A Small Wave, a Big Question
A few months ago, I picked up a cotton handkerchief printed with The Great Wave off Kanagawa at a souvenir stall in Asakusa. My Canadian friend — visiting Japan for the first time — was delighted by the swirling indigo but could not name the artist, and had never noticed the tiny silhouette of Mount Fuji hidden behind the spray. His curiosity, and my mild shock, reminded me that even an image plastered on coffee mugs and phone cases can float free of its maker. That day I promised myself to dive beneath the crest of the wave and introduce the man who painted it.
The Restless Life of Katsushika Hokusai
Born in 1760 on the eastern fringe of Edo (today’s Tokyo), Hokusai reinvented himself with a frequency that would exhaust a modern branding agency. He changed his artist name more than thirty times, moved house over ninety times, and kept sketchbooks under his pillow in case a dream required immediate capture. The constant relocation was not eccentricity alone: fires, floods, and the fragile economics of printmaking often pushed him from one rented room to the next.
Each move left a faint echo in his art. Early works signed Sōri reveal the bright, stylised elegance of the ukiyo-e（浮世絵） pleasure districts; later, under the name Iitsu, landscapes erupt with energy, as if the artist himself were searching for a view that could finally pin him down. Finding none, he kept moving.
Thirty‑Six Views that Changed the View
In the 1830s, already in his seventies, Hokusai unveiled Thirty‑Six Views of Mount Fuji. Cheap blue pigment imported from Europe allowed unprecedented tonal range, and the series became a quiet revolution. Prints were affordable, pocket‑sized windows onto distant provinces — democratised travel for an age before railways.
Painters in Paris bought the sheets to wrap porcelain, only to unroll them and gasp. Claude Monet covered his Giverny studio with the pale blues; Vincent van Gogh copied the contour lines into Provence skies; Debussy wrote La mer after strolling past a dealer’s window. A mountain that barely rises 4,000 metres suddenly cast an artistic shadow across a continent.
Wabi‑sabi in the White Space
Look again at the Wave: between the claw‑like crests there is a pause — a breath of untouched washi — that holds the composition in tension. That ma（間） of silence embodies wabi‑sabi（侘び寂び）, the Japanese appreciation of impermanence and imperfection. The modern minimalist apartment, all blank walls and low furniture, finds an unlikely teacher in a 19th‑century print.
I recently framed an acrylic wall art using Hokusai’s original drawing. When my Canadian friend hung it in his living room, he laughed, “That extra white space forced me to throw things out.” Empty area became invitation rather than absence; the room felt calmer, lighter, ready for whatever pictures the mind might project onto that gap.
From Woodblocks to Blockchains
Hokusai’s lines, carved once into cherry wood, now travel at the speed of light. Digitised high‑resolution scans sit in public‑domain archives; graphic designers sample the wave’s spray for street‑wear logos; collectors mint scrolling NFTs that animate Fuji through the seasons. Some purists wince, yet the artist himself would probably grin — he boasted on his deathbed that at 110 he would finally paint like a god. In digital space, he has already surpassed that age.
These reuses are not degradation but reincarnation. Woodblock technology was the mass media of Edo; today’s code and blockchain merely extend the print run indefinitely, sending the wave to laptops as far from Tokyo as Hokusai once dreamed.
The Wave Rolls On
Hokusai’s indigo droplet slipped across two centuries to lap against our own shores. Its line and empty space polish the eye, nudging us to tilt our heads and notice fresh contours in the ordinary.
Next time dawn lights the sky pink, or salted wind brushes your cheek, you may recall that tiny Fuji beneath the foam. In that moment, the wave will rise again — quiet, persuasive, never quite finished — painting a new vista inside you. I hope you let it linger.
