Hokusai

According to the usual dating, Hokusai was born around 31 October 1760 in the Katsushika district of Edo (now Tokyo), on the Sumida; his childhood name was Tokitarō. The exact birth date is uncertain. His father is often named as a mirror-maker to the shogun, but according to an account by his niece he was the third son of a certain Kawamura.

At fourteen he became an apprentice to a woodcarver, and at eighteen, in 1778, he joined the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō, a master of ukiyo-e, especially prints of kabuki actors. After a year Shunshō gave him the name Shunrō. After Shunshō's death (1793) Hokusai was expelled from the Katsukawa school and explored other styles, including European copper engravings.

Over his career Hokusai used at least thirty names, including Shunrō, Sōri, Hokusai ('north studio', a reference to the North Star), Taito, Iitsu and Gakyō Rōjin Manji ('old man mad about painting'). Names often changed with a new period or style. According to tradition he also moved house well over ninety times.

In 1814 the first volume of the Hokusai Manga appeared, sketchbooks with thousands of images of people, animals, landscapes and supernatural beings. Fifteen volumes eventually appeared, the last three after his death. The word manga then meant loose, informal drawings and does not refer to modern comics.

Around 1830–1832 he designed the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, published by Nishimura Yohachi; in the end forty-six prints appeared. The series includes 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa' and the so-called 'Red Fuji'. He made extensive use of Prussian blue, a pigment introduced from Europe not long before.

Hokusai lived in the Edo period, under the Tokugawa shogunate. Japan then maintained only limited contact with the outside world. Edo was a large city of merchants and craftsmen with a flourishing urban culture of kabuki, literature and prints. Ukiyo-e ('pictures of the floating world') served that public; publishers, designers, woodcarvers and printers worked together.

Through the limited trade with the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki, European prints and pigments reached Japan; Hokusai studied French and Dutch copper engravings and used European perspective. Around 1830 travel within Japan was also growing, to which the Fuji series responded; Mount Fuji was a religious and cultural symbol.

Already in his lifetime Hokusai was an established print designer, with pupils and a large public for his sketchbooks and landscape series. The Fuji series above all made his name in Japan and abroad. His daughter Ōi worked alongside him as a painter.

From the late 19th century Japanese prints spread through Europe and influenced painters and graphic artists (Japonisme). The art critic Edmond de Goncourt wrote in 1896 that the Fuji series inspired the landscapes of the Impressionists. 'The Great Wave' is also often cited as an inspiration for Debussy's La Mer (1905), although that connection is a supposition.

Hokusai kept working into old age. In the 1840s, at the invitation of the wealthy farmer and patron Takai Kōzan, he stayed several times in Obuse in Shinano province, where he made ceiling paintings among other works. He died on 10 May 1849 in Edo and was buried at Seikyō-ji temple in present-day Tokyo.

In Obuse there is a museum devoted to his work (Hokusai-kan). Hokusai's prints and sketchbooks are held in museums worldwide, and 'The Great Wave' is widely reproduced. There is uncertainty about his birth date, the number of his art names and the number of times he moved house (according to tradition 93).