Katsushika Hokusai was born in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1760 and died there in 1849. Understanding Katsushika Hokusai art is easier once you see his prints not as isolated masterpieces but as objects made to be sold, carried and collected. The seven works that follow are all colour woodblock prints, and together they connect one artist's eye for nature with the trade routes, pilgrim roads and folk stories of his time.

Four of the prints come from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, two from A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces, and one from an untitled series of large flowers. They share a publisher, Nishimuraya Yohachi, who worked under the house name Eijūdō.

What blue did Hokusai use in the Great Wave and where did it come from?

Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, was designed for the colour woodblock series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and printed for a broad Edo audience. It wasn't a one-off painting made for a palace or a temple. It was a commercial sheet, made to be bought, carried home and looked at by ordinary people, and it sold extremely well when it appeared in the early 1830s.

What let Hokusai print that sea was a blue that had only just reached Japan. Prussian blue, a new synthetic pigment, entered the country through China and the Netherlands, the only two trading partners Japan kept in those years. Unlike the blues Japanese printmakers had used before, it resisted fading and held a far stronger colour. The older choices were indigo and dayflower, both much weaker, and the new pigment gave designers something they had never had.

The printers didn't simply swap one blue for the other. Research on surviving impressions shows them combining and layering indigo with Prussian blue to reach the range of blues in the water. That's why the sea moves through so many shades: the effect comes from two pigments used together, rather than from one pigment fully replacing the other.

The British Museum estimates that between 5,000 and 15,000 impressions may have been pulled during the Edo period. It was made to be reproduced and sold again and again, and its fame in Japan rested on that repeated manufacture, not on rarity.

Its later fame travelled far beyond printmaking. The composition is said to have inspired Debussy's La Mer and Rilke's poem Der Berg.

Original impressions now sit in museums on several continents, among them the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the British Museum in London.

Why Hokusai's South Wind, Clear Sky is known as Red Fuji

South Wind, Clear Sky (Gaifū kaisei), also known as Red Fuji, shows Mount Fuji as a bold triangle against a cool blue sky, its slopes in rich reds and earthy browns. The nickname comes from real weather. In late summer or early autumn, when a south wind blows and the sky stays clear, the rising sun can dye the mountain red, and that's the moment the print catches.

The whole series was built around the newly imported Prussian blue, and its earliest designs were printed mostly in blue tones with blue outlines. Only once the publisher, Nishimuraya Yohachi, was sure the set would sell did he move to many colours.

The series' success took it from thirty-six to forty-six designs. The publisher had planned more than a hundred, but publication stopped at forty-six.

A print like this one didn't come off a single block. Every colour in the picture needed its own carved block, so each sheet was the joint work of the artist, the block cutters and the printers, all working under the publisher's supervision. The picture looks like the work of one person, but it was made by a small workshop.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds an impression, bought with the Rogers Fund in 1914. Another sits in the British Museum in London, and a third was given to Harvard Art Museums by the Friends of Arthur B. Duel in 1933.

Why did Hokusai choose Enoshima in Sagami Province?

Enoshima in Sagami Province (Sōshū Enoshima) is the island view Hokusai chose as one of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, printed around 1831 by Nishimuraya Yohachi under the name Eijūdō. The old province name in the title locates it in Sagami, and the picture shows the island's rocky cliffs and rolling waves in cool blues and greens that balance the warm beige paper.

Enoshima wasn't just scenery. The small island and its seaside town were a pilgrimage destination. The island has tidal pools and seaside caves. The island also has a large temple dedicated to Benzaiten, the Buddhist deity of the arts, wealth and good fortune.

Hokusai was in his seventies when the Fuji series appeared, and it was far from his only project. He published colour print series one after another in those years, and in the 1830s, his most prolific period as a print artist, his pictures of famous places, called meisho-e, brought him great fame.

He used more than thirty artist names in his life, among them Shunro, Sori, Hokusai, Gakyojin, Iitsu and Manji Rojin. The name Iitsu appears on the Fuji series itself.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds an impression, acquired in 1936 as part of the Howard Mansfield Collection.

Why were travellers carried across the Ōi River in Hokusai's Kanaya print?

Fuji Seen from Kanaya on the Tōkaidō (Tōkaidō Kanaya no Fuji) shows the Ōi River crossing on the Tōkaidō highway, where porters carried travellers and their conveyances. In the print, travellers are carried across the river on platforms while Mount Fuji stands calm and distant behind them.

The obstacle was deliberate. The Tokugawa government banned any substantial bridge over the Ōi near Kanaya for military reasons. It also forbade ferries. The only way across was through the ford, where porters carried and guided each traveller.

When the water ran high, no one was allowed or able to cross. Travellers could be held in Shimada on one bank or Kanaya on the other for days, sometimes weeks, until the water dropped low enough for them to wade across. The Ōi was a dangerous obstacle for travellers.

The delays that frustrated travellers brought money to the two towns, and the river porters earned their living from carrying people across. River crossing was big business on both banks, and by the end of the Edo period Shimada and Kanaya counted more than 1,300 river porters between them, a whole local economy built on carrying people through water no bridge was allowed to span.

Change came only after the shogunate fell. Ferries replaced the Ōi porters in 1871, and in 1879 the first bridge between Shimada and Kanaya finally opened, ending the kind of crossing the print had shown.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds an impression, received through the bequest of Henry L. Phillips in 1939.

What is the legend of the Yōrō Waterfall?

Yōrō Waterfall in Mino Province (Mino no Yōrō no taki) shows a dramatic vertical flow of water framed by rugged cliffs and lush foliage, with white highlights on the water. Hokusai made it as one of eight prints in A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri), and like every sheet in that series it names a real, visitable place.

A Japanese folk story about filial devotion is told about this place. In the legend, a devoted son gathers water from the Yōrō Waterfall for his dying father, and the father recovers after drinking it. The story ties the falls to care within a family.

By choosing named falls for all eight prints, Hokusai placed the series in the tradition called meisho-e, pictures of famous places. In his waterfall scenes, small human figures often appear, and they serve to stress the scale and power of the falls.

The sheets were a collaboration, but Hokusai stayed closely involved in his part. Surviving letters show him watching every detail of the printing and complaining to publishers when the work fell short. He also wrote to the block cutter Sugita about badly cut eyes and noses in his illustrations for the book Ehon Toshisen (1833), asking for them to be redone.

After Hokusai's death, high-quality forgeries of the waterfall series were made, convincing enough to deceive many Western collectors.

The Art Institute of Chicago holds an impression from the Clarence Buckingham Collection, and others sit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Norton Simon Museum and the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Kirifuri Waterfall and Hokusai's prints devoted to falling water

Kirifuri Waterfall at Kurokami Mountain in Shimotsuke (Shimotsuke Kurokamiyama Kirifuri no taki) is a study in verticality, its falling water drawn in cool blues and blue-greens against warm beige paper while small figures at the base give the drop its scale. Kirifuri means “Falling Mist”, and the site lies north of Nikkō in what is now Tochigi Prefecture, in the foothills of Mount Akanagi.

Long before Hokusai drew it, pilgrims visiting the local shrines and temples had admired the waterfall and its highland setting.

The real waterfall is about 250 feet high and falls in three stages: a vertical drop, a near-horizontal glide, then a second plunge over craggy rocks. It was a popular place to visit in Hokusai's time, and it still is.

A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces was the first in ukiyo-e to take falling water as its whole theme, and it was praised for the inventive, expressive way it treated that one subject. The imported pigments helped. Prussian blue and other mineral pigments coming into Japan from Europe had given landscape printmakers new ways to show water and sky.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds an impression, and so do the Art Institute of Chicago and Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge.

How Hokusai signed Hydrangea and Swallow

Hydrangea and Swallow is a bird-and-flower print from the early 1830s, made for an untitled series of large flowers. The swallow cuts through the air above a cluster of hydrangea blossoms and broad green leaves, its blue-black plumage set against soft green foliage and pale petals, and the print keeps plenty of bare paper around them.

It came from the same artist-and-house partnership as the landscapes. Nishimuraya Yohachi issued the sheet through his Eijūdō publishing house, so the collaboration behind the Fuji and waterfall series extended to flower subjects too.

And Hokusai made sure the sheet carried his name. The print is signed “zen Hokusai Iitsu hitsu”, using the Iitsu name of his later years, so the authorship is recorded on the paper itself, just as it was on the Fuji series. The Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts each hold an impression.

Choose the print whose story you'd most like to have around you at home: the imported blue of the wave, the unbridged Ōi, or the son at the Yōrō falls. Once it's on your wall, that history comes with it.

Did you know?

• An impression of Fuji Seen from Kanaya on the Tōkaidō from the Michener Collection in Honolulu was shown in the exhibition Hokusai's Summit at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 2009 and 2010.
• Enoshima in Sagami Province is design number 25 in the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
• The Yōrō Waterfall print is signed “Zen Hokusai Iitsu fude”.
• The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji sold well partly because of a lively popular veneration of the mountain in Hokusai's time.
• Harvard Art Museums' impression of Red Fuji is signed in print “Hokusai Aratame Iitsu hitsu”.

Questions readers ask about Hokusai

What is Katsushika Hokusai's most famous artwork? The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Hokusai played with the perspective in it, shrinking Mount Fuji to a small triangular mound inside the hollow of the cresting wave.

What was Hokusai's art style? He worked in ukiyo-e colour woodblock printing, a medium built on crisp outlines and flat areas of colour. Prussian blue, newly imported, gave landscape printmakers like him new ways to show water and sky. He was also a follower of Nichiren Buddhism, and his waterfall prints convey a strong sense that the water is alive, a sense that reflects his animistic beliefs.

Why is Red Fuji red? Because of the weather it records: in late summer or early autumn, with a south wind and a clear sky, the rising sun can dye the mountain's slopes red. The Metropolitan Museum of Art sets a companion view from the same series, Storm Below Fuji, with its bolt of white lightning over an inky base, beside it for contrast.

Who published Hokusai's prints? Nishimuraya Yohachi, working under the house name Eijūdō, published the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the waterfall series and the large flower prints covered here. A letter dated 1836 records that he had fallen into economic difficulties by the middle of the decade.

When did Hokusai make his best-known prints? He said nothing he drew before the age of seventy was worth taking into account. He published colour print series one after another in his seventies, and he lived to 89.

Where can I see Hokusai prints in person? Original impressions sit in major museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum holds an impression of Fuji Seen from Kanaya on the Tōkaidō, which has travelled to exhibitions in Niigata, Curitiba and Kaohsiung.

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About the author

We're the team at Moryarty, a European company that has been restoring and printing vintage posters in its Barcelona workshop since 2015. We find our posters in libraries, museums, online collections and private collections, restore each artwork by hand without changing its original design or colours, and print it in-house on museum-quality matte paper. Hokusai's woodblock prints are among the works we care about most, and it's a pleasure to tell their stories to readers across Europe.

Sources

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• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)
• British Museum – The Great Wave: spot the difference
• Wikipedia – Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji)
• British Museum Images – South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji)
• Harvard Art Museums – Mount Fuji Viewed during a Fine Wind on a Clear Morning
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Enoshima in Sagami Province
• Sotheby's – Enoshima in Sagami Province
• Ronin Gallery – Enoshima in Sagami Province
• Fuji Arts – Enoshima in Sagami Province
• Wikidata – Enoshima in Sagami Province
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Fuji Seen from Kanaya on the Tōkaidō
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Fair Travellers Fording the River Oi
• Wikipedia – Shimada, Shizuoka
• Old Photos of Japan – Piggybacking the Tōkaidō's Mightiest Rivers
• Tokyo Fuji Art Museum – Mt. Fuji from Kanaya on the Tokaido
• The Torch, University of Oxford – The Yoro Waterfall
• Art Institute of Chicago – Yoro Falls in Mino Province
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Yōrō Waterfall in Mino Province
• Wikipedia – A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces
• Wikipedia – Three Travellers before a Waterfall
• Worcester Art Museum – Kirifuri Waterfall on Mount Kurokami
• Worcester Art Museum – Pilgrimage to Hokusai's Waterfalls
• Philadelphia Museum of Art – Kirifuri Waterfall
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – Kirifuri Waterfall at Kurokami Mountain
• Art Institute of Chicago – Hydrangea and Swallow
• Ukiyo-e.org – Hydrangeas and Swallow (Museum of Fine Arts)
• Wikipedia – The Great Wave off Kanagawa
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art – custom prints, Under the Wave off Kanagawa
• Arts To Hearts Project – The Story Behind The Great Wave off Kanagawa
• MOA Museum of Art – Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji
• Ukiyo-e.org – Mount Fuji from Kanaya on the Tōkaidō Road (Michener Collection)