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Lot Essay
Until This Day, the ‘Wave Off Kanagawa’ Is Still Inspiring Many
With no less than three absolute masterpieces in its first instalment of ten prints, Hokusai’s series of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Fugaku sanjūrokkei, first took Japan by storm, and then also the world. Yet, nobody at the time, including Hokusai (1760-1849) himself, could have foreseen that his In the Hollow of a Wave Off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki namiura), popularly known as the Great Wave, would, even now, be the most iconic work of art of all times, with no potential contender in sight, and still until this very day inspiring many.
Coming out over a period of probably four years, most of the eventually 46 prints in the series were regularly reprinted in answer to a continuing demand. We only know of ten of the original 36 designs that were apparently not reprinted since 1834, something we can see from the outlines that were then being printed in black instead of the original blue. As for the print of the Wave Off Kanagawa, this must have been one of the top three steady sellers, making it already an iconic image in Hokusai’s days. We even know of a contemporary adaptation, with the wave mirrored under a high towering Mount Fuji. This print, titled ‘Floodwaters from Mount Fuji,’ Fujisan shussui no zu, is a so-called kawaraban broadsheet, as these were illegally spreading recent news, something the government absolutely forbade. In this case, the news was a large flood hitting houses, people and rice fields in the evening of the seventh day of the fourth month of 1834. The flood, causing damage in quite a number of villages at the foot of the mountain, was caused by heavy rain and strong winds that even made a mass of snow from the top of Mount Fuji suddenly come down. Although quite imaginative, this was obviously the work of an amateur. Soon also professional artists would follow, such as Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige, who used the concept of ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji’ at least on four occasions. Yet, his print of ‘The Sea at Satta in Suruga Province,’ Suruga Satta kaijō from his 1858 series of ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,’ is rather based on Hokusai’s plate ‘Fuji Towering over the Sea,’ Kaijō no Fuji, from his 1835 album ‘Hundred Views of Mount Fuji,’ Fugaku hyakkei. Anyway, these were only the first of many adaptations in Japan, not to speak of the numerous reproductions on mugs, t-shirts, socks, or even as large murals, all over the world, and, not to forget, the 1000 Yen banknote that Japan started circulating just last July.
Although it is almost impossible to keep track of what is going on and where Hokusai’s design keeps inspiring artists all over the world, it might well be that even now the reproduction made of some 1080 Rubik’s cubes by some Japanese boy of eight years old, each of them turned so as to have the correct color, that I just saw a few months ago on Japanese television is no longer the latest. A version in Lego dating from 2020, is also one of the more recent examples. This is an installation by Mitsui Junpei (born 1997), a professional LEGO builder, re-making the design in 50,000 Lego bricks, emulating the original design three dimensionally. Like the reproduction on the Japanese banknote, these are unmistakable signs of the more recent revival of appreciation of the image in Japan. It probably used to be a bit too dramatic for the Japanese taste, whereas the much quieter Fuji in South Wind and Clear Dawn, Gaifū kaisei, was obviously more favored. Recently, even the popular title of the ‘Great Wave,’ invented in the West, was also adopted in Japan, written phonetically in the kana-syllabary used for foreign words.
For another recent three-dimensional adaptation, we have to go to India for an installation made of trash by the Indian artist Parvathi Nayar (born 1964). For this project she asked the inhabitants of Chennai, India, to assemble blue and white trash that they could dump at the Alliance Française which co-sponsored the project. The installation, measuring 307” x 518” x 86”, made of trash, sand, and paint, is complemented by sound, a rattling sound reminiscent of something in between trash and water, water being a major aspect in her work.
More loyal to water, however, is the international collective teamLab’s Black Waves of 2016, a digital work of art projected on walls, letting the waves roll on, potentially in a continuous loop as just one step further, however two dimensionally. Similarly, we can appreciate The Great Wave, a glass mosaic by German glass artist Lutz Haufschild (born 1943), decorating the International Departure Lounge of Vancouver International Airport as just another interpretation of endless waves.
Obviously, we would need less imagination in the case of the memorial for the victims of the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash, created by David Busch Associates and erected on a granite wall at Smith Point County Park, New York. One side of the 365 x 850 cms wall has the names of all 230 passengers and crew, on the other is an amalgam of Hokusai’s print from the Fuji series and the already mentioned bookplate from his Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, 1835, the wave, understandably, made up of 230 gulls. Serving as a memorial and annual meeting point for relatives, the association is obviously with drama.
We also see drama in an illustration by Tony Abruzzo (1916-1990), adapting Hokusai’s Wave in a 1962 issue of the romance comic Secret Hearts, which would, in turn, inspire Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) to make his Drowning Girl, one of his most important paintings just a year later, in 1963. Both Abruzzo and Lichtenstein capture the wave and give it a dramatic twist that Hokusai never, I believe, intended, and which was never on his mind. This also much disturbed me when Hokusai’s Wave Off Kanagawa was often illustrated in news magazines in connection with the 2011 tsunami hitting the Tōhoku region of Japan. I would rather agree with Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) who, writing to his brother Theo from Arles in September 1888, already remarked that he was trying to observe everything as if it were ‘through Japanese eyes,’ noticing ‘Just think, isn’t it almost like a religion that we can be taught by these unsophisticated Japanese who live surrounded by nature as if they themselves were flowers’ – meaning indeed that ‘nature’ imposes no threat whatsoever, as Hokusai demonstrates in all his landscapes.
But, of course, it remains Lichtenstein’s artistic freedom to zoom in on Hokusai’s Wave and go for the drama that Edmond de Goncourt in his monograph study of Hokousaï of 1896 already saw in ‘the crest of the wave torn apart and dispersed in a rainfall of drops in the shape of animal claws.’ As for that, in his 1990 lithograph ‘The Wave,’ David Hockney, born 1937, despite its abstraction, remains closer to Hokusai’s design. We can imagine seeing boats among his waves that are, in turn, also slightly reminiscent of the sky in Van Gogh’s Starry Night of 1889. A year earlier, in 1989, Hockney had already shown his interest in Hokusai in his large painting of A Bigger Wave. Anyway, still today Hokusai’s iconic In the Hollow of a Wave Off Kanagawa lends itself to endless variations.
It is now a well-accepted theory that Hokusai’s initial fascination with a wave was caused by a painting by Shiba Kōkan (1747-1818) of a wave rolling onto the beach at Enoshima, completed by the sixth month of 1796. When Kōkan had the painting displayed publicly at the Enpukuji Shrine at Atagoyama in the south of Edo, present-day Tokyo, Hokusai was one of many people to come and see it. He then adapted Kōkan’s view, replacing the fisherman and his assistant in the Kōkan original by a party of Edo town’s women on an outing, in the format of a plate in the album ‘The Threads of the Willow,’ Yanagi no ito, published in 1797 by Tsutaya Jūsaburō (1751-1797).
Interestingly, 1797 also saw the publication of the ‘Illustrated Famous Views along the Tōkaidō Road,’ Tōkaidō meisho zue, a travelers’ guidebook for the journey from Kyoto to Edo along this highway by Akisato Ritō, with illustrations by several various artists. One of its plates, by Kitao Masayoshi (1764-1824), depicts the hero Nitta Yoshioki (1331-1358) on horseback, being lifted up by a strange ghostlike wave when he was about to cross the Tama River by Yaguchi near Edo on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1358. He did not survive this strange event, causing his death at the young age of 28. His soul is now revered in the Nitta Myōjin Shrine at the village of Yaguchi. Though in all respects not related to the Kōkan painting, there cannot be any doubt that Hokusai also knew this plate by Masayoshi, making it quite likely that this too helped him develop his iconic print of the Wave Off Kanagawa.
Dr. Matthi Forrer
Senior Researcher Japan Collections, National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden
With no less than three absolute masterpieces in its first instalment of ten prints, Hokusai’s series of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Fugaku sanjūrokkei, first took Japan by storm, and then also the world. Yet, nobody at the time, including Hokusai (1760-1849) himself, could have foreseen that his In the Hollow of a Wave Off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki namiura), popularly known as the Great Wave, would, even now, be the most iconic work of art of all times, with no potential contender in sight, and still until this very day inspiring many.
Coming out over a period of probably four years, most of the eventually 46 prints in the series were regularly reprinted in answer to a continuing demand. We only know of ten of the original 36 designs that were apparently not reprinted since 1834, something we can see from the outlines that were then being printed in black instead of the original blue. As for the print of the Wave Off Kanagawa, this must have been one of the top three steady sellers, making it already an iconic image in Hokusai’s days. We even know of a contemporary adaptation, with the wave mirrored under a high towering Mount Fuji. This print, titled ‘Floodwaters from Mount Fuji,’ Fujisan shussui no zu, is a so-called kawaraban broadsheet, as these were illegally spreading recent news, something the government absolutely forbade. In this case, the news was a large flood hitting houses, people and rice fields in the evening of the seventh day of the fourth month of 1834. The flood, causing damage in quite a number of villages at the foot of the mountain, was caused by heavy rain and strong winds that even made a mass of snow from the top of Mount Fuji suddenly come down. Although quite imaginative, this was obviously the work of an amateur. Soon also professional artists would follow, such as Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige, who used the concept of ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji’ at least on four occasions. Yet, his print of ‘The Sea at Satta in Suruga Province,’ Suruga Satta kaijō from his 1858 series of ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,’ is rather based on Hokusai’s plate ‘Fuji Towering over the Sea,’ Kaijō no Fuji, from his 1835 album ‘Hundred Views of Mount Fuji,’ Fugaku hyakkei. Anyway, these were only the first of many adaptations in Japan, not to speak of the numerous reproductions on mugs, t-shirts, socks, or even as large murals, all over the world, and, not to forget, the 1000 Yen banknote that Japan started circulating just last July.
Although it is almost impossible to keep track of what is going on and where Hokusai’s design keeps inspiring artists all over the world, it might well be that even now the reproduction made of some 1080 Rubik’s cubes by some Japanese boy of eight years old, each of them turned so as to have the correct color, that I just saw a few months ago on Japanese television is no longer the latest. A version in Lego dating from 2020, is also one of the more recent examples. This is an installation by Mitsui Junpei (born 1997), a professional LEGO builder, re-making the design in 50,000 Lego bricks, emulating the original design three dimensionally. Like the reproduction on the Japanese banknote, these are unmistakable signs of the more recent revival of appreciation of the image in Japan. It probably used to be a bit too dramatic for the Japanese taste, whereas the much quieter Fuji in South Wind and Clear Dawn, Gaifū kaisei, was obviously more favored. Recently, even the popular title of the ‘Great Wave,’ invented in the West, was also adopted in Japan, written phonetically in the kana-syllabary used for foreign words.
For another recent three-dimensional adaptation, we have to go to India for an installation made of trash by the Indian artist Parvathi Nayar (born 1964). For this project she asked the inhabitants of Chennai, India, to assemble blue and white trash that they could dump at the Alliance Française which co-sponsored the project. The installation, measuring 307” x 518” x 86”, made of trash, sand, and paint, is complemented by sound, a rattling sound reminiscent of something in between trash and water, water being a major aspect in her work.
More loyal to water, however, is the international collective teamLab’s Black Waves of 2016, a digital work of art projected on walls, letting the waves roll on, potentially in a continuous loop as just one step further, however two dimensionally. Similarly, we can appreciate The Great Wave, a glass mosaic by German glass artist Lutz Haufschild (born 1943), decorating the International Departure Lounge of Vancouver International Airport as just another interpretation of endless waves.
Obviously, we would need less imagination in the case of the memorial for the victims of the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash, created by David Busch Associates and erected on a granite wall at Smith Point County Park, New York. One side of the 365 x 850 cms wall has the names of all 230 passengers and crew, on the other is an amalgam of Hokusai’s print from the Fuji series and the already mentioned bookplate from his Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, 1835, the wave, understandably, made up of 230 gulls. Serving as a memorial and annual meeting point for relatives, the association is obviously with drama.
We also see drama in an illustration by Tony Abruzzo (1916-1990), adapting Hokusai’s Wave in a 1962 issue of the romance comic Secret Hearts, which would, in turn, inspire Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) to make his Drowning Girl, one of his most important paintings just a year later, in 1963. Both Abruzzo and Lichtenstein capture the wave and give it a dramatic twist that Hokusai never, I believe, intended, and which was never on his mind. This also much disturbed me when Hokusai’s Wave Off Kanagawa was often illustrated in news magazines in connection with the 2011 tsunami hitting the Tōhoku region of Japan. I would rather agree with Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) who, writing to his brother Theo from Arles in September 1888, already remarked that he was trying to observe everything as if it were ‘through Japanese eyes,’ noticing ‘Just think, isn’t it almost like a religion that we can be taught by these unsophisticated Japanese who live surrounded by nature as if they themselves were flowers’ – meaning indeed that ‘nature’ imposes no threat whatsoever, as Hokusai demonstrates in all his landscapes.
But, of course, it remains Lichtenstein’s artistic freedom to zoom in on Hokusai’s Wave and go for the drama that Edmond de Goncourt in his monograph study of Hokousaï of 1896 already saw in ‘the crest of the wave torn apart and dispersed in a rainfall of drops in the shape of animal claws.’ As for that, in his 1990 lithograph ‘The Wave,’ David Hockney, born 1937, despite its abstraction, remains closer to Hokusai’s design. We can imagine seeing boats among his waves that are, in turn, also slightly reminiscent of the sky in Van Gogh’s Starry Night of 1889. A year earlier, in 1989, Hockney had already shown his interest in Hokusai in his large painting of A Bigger Wave. Anyway, still today Hokusai’s iconic In the Hollow of a Wave Off Kanagawa lends itself to endless variations.
It is now a well-accepted theory that Hokusai’s initial fascination with a wave was caused by a painting by Shiba Kōkan (1747-1818) of a wave rolling onto the beach at Enoshima, completed by the sixth month of 1796. When Kōkan had the painting displayed publicly at the Enpukuji Shrine at Atagoyama in the south of Edo, present-day Tokyo, Hokusai was one of many people to come and see it. He then adapted Kōkan’s view, replacing the fisherman and his assistant in the Kōkan original by a party of Edo town’s women on an outing, in the format of a plate in the album ‘The Threads of the Willow,’ Yanagi no ito, published in 1797 by Tsutaya Jūsaburō (1751-1797).
Interestingly, 1797 also saw the publication of the ‘Illustrated Famous Views along the Tōkaidō Road,’ Tōkaidō meisho zue, a travelers’ guidebook for the journey from Kyoto to Edo along this highway by Akisato Ritō, with illustrations by several various artists. One of its plates, by Kitao Masayoshi (1764-1824), depicts the hero Nitta Yoshioki (1331-1358) on horseback, being lifted up by a strange ghostlike wave when he was about to cross the Tama River by Yaguchi near Edo on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1358. He did not survive this strange event, causing his death at the young age of 28. His soul is now revered in the Nitta Myōjin Shrine at the village of Yaguchi. Though in all respects not related to the Kōkan painting, there cannot be any doubt that Hokusai also knew this plate by Masayoshi, making it quite likely that this too helped him develop his iconic print of the Wave Off Kanagawa.
Dr. Matthi Forrer
Senior Researcher Japan Collections, National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden