Great Games of Thought
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An imagined portrait of the elderly Hokusai, balding with wisps of white hair, in a checked kimono and a sleeveless vest.An imagined portrait

Katsushika Hokusai

1760–1849

Hokusai, who said his pictures before 70 were not worth noticing

Nothing I drew before 70 is worth noticing.
Game 9 · Reconstruction · Record; paraphrase; One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, first volume, postscript (1834)

Overview

Katsushika Hokusai was an ukiyo-e artist of Edo-period Japan. Born in Edo in 1760, he lived to the age of ninety (by the traditional count) and made pictures for about seventy years. Record

He tended to change his name around the time one period of his work gave way to the next, and used many names, such as Shunrō (春朗), Sōri (宗理), Hokusai (北斎), Taito (戴斗), Iitsu (為一) and Gakyō Rōjin Manji (画狂老人卍). Record

From 1814 he published the Hokusai Manga, a manual for people learning to draw, and at around seventy he made the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The Sumida Hokusai Museum holds that this series established landscape in ukiyo-e. Record · the assessment is interpretation

In 1834, at the end of his picture book One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, he wrote that nothing he drew before seventy was worth noticing, and that at a hundred and ten every dot and every stroke would seem alive. Record · Paraphrase

Museums explain that his pictures became widely known in Europe in the late nineteenth century, and that painters such as Van Gogh and Degas were influenced by them. Interpretation

Timeline

  1. 1760

    He was born in Edo in the ninth lunar month of Hōreki 10. His birthday (the 23rd day of the ninth month) is worked out from the cyclical date of his birth that he wrote in the signature of Daikokuten, a painting he made at 85; the painting's whereabouts are now unknown, and it survives only in a photograph in an old book. His birthplace (Honjo Warigesui) and childhood names (Tokitarō, later Tetsuzō) come from an 1893 biography. Record (year) · Tradition (birthplace and names)

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (based on Katsushika Hokusai den, '出生したという', 'is said to have been born') · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) ('といわれています', 'it is said') · Ota Memorial Museum of Art, note article '葛飾北斎の誕生日はどうやって判明したのか' (How was Hokusai's birthday worked out?, Hinohara Kenji 日野原健司)

  2. c. 1765

    He wrote of himself that from about the age of six he had a habit of copying the shapes of things. Record · his own recollection

    Postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, first volume (1834), "己六才より物の形状を写の癖ありて" — transcription by the Shimane Art Museum · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (based on Fugaku hyakkei 富嶽百景 and Ehon saishikitsū 画本彩色通)

  3. c. 1773

    He is said to have learned to carve woodblocks at about fourteen. Tradition

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (based on Katsushika Hokusai den) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) ('とされ', 'it is held')

  4. 1778–79

    At nineteen (by the traditional count) he joined the studio of the ukiyo-e artist Katsukawa Shunshō, and from the next year he issued pictures of kabuki actors and other works under the name 'Shunrō (春朗)'. Record

    Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) (entered the studio in 1778) · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (1778, '入門するか', 'probably entered the studio'; works signed 春朗 in 1779)

  5. 1794

    He left the Katsukawa school and took the name 'Sōri (宗理)', a name from the Rinpa line, a school of decorative painting. Record

    Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) ('襲名するか', 'probably took the name')

  6. 1798

    He passed the name 'Sōri' to a pupil and changed his name to 'Hokusai Tokimasa (北斎辰政)'. The Sumida Hokusai Museum explains that he then declared he would belong to no school. Record · independence from any school is interpretation

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (「宗理」号を門人の宗二に譲り, 'passed the name Sōri to his pupil Sōji') · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯)

  7. 1814

    The Nagoya publisher Eirakuya Tōshirō issued the first volume of the Hokusai Manga (formal title 伝神開手北斎漫画). It is not manga in today's sense but a drawing manual (絵手本) collecting pictures drawn as the fancy took him; it continued into the Meiji era and ran to 15 volumes. Record

    Sumida City, 'Hokusai Manga' (北斎漫画) · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) · Metropolitan Museum of Art JIB82 (vol. 5, 1816)

  8. 1820

    He began to use the name 'Iitsu (為一)'. Record

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (the signature 「為一」 on New Year surimono, 摺物) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯)

  9. 1827–28

    He is said to have collapsed with a stroke and then recovered after taking a yuzu remedy he made himself. Tradition

    Iijima Kyoshin, Katsushika Hokusai den (飯島虚心『葛飾北斎伝』, 1893), vol. 1 — National Diet Library digital copy (dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992198), 'Mr Tsuyuki's account' (露木氏の話) · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) ('回復するという', 'is said to have recovered')

  10. 1828

    On the 5th day of the sixth lunar month his wife died. Record

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (based on the death register of Seikyō-ji, 誓教寺, and other records) · Cartwright & Nakamura 2009 (a series of family troubles in the 1820s)

  11. c. 1830

    Researchers cite a letter he wrote to a publisher saying, in effect, 'this spring I have neither money nor clothes, and can barely keep myself fed'. Studies that date the letter to the first month of 1830 differ from sources that place it early in the Tenpō era. Record · Paraphrase (original letter not checked)

    British Museum Late Hokusai research, 'Dating Hokusai's prints of the 1830s' (Roger Keyes, archived copy) · Art Institute of Chicago, '10+ Things to Know about The Great Wave', item 7

  12. c. 1831

    Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji appears in an 1831 advertisement by the publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi. One print of the series, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (the Great Wave), was printed with Prussian blue, a synthetic pigment first made in Europe, mixed with indigo. It is thought that up to about 8,000 impressions were printed; a hundred or so are known today. Record · the number printed is an estimate

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (advertisement in Ryūtei Tanehiko's Shōhon-jitate, 柳亭種彦『正本製』) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) (around Tenpō 2, 天保2年頃) · Vermeulen et al. 2020, Heritage Science 8:62 · Korenberg 2020 (British Museum, 'up to 8,000 impressions'; 111 impressions examined)

  13. 1834

    At 75 (by the traditional count) he published the first volume of his picture book One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. At the end he placed a postscript, signed 'Gakyō Rōjin Manji (画狂老人卍, the old man mad about painting)', in which he looked back on his life in painting and vowed to go further. He named the master carver Egawa Tomekichi to cut the blocks. Record

    Shimane Art Museum, commentary on 'One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji' (富嶽百景) and transcription of the postscript · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'About Hokusai' (北斎について) · Ota Memorial Museum of Art, note article '90歳の北斎が、死の間際に望んだこと' (17 April 2021)

  14. c. 1839

    It is said that when his house caught fire he ran out holding only his brush, and lost the pile of reduced copies of other artists' pictures (Western ones included) that he had gathered since his youth. Tradition

    Iijima Kyoshin, Katsushika Hokusai den (飯島虚心『葛飾北斎伝』, 1893), vol. 1 (National Diet Library digital copy) · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) ('消失するといわれる', 'is said to have lost') · Matthi Forrer 2021

  15. 1842

    At the end of a letter to a publisher he drew himself as an old man, signed it '八右衛門' (Hachiemon) and wrote '八十三歳' (aged 83). In the letter he asked that the drawings for this book, made when he was about forty-one or forty-two, be seen as immature old work. Record

    Wereldmuseum Leiden (formerly the National Museum of Ethnology), collection record RV-3513-1496 (including a transcription of the letter) hdl.handle.net · Matthi Forrer, 'Hokusai's Self-portrait and his Sōhitsu Gafu' (2021)

  16. c. 1847–48

    In a letter in which he called himself 'Miuraya Hachiemon', he described himself as having 'small eyes, a big nose and shaggy white hair', and drew his own profile. Beside it he drew the face of his daughter Ei (Katsushika Ōi), whom he described as 'a woman with a square jaw'. Record

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Letter of Hokusai, with portraits of Hokusai and Oei' (北斎書簡(北斎・お栄似顔絵付)), Nagata Collection · quoted in a book edited by Kubota (久保田) (checked at the first stage of planning)

  17. 1848

    In the postscript to Ehon saishikitsū (画本彩色通), published at 89 (by the traditional count), he wrote that from ninety he would change his style of painting, and that after a hundred his only wish was to renew this way of art. Record · Paraphrase (not checked against a scan of the original)

    Ota Memorial Museum of Art, note article (17 April 2021) (transcription of the postscript) · Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (1848, Ehon saishikitsū 画本彩色通, parts 1 and 2)

  18. 1848

    His temporary lodging in Asakusa at this time is said to have been the ninety-third house he had moved to. The Sumida Hokusai Museum notes that he moved house more than ninety times in his life. Tradition

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (based on Katsushika Hokusai den) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'About Hokusai' (北斎について) ('といわれます', 'it is said')

  19. 1849

    He died at about four in the morning (七ツ時) on the 18th day of the fourth lunar month, at his temporary lodging in the grounds of Henjō-in (遍照院) in Shōden-chō, Asakusa. That day his daughter Ei sent notice of his death to his pupil Hokushin (北岑), and the next day the funeral was held at Seikyō-ji (誓教寺) in Asakusa. His grave is also at this temple. Record

    Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (notice of Hokusai's death addressed to Hokushin, 北岑宛北斎死亡通知, Nagata Collection) · Ota Memorial Museum of Art, note article (17 April 2021) ('今暁七ツ時', 'at the seventh hour this morning'; grave at 誓教寺)

Key ideas

Getting better with age

At seventy-five Hokusai wrote that nothing he drew before seventy was worth noticing, and that only at seventy-three had he come to grasp a little of the principles of birds and beasts, grasses and trees. So at eighty he would advance further, he said, and at a hundred and ten every dot and every stroke would seem alive. At eighty-nine, too, he wrote that from ninety he would change his style of painting. Record · Paraphrase

Postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, first volume (1834) · postscript to Ehon saishikitsū, first volume (1848) — transcriptions by the Shimane Art Museum and the Ota Memorial Museum of Art

Manuals for people learning to draw

As his pupils and people learning to draw grew in number across the country, he published many drawing manuals. In Ryakuga hayaoshie (略画早指南, c. 1812) he showed how to set up the framework of any shape with compass and ruler, and the Hokusai Manga was used both as a model for learning to draw and as a pattern book for craftsmen. Record

Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) (the period of drawing manuals, 絵手本の時代) · Shimane Art Museum, commentary on Ryakuga hayaoshie, part 1 (略画早指南 前編) · Sumida City, 'Hokusai Manga' (北斎漫画)

Letting go of a name and starting again

He passed 'Sōri' to a pupil and became 'Hokusai', and later seems to have passed the name 'Taito' to a pupil as well. Scholars divide his career into periods by the names he used. Record · Interpretation

Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜) (1798, 宗理 → 宗二; 1819, 戴斗 → 北泉, '譲るか', 'probably passed on') · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'Hokusai's life' (北斎の生涯) (periods by name)

He looked at Western pictures too, and blended them in

When young he made 'uki-e', pictures imitating Western perspective, and the Sumida Hokusai Museum relates that he studied Western techniques along with the Kanō and Tosa schools. But scholars who studied the Great Wave wrote that he seems never to have understood perspective scientifically. Interpretation

Shimane Art Museum, glossary entry 'uki-e' (浮絵) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'About Hokusai' (北斎について) ('といわれています', 'it is said') · Cartwright & Nakamura 2009, Notes Rec. R. Soc. 63:119–135

In their words

Ever since I was six I have had the habit of copying the shapes of things, and from around fifty I brought out many pictures, but nothing I drew before seventy is truly worth noticing. At seventy-three I came at last to grasp a little of the bones of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of how grasses and trees grow. So at eighty I shall advance still further, at ninety I shall go deeper into their hidden meaning, and at a hundred shall I not truly reach the marvellous? At a hundred and ten, a single dot, a single stroke, will seem to live. I ask you, gentlemen of long life, to watch and see that my words are not empty.

己六才より物の形状を写の癖ありて 半百の比より数々画図を顕すといへども 七十年前画く所は実に取に足ものなし 七十三才にして稍禽獣虫魚の骨格草木の出生を悟し得たり 故に八十才にしてハ益々進み九十才にして猶其奥意を極め 一百歳にして正に神妙ならん歟 百有十歳にしてハ一点一格にして生るがごとくならん 願くハ長寿の君子予が言の妄ならざるを見たまふべし

Postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, first volume (1834) — checked against the printed first volume in the Smithsonian Libraries; the same characters as the Ota Memorial Museum of Art transcription (differences in notation in the note); the Shimane Art Museum transcription consulted · translated from the Japanese by Great Games of Thought Record · Quotation
From ninety I shall change my style of painting, and after a hundred my only wish is to renew this way of art.

九十歳よりは画風を改め百才の後にいたりては此道を改革せんことをのみねがふ

Postscript to Ehon saishikitsū (画本彩色通), first volume (1848) — transcription in an Ota Memorial Museum of Art, note article (17 April 2021) · translated from the Japanese by Great Games of Thought Record · Quotation
small-eyed, big-nosed, with shaggy white hair

眼の小キ鼻之大き成白髪のモジャモジャ

Hokusai's letter (c. 1847–48, Nagata Collection, Shimane Art Museum), 'Letter of Hokusai, with portraits of Hokusai and Oei' (北斎書簡(北斎・お栄似顔絵付)) · translated from the Japanese by Great Games of Thought Record · Quotation
If Heaven would lengthen my life by ten years … If Heaven would grant me five more years of life, I could become a true painter.

天我をして十年の命を長ふせしめは … 天我をして五年の命を保たしめは、真正の画工となるを得へし

Iijima Kyoshin, Katsushika Hokusai den (飯島虚心『葛飾北斎伝』, 1893) — quoted in an Ota Memorial Museum of Art, note article (17 April 2021) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'About Hokusai' (北斎について) ('と言ったといわれます', 'he is said to have said') · translated from the Japanese by Great Games of Thought Tradition · Quotation
As a spirit-flame I'll go, free and easy — over the summer fields.

ひと魂でゆく気散じや夏の原

Shimane Art Museum, 'Hokusai chronology' (北斎年譜), entry for 1849 (citing 北岑宛北斎死亡通知 and 葛飾北斎伝) · Sumida Hokusai Museum, 'About Hokusai' (北斎について) · translated from the Japanese by Great Games of Thought Tradition · Quotation

Times and influence

In the late Edo period, when Hokusai was active, ukiyo-e prints were made by a division of labour: a publisher planned them, an artist drew the designs, a carver cut the blocks and a printer printed them. In the 1820s and 1830s Prussian blue (in Japanese, bero-ai), a synthetic pigment first made in Europe, spread at low cost, and landscape prints that made the most of blue became popular.

His pictures became widely known as the taste for things Japanese spread after the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867. The Sumida Hokusai Museum explains that Van Gogh and Degas, Henri Rivière and Émile Gallé were influenced by him. In 1905 the cover of the first edition of the score of Debussy's orchestral work La Mer carried part of the Great Wave.

With people from other games

Common misconceptions

Books to read

Appears in

On the field side, a red-bearded man in white clothes and a straw hat sits on a folding stool; across from him, a white-haired old man in old Japanese dress sits at a low desk in a tatami room; the two look at each other0910:51

Game 9·Van Gogh×Hokusai

Is It Really Too Late?