Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa is part of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The enormous wave, boats, and distant mountain create a dramatic contrast of scale.
The image circulated as an ukiyo-e woodblock print, with colors and print editions affecting its appearance. Japanese prints later influenced several European artists.
Description
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a landscape-format yoko-e print that was produced in an ōban size of 25 cm × 37 cm (9.8 in × 14.6 in). The landscape is composed of three elements: a stormy sea, three boats, and a mountain. The artist's signature is visible in the upper left-hand corner.
Creation
Hokusai faced numerous challenges during the composition of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. In 1826, whilst in his sixties, he suffered financial difficulty, and in 1827 apparently suffered a serious health problem, probably a stroke. His wife died the following year, and in 1829 he had to rescue his grandson from financial problems, a situation that pushed Hokusai into poverty. Despite sending his grandson to the countryside with his father in 1830, the financial ramifications continued for several years, during which time he was working on Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Cartwright and Nakamura (2009) interpret Hokusai's tribulations as the source of the series' powerful and innovative imagery. Hokusai's goal for the series appears to have been depicting the contrast between the sacred Mount Fuji and secular life.
After several years of work and other drawings, Hokusai arrived at the final design for The Great Wave off Kanagawa in late 1831. Two similar works from around 30 years before the publication of The Great Wave can be considered forerunners: Kanagawa-oki Honmoku no Zu and Oshiokuri Hato Tsusen no Zu, both of which depict a boat (a sailing boat in the former, and a rowing boat in the latter) in the midst of a storm and at the base of a great wave that threatens to engulf them. Hokusai is also thought to have drawn on the Rinpa school paintings of Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716) and Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1829): one of the illustrations in Hōitsu's ehon Ōson gafu (1817) shows clear similarities between its own wave and the one Hokusai would later depict. The Great Wave off Kanagawa demonstrates Hokusai's drawing skill.
The print, though simple in appearance to the viewer, is the result of a lengthy process of methodical reflection. Hokusai established the foundations of this method in his 1812 book Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, in which he explains that any object can be drawn using the relationship between the circle and the square: "The book consists of showing the technique of drawing using only a ruler and a compass... This method starts with a line and the most naturally obtained proportion". He continues in the book's preface: "All forms have their own dimensions which we must respect... It must not be forgotten that such things belong to a universe whose harmony we must not break".
Hokusai returned to the image of The Great Wave a few years later when he produced Kaijo no Fuji for the second volume of One Hundred Views of Fuji. This print features the same relationship between the wave and the mountain, and the same burst of foam. There are no humans or boats in the latter image, and the wave fragments coincide with the flight of birds. While the wave in The Great Wave moves in the opposite direction of the Japanese reading – from right to left – the wave and birds in Kaijo no Fuji move in unison.