Late Hokusai: Society, Thought, Technique, Legacy

This publication has been developed from ideas first presented at the international symposium Late Hokusai: Thought, Technique, Society, held at the British Museum in May 2017. The symposium was organised to enable specialists in a range of disciplines relating to early modern Japan to view and consider the critically acclaimed exhibition Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, then being presented at the British Museum. The exhibition brought together representative works by the artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760−1849) in the various media in which he worked – colour woodblock prints, woodblock-printed illustrated books, brush paintings on paper or silk, and brush drawings − that were produced between the age of 61 and his death aged 90.

Building on the themes of the exhibition, authors from the UK, Europe, Japan and USA have engaged with late Hokusai from a variety of perspectives, both intrinsic and extrinsic to his life and works. Essays have been grouped within the broad categories of ‘society’ – wider cultural interaction and patronage; ‘thought’ – Hokusai’s intellectual concerns and the ways his art brought these to life; and ‘technique’ – how the artist pursued excellence in all media, within a commercialised art market. A particular focus has been the collaborative relationship between Hokusai and his artist daughter Ei (art-name ÅŒi, c. 1800−after 1857?). A fourth section on ‘legacy’ looks at how stories of Hokusai have been as much generated by 130 years of scholarship, as they have by his works themselves. Challengingly, faked paintings and printed works have both contaminated and supported those stories. This innovative approach provides new insights into the work of one of the world’s most celebrated artists and suggests many new avenues for Hokusai research.