Imagine for a moment stepping back into one of Japan’s most colorful eras, the Edo era, around 1830…

Still closed off from trade with all other countries except the Dutch by the ruling shogunate, Japan was considered somewhat “exotic”, and still a great mystery to the rest of the world.

An artistic wonder, with a career of 50 years experience making traditional woodblock prints, seventy year old Katsushika Hokusai, is undertaking an impressive new series of works which will honor the most spiritual and sacred mountain in all of Japan, Mount Fuji.

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, or The Great Wave, is the first print of this series titled Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji using a traditional technique which was most common at that time, ukiyo-e, literally meaning “pictures of the floating world”.

While The Great Wave is Hokusai’s most famous depiction of a wave it is not the only time he experimented with the image. In fact, he created similarly themed works of art throughout his lifetime, allowing the viewer a rare opportunity to visually trace the “evolution process” of his making The Great Wave.

Detailed preliminary sketches would be a necessity for the new series, therefore Hokusai would make numerous pilgrimages on foot in order to view the esteemed mountain. He would also use the Tokaido Road, Japan’s “eastern sea route” important for linking Kyoto the imperial capital, with Edo (modern-day Tokyo) the residence of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This often traveled route would have been filled with posts, inns, temples, shrines, samurai, and merchants…as well as the everyday common traveler.

Journeys made in every season enabled Hokusai to see first-hand and then render in the series, outstanding views of his beloved Mount Fuji, from all different perspectives at various famous locations along the way.

Hokusai’s enduring passion was to portray Japan’s tallest mountain with waves, a challenge he continued to pursue for his entire life. He would depict countless waves, striving to capture their ever-changing shapes and movement. The Great Wave being such an example of this never-ending desire to create the most realistic and captivating wave.

The making of an ukiyo-e print is a labor intensive process. Beginning with sketches, a final painting with color is produced. The next step is carving the painting’s image on the surfaces of woodblocks, a separate block required for each color of the print. The advantage of producing a print, verses a painting, would be that a print can be duplicated up to thousands of times, keeping the cost relatively low.

Being at the very height of his career with years of experience, Hokusai uses delicate lines in his work, painstakingly carving the intricate crest of the wave, a true test of his outstanding skill. He also pays careful attention to the rhythm and overall balance of the wave, presenting a powerfully dramatic composition.

At the time The Great Wave was produced, one of the reasons for its success in Japan was that it was printed in a new and exotic blue color, the pigment we recognize today as the Prussian blue, (called “bero-ai”, which means “Berlin blue”). This pigment would have had to have been imported through Holland, since trading with the rest of Europe was not yet officially open.

Hokusai uses this vivid blue color in two different concentrations, where he skillfully prints one color over the other through a complex multi-block printing process. By printing the wave in this manner one layer at a time, he successfully achieves a more richly colored three-dimensional quality.

Interestingly, a scientific analysis has recently revealed that Hokusai used both the imported Prussian blue, as well as traditional Japanese indigo for the very subtle gradations in the coloring of the wave composition. He uses this same technique of blue “over-layering” in other pieces from the series as well, including the well-known South Wind, Clear Sky.

Just four years after Hokusai’s death at the age of 90, Japan opened its ports for world-wide trade. The Great Wave instantly became known and exported to Europe and America, where it was to have influenced artists like Van Gogh, Whistler, and Monet. It even influenced Claude Debussy’s orchestral piece La Mer (The Sea), whose cover for the score’s first edition would feature a reproduction published in 1905 of The Great Wave.

In the letters to his brother (Letter number 676: To Theo Van Gogh), Vincent Van Gogh states how much he admires the works of Hokusai, praising the quality of his drawing and “the great use of line” in The Great Wave. In his own words, this work left a “terrifying emotional impact” on his life and art.

The Great Wave has continued inspiring artists and viewers of all ages for nearly 200 years, clearly a testimony to Katsushika Hokusai’s superb draftsmanship and breathtaking compositional ability. It is a work which could easily be called Hokusai’s “living” masterpiece, being studied, and appreciated by art lovers over the world with each new generation.