Hokusai– category –

The Great Wave is on mugs, phone cases, tattoos, and the wave emoji. How a 19th-century Edo print became the most reproduced artwork in human history — and what that ubiquity means.

Everyone knows Hokusai's waves. Far fewer know his bird and flower prints — kachō-ga that show a different kind of attention: intimate, observational, among the finest in the genre's history.

In his 80s, Hokusai traveled to Obuse to paint a dragon across a temple ceiling. Throughout his career, dragons were a recurring obsession. Here's his most powerful dragon work.

Hokusai drew ghosts, demons, shapeshifting animals, and supernatural beings with the same precise observation he brought to waves and mountains. Japan's spirit world through his eyes.

Is it a wave threatening boats? A meditation on transience? A philosophical statement about man vs nature? Here's what art historians actually think The Great Wave means.

It gave the word 'manga' to the world. It sparked the European Japonisme movement. It contains 4,000 drawings across 15 volumes. This is the story of the most influential sketchbook in history.

Using the boats as scale references, scientists estimate the wave at 10–20 meters — within the documented range of real rogue waves. The math reveals what Hokusai was really painting.

In Edo-period Japan, it was a respected art form with clear cultural functions. In the modern West, it's often misread. Here's what it actually means — and why the gap matters.

He was 89 years old — and still working. His last recorded words were a wish for five more years to paint. What does that tell us about creativity, age, and what art can aspire to?

A German paint maker's 1704 mistake created a color that, over a century later, gave Hokusai the vivid blue to paint The Great Wave. The full story of Bero Ai.