Picturing Places and Spaces

Fishermen in two boats struggle against the waves that threaten to smash them into the rocks of Chōshi, a village in Shimosa province about sixty miles east of Tokyo. Rowers in the foreground boat lean heavily into their paddles, and a lone fisherman stands precariously on the bow. In the distance, a boat carried by a massive wave speeds toward the shore, as the man in front tries to steer the boat away from the cliffs. The clashing diagonal lines of the waves enhance the feeling of danger in the deep blue water of the Pacific Ocean, and the frothing surf crashing on jagged rocks reminds the viewer of the boats' peril.

The title of the print and the series, One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean, are recorded in the red oblong box in the upper right corner. The signature of the artist appears in the lower left corner. Hokusai completed ten designs of fishermen engaged in various activities for this series, but around the same time, Hokusai was engaged by another publisher to create designs for a longer series, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. A print in that series depicting fishermen struggling against the force of an enormous wave, "Under the Wave off Kanagawa"—commonly referred to as "The Great Wave"—is Hokusai's most celebrated design (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45434). In early nineteenth-century Japan, public interest in purchasing prints was fueled by use of a synthetic pigment, Prussian Blue, that had made its way from Europe to Japan. No organic pigments currently in use by printers could compete with the intensity of this new color, and Prussian Blue was particularly suitable for images of water, especially Hokusai's dynamic waves.

During his long career Hokusai designed many images of meisho or the famous places of Japan. In his hundreds of paintings and in his thousands of designs for prints and books, his imaginative compositions kept the public always wanting to buy more and left him with admirers from Tokyo to Paris.