Tokyo Yôkan Collection, Tokyo.
A Mare and her Foal, 1795–1798.
Nishiki-e, 35.5 × 24 cm.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
The style called Hokusai-riu is the style of true Ukiyo-e painting, naturalist painting, and Hokusai is the one and only founder of a painting style that, based on Chinese painting, is the style of the modern Japanese school. Hokusai victoriously lifted up paintings of his country with Persian and Chinese influences, and by a study one might call religious in nature, rejuvenated it, renewed it, and made it uniquely Japanese. He is also a universal painter, who, with very lively drawings, reproduced men, women, birds, fish, trees, flowers, and sprigs of herbs. He completed 30,000 drawings or paintings. He is also the true creator of the Ukiyo-e, the founder of the ‘école vulgaire’, which is to say that he was not content to imitate the academic painters of the Tosa school, with representing, in a precious style, the splendour of the court, the official life of high dignitaries, the artificial pomp of aristocratic existence; he brought into his work the entire humanity of his country in a reality that escapes from the noble requirements of traditional Japanese painting. He was passionate about his art, to the point of madness, and sometimes signed his productions, “the drawing madman”.
However, this painter – outside of the cult status given to him by his students – was considered by his contemporaries to be an entertainer for the masses, a low artist of works not worthy of being seen by serious men of taste in the empire of the rising sun. Hokusai did not receive from the public the veneration accorded to the great painters of Japan, because he devoted himself to representing “common life”, but since he had inherited the artistic schools of Kanō and Tosa, he certainly surpassed the Okiyo and the Bunchō. Ironically, it was the fact that Hokusai was one of the most original artists that prevented him from enjoying the glory he merited during his life.
Collection of Surimonos Illustrating Fantastic Poems, c. 1794–1796.
Surimono, nishiki-e, 21.9 × 16 cm.
Pulverer Collection, Cologne.
An Oiran and her Two Shinzō Admiring the Cherry Trees in Bloom in Nakanochō, c. 1796–1800.
Surimono, nishiki-e and dry stamp, 47.8 × 65 cm.
Musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris.
He used his painting and drawing talents in the most varied of domains. Let’s listen to the artist: “After having studied the painting from the various schools for a long time, I penetrated their secrets and I took away the best parts of each. Nothing is unfamiliar to me in painting. I tried my brush at everything I happened upon and succeeded.” In fact, Hokusai painted everything from his most common images, called Kamban, which is to say “image ads”, for travelling theatre companies all the way up to the most sophisticated compositions.
At first, Hokusai was often both the illustrator and the writer of the novel he was publishing. His literature is appreciated for his intimate observations of Japanese life. It is even sometimes attributed, as was his first novel, to the well-known novelist, Kioden. The painter’s literature also has other merits: the mocking spirit of the artist made him a parodist of the literature of his contemporaries, of their style, of their conduct, and above all, of the accumulation of affairs and of the historical jumble. This double role of writer and sketch artist only lasted until 1804, when he devoted himself exclusively to painting.
During the Kansei era (1789–1800), Hokusai wrote many stories and novels for women and children, novels for which he did his own illustrations, novels that he signed as the author Tokitaro-Kakâ and, as the painter Gwakiôjin-Hokusai. It was thanks to his spiritual and precise brushstrokes that the popular stories and novels began to become known to the public. He was also an excellent poet of haïku (popular poetry). Not having had enough time to transmit all of his painting methods to his students, he engraved them into volumes that, later, would be highly successful. During the Tempō era (1830–43), Hokusai published an immense number of nishiki-e, colour prints and drawings of love or obscene images, called shunga, with admirable shading, that he always signed with the pseudonym Gummatei.
He was also highly skilled in the painting called kioku-ye, fantasy painting, done with objects or tableware dipped in India ink, such as boxes used as measuring cups, eggs, or bottles. He also painted admirably well with his left hand, or even from bottom to top. His painting done with his fingernails is especially surprising and if one did not see the artist at work, one would think that his paintings done with fingernails were done with brushes.
His work had the good fortune not only of exciting the admiration of his fellow painters, but also of attracting the masses because of its special novelty. His productions were highly sought after by foreigners and there was even a year in which his drawings and woodcuts were exported by the hundreds, but almost as suddenly, the Tokugawa government banned this export.
Two Women Puppeteers, c. 1795.
Surimono, nishiki-e.
Private collection, United Kingdom.
Tarō Moon, 1797–1798.
Nishiki-e, 22.7 × 16.5 cm.
The British Museum, London.
An anecdote attests to this fame. In fact, at the end of the eighteenth century, Hokusai’s talent not only made him popular with his compatriots, but he was also appreciated by the Dutch. One of them, believed to be Captain Isbert Hemmel, had the intelligent idea of bringing back to Europe two scrolls done by the illustrious master’s brush. They represent, in the first, all the stages in the life of a Japanese man from birth to death, and in the second, all the stages in the life of a Japanese woman, also from birth to death. Hokusai received, from a Dutch doctor, an order for two scrolls and for two more for the captain. The price, agreed upon between the buyers and the artist, was 150 rios in gold (the gold rio being worth one pound sterling). Hokusai brought all his care and technical knowledge to the creation of these four scrolls. They were completed by the time of departure of the Dutchmen. When he delivered the scrolls, the captain, enchanted, gave him the agreed price, but the doctor, on the pretext that he was not treated as well as the captain, only wanted to pay half of the price. Hokusai refused to accept this. However, the sum that the painter should have earned was already slated to pay off some debts and Hokusai’s wife scolded him for not having given one scroll to the doctor, since that sum would have saved them from deep poverty. Hokusai let his wife speak, and, after a long silence, told her that he had no illusions about the poverty that awaited them, but he would not stand for the greed of a stranger who treated them with so little respect, adding: “I prefer poverty to having someone walk all over me.” The captain, when he heard of the doctor’s behaviour, sent his interpreter with the money and bought the two scrolls ordered by the doctor. Hokusai continued to sell some of his drawings to the Dutch, until he was banned from selling details of the intimate lives of the Japanese people to foreigners.
The 300 rios in gold paid to Hokusai by Dutch Captain Isbert Hemmel, for the four makimonos on Japanese life, were certainly the largest payment the painter had ever obtained for his works. In fact, his book illustrations – the artist’s principal revenue – were poorly remunerated by editors, even at the time when the artist enjoyed his greatest celebrity. One can take as evidence this fragment from a letter sent from Uraga in 1836 to the editor, Kobayashi: “I am sending you three and a half pages of ‘Poetry of the Tang Epoch’. Of the forty-two mommes (one rio = 60 mommes) that I have earned, keep one and a half mommes that I owe you; please give the rest, forty and one half mommes to the courier.”
This story also shows the great poverty in which the artist lived, even into his old age. Thus, we also know that Hokusai borrowed miserable sums to pay for his daily needs from fruit sellers and fishmongers. Also, a request the painter made of an editor to borrow one rio, pleading with