In Our Time - Hokusai

Episode Date: March 30, 2017

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), the Japanese artist whose views of Mt Fuji such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa (pictured) are some of the most iconic in world art. He worked as Japan was slowly moving towards greater contact with the outside world, trading with China and allowing two Dutch ships to dock each year. From these ships he picked up new synthetic colours and illustrations with Western compositions, which he incorporated in his traditional wood block prints. The quality of his images helped drive demand for prints among the highly literate Japanese public, particularly those required to travel to Edo under feudal obligations and who wanted to collect all his prints. As well as the quality of his work, Hokusai's success stems partly from his long life and career. He completed some of his most memorable works in his 70s and 80s and claimed he would not reach his best until he was 110.With Angus Lockyer Lecturer in Japanese History at SOAS University of LondonRosina Buckland Senior Curator of Japanese Collections at the National Museum of ScotlandAnd Ellis Tinios Honorary Lecturer in the School of History, University of LeedsProducer: Simon Tillotson.

This is the BBC. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, Hokka Sai, born in 1760, was a major power in Japanese art, creating extraordinary images at a time when Japan was largely closed off from global cultures. The older he grew, the better he became.

He began his 70s with the Great Wave, now one of the best-known graphic images in the world. Always striving to improve, he reached new heights over the next two decades, and his hope was to live to 110 when he thought he would become a true master. When Japan opened up in the years after Hocke's death in 1849, his works were displayed in Paris. They caused a sensation and inspired generations of artists from the Impressionists down to today. With me to discuss the life and work of Hokosai are Angus Lockyer, a lecturer in Japanese history at Soas, University of London. Rosina Buckland, senior creator

of Japanese collections at the National Museum of Scotland, and Ellis Tinius, honorary lecturer in the School of History at the University of Leeds. Angus Lockyer. Hocusau was born in Edo, modern-day Tokyo. Can you tell us about the city and what his corner of it was like? Indeed.

He was born in 1760, as you mentioned. It's the largest city in the world. It will remain the largest city in the world until the 1820s. Numbers are difficult, but there we and he's born on the other side of the river, the main river that divides the city. So he's born in a neighborhood of merchants, artisans, largely working class, a scattering of samurai here and there. But by the late 18th century, Ado is really dominated by the townsmen.

It's a highly commercial city. It's a highly commercial country at that point. And so he's born into a family there. When he's very young, he's actually adopted by a different family, a family of professional mirror makers to the shogunal court. immediately in with the craftsman, if you like. And from there he goes on to begin to explore how you represent things in two dimensions. He apprentices quite young.

How young? Why was he adopted? I didn't know that. It's quite common. And we don't know all the details of his life. His biography was written posthumously and some of the details are missing. But many families would adopt sometimes if they didn't have a son in order to inherit the business. But it's a very common custom in early modern Japan. So, common stuff, no great trauma there.

And he got going quite... Was there a promise, as it often is, with persons who end up in such commanding positions in any area, any area, any area, was the promise from a very early age, and what was it? We think so. I mean, in retrospect, he says,

you know, I picked up, I started drawing when I was six. In his teens, he's apprenticed to a block carver, the people who actually carve the blocks that make the prints. Printmaking is quite a complicated technical procedure. So he learns actually to calm the blocks himself. He learns to carve the blocks and we think we have one or two images which were carved from blocks that he made.

And then when he's in his late teens, he then gets taken up in a painting studio. A studio, Katzkawa Shunro, who is a specialist in really portraits of kabuki actors. This is what he specializes in, what his studio specializes in. So very early before he's into his 20s, he's kind of found his METI. if you like, and he's being trained. Is he just kabuki actors from the great theatre tradition in Japan? They specialize in one might call them celebrities, but certain great performers.

Just that, are there others? Indeed. Well, his studio specialises in actor prints above all. It will produce prints of courtesans and things like this. What we know is the floating world in Japanese. This is Ukiyo, and so the paintings are called Uki-O-A, or the prints are called Uki-O. Why is it called the floating world?

It's an interesting story. Originally it's a Buddhist concept. Originally it's a concept of impermanence that life is ephemeral. And therefore, for Buddhists, the point is to leave the ephemorality behind. In Tokugawa, Japan, in Edo specifically, the idea is more kind of Gadhii Rose Botswale-Yime

sees the moment since it's passing, since pleasure is fleeting. And so the floating world, for us now, is very much associated with the pleasure quarters, the theatre, the world of celebrity. Do we have any specific portraits that he did? Are they remaining now? Can we see them? Indeed, of the early prints of certain actor prints from his 20s, yes.

Was he good? When he was young or any of us good when we're in our 20s? I don't know about that, but was he good at doing what he did? Indeed. I mean, he was very accomplished. He learnt very well. He learned quite quickly, and very quickly we see him producing stuff within the studio. And so is a valued member of that studio?

Yeah, relationships within the studio, were rocky. He wasn't the senior apprentice and so there are stories of fights and eventually he leaves in a half it seems. He has a rivalry with the chief apprentice. There are stories of the chief apprentice

tearing down a sign Hockassai has produced and saying this is unworthy of our studio and at that point he's off and running and he starts carving his own way in the world. As it were. Rosina Buckland, how, can you tell us a bit about Japan at the time? We told it was a very close society at the time.

Can you develop that? Is it true? There is this perception, a general assumption that Japan was closed, but you have to finesse that description, really. There was severe travel, a severe restriction on travel, control on travel, I should say. The Japanese themselves were not allowed to leave the country, and there was only one port where foreigners, people from other countries, were allowed to enter, and that was Nagasaki in the very far west of the country. And this prescription on travel was due to the fear of Christianity

and incursions by foreign powers that had come. come from the early 1600s. So Christianity, those who were propagating Christianity, had been banned from the country in 1639 and there was a relative lockdown, but Nagasaki remained open to trade. So the Chinese were the largest traders coming into this port. There were around 10 ships per year and there was a permanent settlement in Nagasaki for the Chinese residents and those who were coming and going with the ships. And then there were the Dutch who had two ships coming in per year and they were allowed to remain because they were Protestant

and the fear was really of the Catholic propagation of the Catholic faith, the Catholic missionaries that had been there in the 17th century. So through Nagasaki with these ships, there's a tremendous amount of information coming in. There are hundreds of books coming in. So information is coming from the Chinese who are getting information themselves

from the Jesuit missionaries who are living in China, working with the court. and then there are also Western publications and as long as they don't mention Christianity they're allowed in in fact the restrictions were lessened in 1720 there was a rather more enlightened ruler

who changed the laws in 1720 so there's a hunger for information from both sources certainly amongst the scholars and there's a lot of that percolating down into popular culture as well was the ten ships here doesn't sound very much does it really especially when we're talking

about one city alone it's got a million people or whatever it is. But nevertheless, Chinese seem to have a strong influence, certainly in the world of the arts and culture. Is that right? Absolutely. And what was the influence? And had had for centuries that China had always been the source of authority,

the cultural source that artists and scholars literary types looked to. And that was continuing and had a revival in the Edo period. So Chinese literature, legend, art, is always this source of inspiration and, as I said, authority for people.

We left the Hockassai story when he had a row and left and gone somewhere else in his early 20s. About then, yes, a bit vague, hidden and habit dates as often. What was he doing after that and was it an appetite? Did he follow the taste? Was he very concerned to get where he could make a good living? I think like anyone, he was concerned to make a living, but we can identify a more individualistic strand in Hokka-Sai as an artist that he has been producing these actor prints,

which were one of the mainstays of popular culture. The print industry is extremely well developed, as was just said, the commercial culture of Japan is very well developed. So there's constant demand for new images. Prints are affordable, ephemeral, they're fun things to buy, they're part of the fashion, the changing fashions of the day, and you have to keep up with what other people have got.

Have you heard about that fantastic print that's just been released? I must go and get that one. Or the latest kabuki performance. These are the celebrity prints. After that, why did he go after he stormed out? Well, he leaves this genre of kabuki prints, of the actor prints, and this is where we can see him making a departure, ploughing his own furrow. And he is adopted into another artistic family,

again, this process of adoption. He takes the name Sauri. and this is a very different style of painting it's much more proper it has more authority one could say so he works in this mode and he's been producing paintings in various forms

not so much portraits landscapes beauty paintings is one area that he moves into at this point beauty painting so pictures of beautiful women paintings of beautiful women but also a type of deluxe print that's called the Surimono and these are privately commissioned very high quality exquisitely printed works for poetry groups

so private groups of patrons. And so he's well employed there. He's moving on there. Is he being recognised at this time as a fine artist? Or is he outstanding? Or where are we? Yes, he's certainly getting recognition, acclaim as an artist. And he'd already established that, I think, with the actor prints.

And then as he's moving into these paintings and establishing his reputation there, people are learning that he can do more, that there's certain skills are unfolding. Alistinios, what was this process of making books? because I understand it from the notes. Japan was about 80% literate. In Europe at the time was about 40% literate,

and there's an appetite for books as being said and so on for illustrated books. What was the process for making these books? Well, there was a commercial printing industry in Japan from the mid-17th century, and the technique used was to print from a cut woodblock. Everything was done from cut wood blocks, and printing presses were not employed.

Everything was done with the arm of the printer. So the artist would create a design, and what was so good about the system they used in Japan was that text and image could be printed at the same time. There was no division between the two parts of a book. So an artist would create a design, and it would be pasted onto the wood block, and then it would be cut,

and you would then use that block to print. You would ink it, lay a sheet of paper on top of the ink block, and then the printer would simply use his arm holding around, that would take the ink onto the paper. That was the technique used for everything. And we're talking about hundreds and thousands of books going out. Yes, it was a vital industry. They were producing books regularly.

You had a tendency for popular books to come out at the New Year. They were festive books, special books. And these were illustrated and enter Hukesai. And Huxi, first of all, was illustrating quite simple little line-only books while he was doing his actor prints. Then when he was doing his Soudi Mono, he did some exquisite poetry anthologies for these societies. But then he really...

What would you do, illustrate a poem according to his view of it or according to the writing view of it? Well, it looks like it was his view of it. He did some wonderfully eccentric illustrations of the poetry that was provided. And I think that was part of the joy of it, that you would get an imaginative artist who would respond to your poetry in some unexpected way. That was part of the joy of both the Soutimono and the poetry anthologies, the books, the published books. These include the deluxe editions

that's not the Rosina was talking about. Yes, some of these poetry books were produced to an extremely high standard. We could call them deluxe publications. Because they were subsidised by the members of the poetry society, no expense was spared in their production. So he's in a different area,

he's in his third area, really, and he adopted 30 names during his lifetime. We're going to stick to Hock aside. We will, yes. Continuity. What can you give us, some idea of the range of images. Before we get to images that people know about, like Montfugee in the great way.

So what images is he making? Anything that turns out? You tell me. Well, okay, fine. Because really he says himself, in his autobiographical note, I really didn't do anything worthwhile until I was in my 50s.

And it was in his 50s that the manga were first appear. And these were drawing manuals. And they represent everything on Earth and in heaven. his mission was to depict everything out there. So there are 15 volumes of these. There are 15 volumes ultimately, eventually. But that's a whole of the story.

And this is everything. From a teacup up to a cloud, kind of thing. Basically, exactly. Teacup, cloud, demons, historical figures, grind, millstones, looms. Nothing was unworthy of his attention. And the public grabbed these up. They loved them. They went mad.

of it. This was the beginning of the manga crisis. Yes, but not like our manga now. No, the beginning of the manga fashion. Actually, the manga began, it was supposed to be a standalone single volume in 1814 and it proved so popular that within five years there were ten parts.

Did they just collect up what it done? Because he used to draw every morning, didn't he? Draw one or two of these scenes? Or did he do it because of demand? The early printings, the colophons say that his pupils assisted in this and we're not quite sure what role the pupils played in the assembly of the manga. But there's no doubt that he was the driving force behind them.

And some manga volumes have particular topics that they focus on, like landscape or warriors. So each manga is not identical. You have variety even between the volumes. So his work is going out in its hundreds, even in its thousands, so the Japanese public by that time. His brush seemed to be ceaseless. It never stopped.

Angus Angus Lockyer What was, given the 10 Chinese ships and the two Dutch ships, was Hokka Peking up any influences from Europe at all? Yes, yes, absolutely he was. He, already in the beginning, in the late 18th century, we have artists, famously an artist called Shiba Kokan, who is enraptured, if you like, by the possibilities of perspectival technique,

of the ability to represent the world as it is in the plane in front of you. And so he's producing a lot of images, which Huxi obviously knows. There are some things which are quite straight copies of it. And so once he starts leaving his earlier school affiliations, he's relentless. He moves to this slightly more elite school that Razina's already talked about. But from this time on, he's just assimilating techniques. the most important perhaps are the Chinese techniques

because they are the source of authority. So how does a Chinese school depict a rock, for example? Japanese schools come next, some of them belonging to Chinese affiliations and borrowing from his background in the floating world. How do you paint figures? And the floating world has told him how to paint figures. And then he starts studying the European stuff.

This is probably... Which European stuff? Perspectival prints, it's not quite clear. Again, we have a problem with sources as to exactly what he's studying. But there seem to be some landscapes in there. Whose landscapes? That much we don't know. They're coming with the Dutch.

We know certain books that come through. This is more in the medical sciences, but it's very difficult to specify particular sources or particular artists. But it's clear from what we see from Hock's-Zay-Zone brush, that by the 1790s and by the 1800s, he's drawing on this, he's beginning to experiment with it. Perhaps the most interesting thing is

it's only one technique now. It doesn't immediately ascend to this is the way one paints. It's a technique to be used for particular effects within the picture plane. And so we have images from, there's one at the end of 1807 to 1810

where he's showing us people gathering shells on a shore. And the frame for the print perspective drawn from the European tradition. Within the print, the landscape itself is very much using Chinese technique in order to show you what a rock looks like, to give you the texture of a rock. And then the figures are drawing on Japanese forebears. So what one has is an artist who in his 40s, 50s is beginning to be accomplished enough

to pick and choose, to combine and to mash these things up together in order to achieve the effects he wants. Rosina Bockeland, he made a very public role of, being an artist. Was he alone in that or was that the tradition? And then we can talk a bit about the public really undertook. He wasn't alone in that by any means, but he seems to have taken it to

a bigger, better level. There was an expectation that artists should be able to perform. There were expectations that they would go to parties. People would pay to see them produce works, both images and calligraphies, people brushing paintings, people brushing

calligraphy on demand. And there's a whole culture of showmanship, fairs, sideshows, particularly at festival times, so people are looking for entertainment. There's a ready audience there. But Hokkazai takes these events to a monumental level. There's two particular incidents, one in 1804 in Edo, where he produces a massive portrait, bus portrait of the Zen patriarch, the Zen Buddhism, Daruma. What's massive? This was 350 square metres in size, the paper, many many sheets of paper joined together.

And people were intrigued. They couldn't actually work out what he was painting until the whole thing was complete and lifted up. So it's the element of suspense there. And then it was this portrait? Of this Zen patriarch, yes. A well-known figure within Buddhism. And then again in 1817 he does the same subject matter

when he's on tour, you could say, in Nagoya, that he's promoting the manga, and he's obviously a celebrity and people want to see him perform. at somewhat small at scale, only 240 square metres on that occasion, but the same sort of thing, and it's written up afterwards in the broadsheets and in manuscripts. Is this the rooster? No, and then there's the rooster story.

What did you do before we get to the rooster? What did you do the one you just talked about? What was that? The Nagoya incident was the same subject matter. Oh, I see. But what about the rooster? This is a revered figure. The rooster story comes a little bit later. It can be pinned to about the 1830s, and this involves the highest figure in the land.

This is the Shogun. the head of the military government, Ienari. And Ianari was on his way to a falconry hunt, and he summoned Hokka Sai and another painter, Tani Buncho, to perform before him at a temple in Osaka, which is a very dense area of popular culture that Hokka Phaar would have known well. Many of these fairs are going on there anyway,

so Ionari is hanging out in one of the townsmen's areas, having fun. And this other painter, Tani Buncho, is from the very proper style. of Chinese painting. He's a retainer to one of the shogunal officials himself. So it's quite a contrast with him and Hokka Sai. Buncho takes his turn. He produces very proper paintings, birds and flowers. And then Hokka Sai comes up. He also does quite straight paintings, birds and flowers landscapes. But then like a magician, he pulls out this role of paper, does one breviura brushstroke of blue. I don't think we have a record of the dimension here,

but this is a roll. A very big piece of paper. I don't think this was a monumental scale. It's the... We're on a roll then. Yeah, it's the conjuring trick that he pulls out the chicken, dips its feet in red ink, and then sets it loose over the paper.

And he goes up to the shogun and says, voila, my lord. This is the river Tatsuta in autumn with maple leaves. So you've got a blue line on the paper first. A blue wash and then some red scattered over it. And this is a very well-established theme within Japanese painting, so everyone would have recognized it. and tittered away.

But I think what's interesting here is that he already knew the Shogun Iy I'madi. It wasn't the first time he'd appeared before him. So he's playing with expectations here and he thinks it's going to be, the Shoggan thinks it's going to be a serious event. But then he, Haukesai, ups his game and... Do we know how the Shoggi reacted to the rooster's feet?

I'm sure. He was very amused. Tickled pink. I hope he was. Alice, can we talk a bit more about these manga? We've talked about them out. Can you just give us a bigger idea? A lot more about it. Okay, fine.

Well, we have to think of them in groups because the first ten were produced in a short period. Ten volumes or ten manga? Ten volumes. Right. Ten volumes, sorry. How many in each volume? Each volume would have 30 sheets, would have 60 pages.

And they would be covered with multiple images. But as the manga go along, the figures tend to get a bit larger, so you get fewer in the later volumes. But they start with divinities, Chinese and Japanese, then historical figures, both Chinese and Japanese, scenes of daily life in Japan, plants, animals, rocks, landscapes. These are the first volumes. They show us everything. The second volume, he says explicitly, I want to show man-made objects here.

And then we move on, and we have, as I said earlier, one devoted to warriors, another devoted to landscapes. And then you get more of these encyclopedic mixed volumes. The prefaces tell us that these are copy books intended for the aspiring artist to use. to copy, to take designs from. They were rather expensive. They were produced on a high-quality paper. They weren't a book for the masses, really,

but they proved to be extremely popular. Then after a hiatus of 10 years, the publishers decided there was more money to be made out of the manga, and they said, we're going to issue another 10 volumes. So in the early 1830s, they began with volumes 11 and 12. But then there was a break, for reasons we're not entirely sure, and the 13th volume came just at the time of his death in 1849,

shortly thereafter we had the 14th volume. The 15th did not come until the mid-1870s. Now, apart from very expensive ones, were the others widely bought by, I don't know the class system in Japan, but widely bought, let's leave it at that. Could I just say that the first printings of the manga appear to have been more expensive?

They were on a higher quality paper. Now, part of the problem is there's a very soft paper that took the ink beautifully, but it wears badly. so it's hard to find a clean copy of the early impressions of the manga volumes. Later they were done on cheaper paper and the price would have gone down. So they became much more affordable over time as they were being printed and reprinted. Angus. Just to add in here maybe a little bit of backstory to this, of course,

because the manga is the thing that made the impact in the West. And so for us it is enormously important. But he's already been producing illustrated books, which Ellis knows much better than I do, which include painting manuals and drawing manuals. So he's already engaged in trying to get his way of depicting the world out there. Actually, his first painting manuals about 1812, just two years before the first manga. It really is a development of his 50s, this idea to create these painting manuals.

That was quite an innovative thing in his career at that point. Mentoring the 50s takes us to the massive edge of 60, which is important in Japan. It was very important for Hocke-Sai. Can you answer both those? Enormously important. There's a slightly technical explanation here, so you'll have to stick with me.

We can stick with technical explanations. We all know the Chinese zodiac of a 12-year cycle of animals. But in East Asian calendars, there's also a five-year annual cycle, and if you multiply five by 12, you get 60. Ellis is gesturing at me. The point of six... A mathematical contribution has been made by a friend on the left

who's holding up 10 fingers. 10 and 12. 10 and 12. Sorry, 10 and 12. But every 60 years, forgive me, my math is lousy at the best of times. Every 60 years, the cycle comes around again. In Japanese culture still today, this is an enormously important birthday, which we know is Kan Reiki, and so you celebrate it. And for Hokka-Sai, this was a key moment.

He adopts a new art name, and the name he chooses is Iyitsu, which you can translate a little bit loosely as becoming one again. Up to this point, and I think we've mentioned this already, he's kind of discarding his experience to that point and saying, now I'm ready to really get going. So there's hope for us all, perhaps. Life begins at 60. Life begins at 60, indeed.

And did he? He did. He did. With each art name, his style does tend to change. His focus changes, his interest changes. That particular decade in his 60s, which we're now talking about the 1820s, is a difficult one for him in family terms. A daughter dies at the beginning of the decade.

His second wife dies towards the end of it. He also has a reprobate of a grandson who he spends a lot of time trying to clean up afterwards and sometimes just throwing his hands up. And so we don't have a lot of work from the 1820s. We do have some very interesting paintings that we can talk about a little bit more later where he's very much copying European style again,

this time commissioned by the Dutch themselves on one of their trips to Ado to Tokyo. But he has made this decision, at the age of 60 to 20. change and he kept making these decisions and sticking to them, didn't he? So can you tell us more about how he wanted to change his art when he was 60? I will be a different person born again, a new man and so, and I will do what? I think this is the point in which he feels free, that there's no more constraints on him

in terms of the expectations, that there are affiliations with schools, usually when you're an artist in Japan at this point, and he's been moving away from that throughout his career, but then there's this sense of liberation at 60. It's almost like retirement, but this is when you get to do what you really want to do. So anything is possible for him. But initially it was a bit of a fallow decade. When you look at the output,

it wasn't at the same intense scale that you had in the 1810s into the early 1820s, and then again in the 1830s. So you can see the reflection of the difficulties he was having in his art, that he wasn't designing as many books, for example. And there were no prints in that decade either. At that time in Japan, was he their most famous artist? Was he well off?

Was he running his own studio? What was going on? He's certainly got followers. There are a lot of pupils, a lot of individuals who were obviously studying with him. We can tell this from their names. The pupil often took an element from the master's name. It was proof of their affiliation.

He was certainly well known. I think those public events that we were talking about earlier demonstrate that. But well off, no. He doesn't seem to. to have handled financial matters particularly well. He wasn't interested in being financially secure. And then there were these family troubles that seemed to have drained his resources.

And we now in his 70s, because he's a decayed man, isn't he? He's aiming for 110. And in the 70s, people will know the 36 views of Mount Fuji and the first view of the Great Wave. What led him to those subjects? The 36 views are a tremendous achievement. they are a pinnacle of his work and of art in Japan at this time. They do stand alone to a large extent,

but there's many elements that contribute to them. He helps establish the landscape genre, the category of prints that represent landscapes with this particular series. So it is a tremendous achievement, but it doesn't spring from nowhere. You can see elements, the elements of the series are visible in his work 25 years earlier, but he's really a master of structuring the composition at this point

and that's what contributes to the tremendous success of the series. There's also a contribution from what's happening in society that the structures of authority are loosening at this point which makes travel much more possible for people. So people are travelling for pilgrimage, travelling for fun under the name of pilgrimage very often and this creates a demand for landscape prints which again seems to fuel the success.

of this series. Alice, Tinios, can you say a little bit more about the 36th views, then take us

onto the Great Wave, which is one of the best known in the world. There's also a technical side to this in that at that time Prussian blue

and imported synthetic pigment fell in price and it was now affordable for mass produced prints. And Hoxai was asked,

we believe, it looks like by the publisher, to see how he could exploit this new pigment. And the first couple of prints in the series are printed almost entirely in shades of blue, using indigo as well as Prussian blue.

But interestingly, the key block itself is not printed in black, which was the usual practice, but is also printed in blue. So he's creating a completely new series of images. Blues were very unsatisfactory up to this point. You either had a very attenuated dayflower blue or rather coarse indigo.

You couldn't get long. large expanses of blue that were really satisfactory in a print. Prussian blue allowed this. And his mastery in exploiting these, this new pigment, was extraordinary. There is the Great Wave, which we all know, which is dominated by the sea and the blues. But there's also a wonderful one. It's Kajikazawa, where you have the fishermen on a rock with the waves surging about him is just extraordinary force there. So it comes again and again. Vast skies. see. He's representing something quite new in prints. They're not tame landscapes. Was this Angus Lockyer, was this recognised at the time? Did Hocke-Sai, obviously he knew what he was doing, but did his public and his discerning public think, yes, this is something new here?

Certainly, I mean, if we look at how many times these prints were produced, how many different versions there were, and how the blocks actually wear down over time, we can see that this is an enormously popular series. It's worth adding to what Ellis was saying about, for us, the Great Wave is the centre of the series. Can you just describe a Great Wave? People who might not have seen it. It is now the most reproduced image in the world. So even if they don't think they've seen it, they probably have. On the left of the print in the very top right corner, you get the Cartouche, the title, which is actually not the Great Wave, it's under the Great Wave off the coast.

Then you have this massive wave tipping over into the center of the image with kind of tentacle-like. frost coming off the edge of it. It would be a great surfing wave, perhaps. And then underneath it, buried amidst the various folds of the waves that go around this wave, are fishing skiffs or skiffs that might be transporting goods back up and down the coast. And then in the very distance, very small, in fact, within the picture plane, you have the image of a snow-capped Mount Fuji. As this has been reproduced, of course, the way in which it's been configured,

and even some of the colours have changed in some of the reproductions. But in the very early prints, it's a print of very few colours indeed. We have blues, we have white, we have a cream and a grey. And it's a radical compression of both graphic elements and then colours to create this enormously powerful image of not helplessness, but of our smallness within a natural scene. And then Fuji anchoring as a still centre to this world. I mean, it's always difficult to know why someone.

something becomes very famous. The man in he said, oh, Razinia, you're going to tell us. I just wanted to add that I think this is the perfect success for this series, the perfect representation of man within nature, and that's what the series is all about. And this is a very long-standing theme within East Asian art within Japanese art.

So a very ambitious series, the 46 prints in total, even though it's called 36, it was so popular that it was continued for a sequel of 10 images. It's all over the place in these prints. It's in the foregrounds and the background. It's the forefront around which the universe moves, but it is man within nature for most of the prints. Some of them are pure views of the mountain.

So it's the relationship. And you look at this towering wave, this tremendously simple but geometrically complex composition, and then you find the narrative of the humans within it. And that's what most of the prints are about. It's ordinary people living their lives within the landscape, and everyone can relate to that. And they're depicted with compassion,

and very often with humour. Does Ellis, does Hocusay himself have a feeling or a view that he's doing something different? And does his public think he is doing something different and he's doing something very fine? Well, I think he wasn't modest about his accomplishments. And when he was good, he knew he was doing something good. And he also was very certain about how he wanted his designs realized by the block cutters. Because the design that he made for the 100 views of Fuji was destroyed in the cutting of the block. We're not talking about reproductive art.

We're talking about original art in multiples, just like our European art prints. And I have no doubt that he realized he had done something special with the 100 views of Fuji. 36 view and the 36 views, sorry. Well, there's 100 views of Fuji, and then we're told us 36 of 46 views. Sorry, 100 views is a book.

100 views is a book. Angus, you and it's a book. Yes, we need to make this distinction because there's an interesting relationship. between the 36 views, which are in fact 46. These are a single sheet prints, and these come out in the early 1830s. And then just a few years later, he produces this book, so Ellis's neck of the woods, which is a hundred views. So this is a three-volume book, and again with multiple views of Fuji,

some of them riffing off some of the prints from the earlier series, but much more complex. And for many of us, and indeed possibly for Hoccasai himself, this was the summit of his achievement in print. Yes, also it's very important to point out that the 100 uses monochrome. It's printed with black and a wide range of shades of grey, which are used to tremendous effect in it.

Zena. I also wanted to add something about the significance of Fuji, the mountain itself, that it's not just a tremendously visually powerful presence within Japan. It's visible from a large area of central Japan, and it's quite unpredictable.

I think when Hokka-Sai was a boy, it would have been within living memory that it had last erupted. But it's a sacred aspect of the Japanese landscape. There was a whole network of shrines across Japan that were dedicated to Fuji, and there were these confraternities that were organized, that took pilgrimages to Japan, and people went to the shrines to worship the mountain deity.

So the success of the series has something to do with that spiritual aspect as well, and we know that the publisher was involved. with these confraternities. You're talking about the success of the series. Is that success recognized in Japan? Angus Nipso, how? Indeed. And in Japan, interestingly enough,

it's not the great wave that is the best known print. The best known print in Japan is something called red Fuji, because most of the impressions of the print are in red. In fact, the original seems to have been more pink. And this is an extraordinary image of the mountain in isolation with woods below it, so simply a symbol of this unchanging center. So Fuji has become this centre of Japanese faith. That's too strong, but certainly the centre of a spiritual practice

over the course of the last 100 years, maybe 150 years. So it's moved to the centre. So in Japan itself, this series is riffing off this, exploiting it, and certainly also encouraging it further. So he's now in his early 80s. I want to track this through because he's determined to live 110, and he's not making a bad shot of it. now. His work, he's doing his best work in

his 70s and then he's going to move, I think, you tell me, he's even better work in his 80s. Is that right, Rosanna? I think so. Well, what was that better work? He's at the top of his game, absolutely now, and he's focusing much more on paintings. They take,

he focuses rather on the strange and the imaginary. So these are the creatures that don't exist, mythical beasts or figures from Chinese legend, but a very strong, or psychological or symbolic quality to them, in very rich pigments on silk, the highest level of quality in terms of materials and the brushmanship that he's producing,

very powerful images that are recognised to be amongst his finest works. How difficult was it? Do you want to answer this? How difficult was it to paint as he did on silk? Well, you couldn't correct it. You couldn't paint over it. Once the brush touched the silk, that was it. but in his 80s he seems to have focused almost entirely on painting whether on paper or silk book designs dry up completely in that period but may I just say that in his 70s

in addition to the 100 views of Fuji the three-volume work he produced a series of illustrated Chinese classics and he became the artist of choice for depicting China and Chinese themes in that decade and the one... What sort of Chinese classics? The classic affiliate piety, the thousand-character classic.

and also a massive anthology of Tong Dynasty Poetry. Those are the three most important. He also did books of his warriors, including Japanese and Chinese warriors combined in a volume. Is he a man or is you an industry by this stage? I think in these books he is a man that he was producing these things himself. He had a daughter who was collaborating,

but we're not really sure how important a role she played exactly what roles she played, but we know she was there. and that's something for further research. Do we know Angus? His daughter is working with him from early. I think we can say this from probably back the rocky decade of the 1820s. Her marriage has actually fallen apart.

She's an accomplished artist in her own right. And some scholars would suggest that we can see her trace in some pictures which are attributed to Hoxei. She goes on to produce these more generally. So she's there from there until the end. There's an exhibition in Paris. Can you give us the date and the impact, please, Rosina?

You want to talk about it? Who wants to talk about it? You're looking at Angus. Angus is looking at Ellis. We like keeping the story to Japan. As long as none of you look at me, I'm fine. There's an exhibition in Paris had a big impact. Can you give us some view of that, please? Yeah. Actually, the Hokk Sai manga are in Europe before the big exhibition. Yeah, but let's talk about the big exhibition.

The big exhibition is 1867. Yeah. that he's famous in Europe. He's already in demand in Europe. And the exhibition is where the whole world goes in 1867, like the Crystal Palace in 1851 here in London. And the impact of this is extraordinary. Already these images have been affecting artists, but it changes the view.

It's on Degas and Bangor. It's on Degas. It's on all of the impressionists. I think I would like to say that without Huxai, without Japanese art, more generally, we wouldn't have modern art. We need to see the world in a new way. And certainly the common, my colleagues here are slightly more cautious, but without this kind of ability to see that the world can be taken apart and reassembled beyond perspective in this highly imaginative way, I think it would have been difficult for us to make the imaginative break.

Would you go along with that? It's an interesting proposition. It's a very interesting proposition. I like it. Resina? I think it certainly opens up tremendous. range of possibilities for artists in Europe at that point. So yes, many things might not have been possible without the inspiration that they took from. The huge range of Hokka Sai's work.

And it's not just Hokka Sai anyway, it's all of Japanese art, but there are new ways of representing the world that give them new inspiration. And in Japan today? He is the artist who is represented on the Japanese passport. He will feature heavily in the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Thank you very much. Thanks to Angus Lockyer, Rosina Butler, and Elis Tinios. Next week we'll discuss the physicist, Wolfgang Paoli, and the Powley Exclusion Principle. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So what did we say that we should have said?

I think we can talk more about thought and philosophy and religion, because I think this is very an interesting point. That it's difficult to make claims because he didn't leave as many texts. We have this what we sometimes call a biography where he says, you know, nothing until 70 was worth anything. And then he says, when I get to 90, which is actually when he dies, I'm going to be able to see into the underlying principles of things. If you combine this with what Razina was talking about in terms of the work of the last decade involved with the,

what we might think of as the fantastic, lots of dragons, which I find absolutely stunning, it's clear that he doesn't really make the same kind of distinction we do between the visible and the invisible world. And this fits into a much larger conversation we can have about religion in East Asia, generally, but religion specifically at this moment. I often think when we're looking at Huxai,

a word that we might want to use is communion. Communion with nature, communion with animals, with plants, opening up the possibility of communion for the viewer with the scenes he's depicting. And so there is a spiritual dimension to his work, which we lose when we use words like landscape, or botany or the categories from Western art. And it's almost hiding in plain sight

because it's there in his name, his spiritual practices. His name means North Star Studio, literally, and this has been studied a lot by scholars that he had this devotion to the North Star, and this was a widespread practice. And he makes reference to that in other of his art names. So he's very much looking to the skies, looking to the universe as a whole beyond the earthly realm,

and that informs his spiritual practices and his artistic practice, I think. I'd like to add something on the role of China in his art. Razina was talking about the Western influences. He was, the Western influences he was assimilating. But then in 1805, in his mid-50s, he started illustrating a Chinese novel that was being issued in a Japanese translation, the water margin. And his illustrations were so important that the title was the new edition, illustrated water margin.

And Hoksi was the artist. Bakin was the translator. Bakin fell out with the publisher. The publisher later pushed on with this project with another translator, but Hokkai remained the illustrator. It was so important. And Hokkai created an extraordinary vision of China

in this book, a very exciting vision of China, which then led to the classics that I mentioned earlier that he was illustrating when he was in his 70s. So he really did become the most compelling illustrator of Chinese scenes active in the 1820s and 1830s. I think even more so than Kuniyoshi, another Gioi artist, who made his fame with his colour prints of warriors.

Hawkside did very few colour prints of warriors, but he did these tremendous books on Chinese warriors and other Chinese themes. And potentially inspired the genre of prince, of warrior prints through his book illustrations. He did inspire the colour prints by other artists. He was a trendsetter. He was held. to have invented or pioneered several print genres. So we have the bird and flower prints that he produced,

the landscape print genre that I talked about, and then the warrior prints indirectly inspired by Hokka. And the fascination with China continues, it's worth noting, you know, even when the West sweeps in and imposes free trade treaties and other things on Japan from the 1850s, there's a large coterie of intellectuals who remain synocentric in their cultural imagination.

China remains the source. And this doesn't really change until the 1890s. Of course, this is a moment when Hocke's things are in wide circulation as well. It even has a boom at that point because there's now new access to China that there's free travel. So it's an exciting opportunity. So it's a more complicated kind of global story, I think, than we sometimes make it. It's also been discovered that Chinese editions of Chinese classics were being marketed in China the late 19th century. It's so close with the ties at that point.

Is he still hardly regarded in China at the moment? I'm not sure. I don't think so. Why, don't they... The contemporary cultural politics... The contemporary cultural politics are complicated. You wouldn't fit in? No, I don't think so. I don't think Japanese art registers in the national story generally.

I mean, many of us do have national stories of aesthetic achievement, and I think the same is true in China and Korea and Japan. When does he play at the moment in this country or in the West generally? here. He is the most famous Japanese artists. I think he's the there are maybe only two that people recognise Hokka Sai and Hiroshima and I think the wave everybody knows so even if they think

they don't know Hokka Sai they probably do they probably seen that work if not a few others. He's we were hearing from beforehand. I mean this image because of its graphic power is endlessly reproduced in primary schools on economist covers on Well I'd like to make a profoundly relevant artistic

comment when we started the first series of the South Bank show I got a guy called Pat Gavin. I got a guy. I knew something called Pat Gavin. A graphic artist. He was the best. He's the only graphic artist in this country. He won a pre-Italya for his work. He did for these titles he did.

And I asked him to get everybody to say, who's your favourite artist? And we'll make a sheet out of it. And there's one wonderful illusion where he has a great wave. And it sweeps across the screen like that. And it turns into Elvis Presley's quip. Yes.

How about that? I've seen it west. I've seen it on a woolen shortage. I've seen it on a boat in Liverpool. It appears everywhere. Absolutely. But I think it's also said that a month doesn't go by without a hoaxi exhibition somewhere in the world.

It is that kind of... Thank you all very much indeed. The producers pouring our time. Bring us good news. Only not enough for a tealcon. And for more podcasts on arts and ideas from the BBC. Follow the link on our website to the best of BBC Radio 3's

Free Thinking Program.