Details
This publication has been developed from ideas first presented at the international symposium Late Hokusai: thought, technique, society, held at the British Museum in May 2017. The symposium was organised to enable specialists in a range of disciplines relating to early modern Japan to view and consider the critically acclaimed exhibition Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave, then being presented at the British Museum. The exhibition brought together representative works by the artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760−1849) in the various media in which he worked – colour woodblock printed, woodblock-printed illustrated books, brush paintings on paper or silk, and brush drawings − that were produced between the age of 61 and his death aged 90.
Building on the themes of the exhibition, authors from the UK, Europe, Japan and USA have engaged with late Hokusai from a variety of perspectives, both intrinsic and extrinsic to his life and works. Essays have been grouped within the broad categories of ‘thought’ -- Hokusai’s intellectual concerns and the ways his art brought these to life; ‘technique’ – how the artist pursued excellence in a wide range of media, within a commercialised art market; and ‘society’ – dimensions of cultural interaction and patronage. A fourth section on ‘legacy’ looks at how stories of Hokusai have been as much generated by 130 years of scholarship, as they have by his works themselves. Challengingly, faked paintings and printed works have both contaminated and supported those stories. This innovative approach provides new insights into the work of one of the world’s most celebrated artists and suggests many new avenues for Hokusai research.
Building on the themes of the exhibition, authors from the UK, Europe, Japan and USA have engaged with late Hokusai from a variety of perspectives, both intrinsic and extrinsic to his life and works. Essays have been grouped within the broad categories of ‘thought’ -- Hokusai’s intellectual concerns and the ways his art brought these to life; ‘technique’ – how the artist pursued excellence in a wide range of media, within a commercialised art market; and ‘society’ – dimensions of cultural interaction and patronage. A fourth section on ‘legacy’ looks at how stories of Hokusai have been as much generated by 130 years of scholarship, as they have by his works themselves. Challengingly, faked paintings and printed works have both contaminated and supported those stories. This innovative approach provides new insights into the work of one of the world’s most celebrated artists and suggests many new avenues for Hokusai research.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Timothy Clark
Part 1. Thought
1. Lucia Dolce, SOAS, The Buddhist World of Hokusai: Lotus Practices and the Religious Frenzy of Urban Edo
2. Janine Sawada, Brown University, Hokusai’s Devotion to Mount Fuji
3. Yoshitaka Yamamoto, NIJL, Japan and China in Hokusai’s Ehon kōkyō (Illustrated Classic of Filial Piety)
4. Angus Lockyer, independent scholar, There Be Dragons
5. Akio Yasuhara, independent scholar, Research note: Hokusai’s Sources -- The Case of an Eighty-One-Scaled Dragon
Part 2. Technique
6. Timothy Clark, BM, Connoisseurship of Late Hokusai Paintings: Slow Looking, Sharing Collections
7. John Carpenter, MMA, Shedding Light on the Authentic Genius of Hokusai the Painter
8. Shūgō Asano, Abeno Harukas Art Museum, Connoisseurship of Unsigned Drawings by Hokusai – A Group of Works in the Collection of Hokusaikan, Obuse
9. Capucine Korenberg, BM, The Making and Evolution of Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’
Part 3. Society
10. Hiroyoshi Tazawa, TNM, Hokusai: Life and Works
11. Robert Campbell, NIJL, Hokusai and Calligraphy and Painting Parties (Shogakai)
12. Frank Feltens, Freer-Sackler Gallery, Between the Lines: Hokusai in his Letters
13. Alfred Haft, BM, Hokusai in Obuse: A Study of Cultural Mobility During the Late Edo Period
14. Julie Nelson Davis, University of Pennsylvania, Partners in the Studio: Reconsidering Ōi and Hokusai
15. Ellis Tinios, independent scholar, The Publisher Tōhekidō (Eirakuya Tōshirō) and the Hokusai ‘Brand’
Part 4. Legacy
16. Koto Sadamura, BM, Pursuit of the Man Behind the Art: Biographies of Hokusai and Kyōsai by Iijima Kyoshin
17. Roger Keyes, independent scholar, Catalogue Raisonné of the Single-Sheet Colour Woodblock Prints of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
18. Ryōko Matsuba, SISJAC, Facsimile Reproductions (Fukusei) of Hokusai’s Prints in the Meiji Era (1868-1912)
19. Andrew Hare, Freer-Sackler Gallery, A Technical Study of the Freer Version of Shell-Gathering at Low Tide (F1903.2)
20. Stephanie Santschi, University of Zurich, Hokusai Beyond the Database: Transforming Digital Archives into a Complex Collaborative Research Environment
21. Dominic Oldman and Diana Tanase, BM, Beyond the Catalogue: Hokusai Says, Be Dialectic
Appendix - Ellis Tinios, independent scholar, A Chronological List of Late Hokusai Art Books with Short Bibliographic Notes
Afterword
