Notes on Hokusai

March 13, 2006

I spent two afternoons in Washington looking at prints and paintings by Hokusai, the Japanese artist who lived from 1760-1849. The exhibit is being hosted by the Freer Gallery of Art and the Sackler Gallery, and runs from March 4 through May 14, 2006. Knowing how quickly impressions fade, I want to get down some ideas that struck me while I looked through the exhibit.

1. It was obvious that prints were displayed in Japan in ways that were quite different than what we expect. If I were to buy a print, I would immediately stick it in an unobtrusive frame and hang it on a wall. Many of these prints on display, however, were already part of a different frame. In these cases the print was the central feature of a long cloth hanging, often with two tones of cloth. Many of the larger paintings, on the other hand, were set in multiple panel accordion-like dividers. They were the sort of thing that I imagine would be used to divide a room, or to enliven a corner. One of the oddest formal arrangements was a small double wooden panel on which four painted fans were mounted on a screen. It seems that after Hokusai's death someone collected these fans.. three of which had been used, while a fourth was unused.. and mounted them so that they could be displayed. But there was very little in the exhibit to explain how these prints and panels would have been used.. where they were hung (in a house? in what room?). But that is a common complaint for an exhibit.. not enough information on the social niches which made possible these works.

2. This query concerning the ways that these prints and panels were displayed leads to a further comment. Works of art that transfer between cultures are those which can fit into the social niches of the new culture. These Japanese prints are beautiful.. but better than that, they can be framed and hung on a wall.. which is what we expect of art. The panel paintings which formed a series, on the other hand, were beautiful, but clearly harder to translate into out own domestic settings.. and so they remain slightly foreign.

3. I found the many books published by Hokusai particularly fascinating. In his lifetime there were 15 volumes of Manga, or random sketches. Some of these volumes lay open in glass cases, and I could see sketches of the natural world and day-to-day portraits. Among other books there was an Album of True Pictures. The pages open from this book consisted of blooming irises and their green stalks, splashing across the page. The book was small and contained maybe 20 more layouts like this, likely containing simply views of nature. I suppose these are early examples of what we think of now as a book of nature photography.

4. When I arrived at the small museum book shop I set about trying to find one of these books by Hokusai. Art books are much more interested in giving a purchaser the "greatest hits" instead of allowing us to glimpse how pictures worked together in a publication to build layers of meaning. I was in luck and found two books, both by Hokusai: One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji and a series of related prints entitled One Hundred Poets. The publisher George Braziller appears to have cornered the market on these reprinted 19th century Japanese books, with short commentary included. The introduction to One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji recognizes the uneasy translation of these art books to a modern paperback available for $20.95:

In viewing the One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, it helps to understand its character as a physical artifact, since a reproduction of the sort offered here cannot completely replicate the original. It is a book in three separate volumes: each roughly six inches wide, nine inches high, and one quarter inch thick...

it strikes me that the internet would be the perfect place to make available some of these books. There is not enough demand to prod a publisher to print many of these books.. and since it is art it is a costly prospect. But these are the perfect projects to set on the internet. They should all be in the public domain, and the internet actually could be a fitter home for these works than a paperback.

5. Hokusai painted landscapes.. and his most famous print, reprinted everywhere, is of a dramatically curling wave with a small Mt. Fuji in the background. In addition to these landscapes he also painted ordinary people going about their lives. There was a two panel painting entitled "Shinto Priest, Three Women, and a Child." In the painting three women holding pots on their head approach a priest for a blessing. Another example was entitled "New Year's Custom: Wish for a New Year's Auspicious Dream." In this case a woman sits preparing a pillow while beside her lies a picture of the seven gods of fortune, which it will be good luck for her to sleep on. Like realists from many periods, Hokusai seems to have been attracted to unique rituals and local customs. If one abjures any concentration on the unusual or fantastic, then an artist has to locate those elements in the everyday.

6. I have a soft spot for the Japanese poet Basho (1644-1694), whose The Narrow Road to the Far North was a major discover for me some years ago. Basho wrote an odd kind of travelogue, recounting a journey, but then providing short Haiku poems that capture the most transient elements of nature. Looking at the prints of Hokusai it is hard not to think that the spirit of Basho is not somewhere close by.. indeed a book of prints such as Traveling around the Waterfalls in the Provinces could be thought of as a Basho-like travelogue. As I made my way through the exhibit, I finally came across a painting by Hokusai captioned with a haiku ("Cormorant Fisherman"). And really, there is probably no reason to stop with a haiku, since the series of prints One Hundred Poets includes a line of poetry from a famous poet on the upper right hand corner of every print. The picture, although going far past anything that could be described in a line of words, strives to capture that single line of poetry.