Hokusai Manga

Even today, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is regarded as the archetypal ‘Japanese artist’, both in Japan and internationally. Early western evaluations of the history of ukiyo-e saw him as the late saviour of a style in decay, but Hokusai was a contemporary of classical-period artists, training in the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–92) from 1779. His popular illustrated manga volumes were conceived as early as 1812, when Hokusai enjoyed a sketching visit to his friend Gekkotei Bokusen (1736–1824) at Nagoya. Indeed, Bokusen may have brokered the earliest (1814) printing through the publisher Eirakuya, as well as later volumes with Kadomuraya Jinsuke of Edo.

The manga continued to be published until after Hokusai’s death, with the final issue printed in Nagoya in 1878. In Hokusai’s day, manga meant something quite different from the narrative comics of today; his public understood them to be casual collections of informal drawings. The drawings published in the Hokusai manga embrace images of almost every subject his audiences could hope to see, organised in several thematic groups within each volume. They seem to have been conceived both as media for sharing Hokusai’s own polymath curiosities and virtuoso skills, and as compendiums of diverse images for copying by amateur artists. The first volume was signed by Katsushika Hokusaiunder the title Denshin kaishu – A primer for transmitting the true spirit. Beyond this function, however, the manga seem to have found huge acceptance as popular visual entertainment. Hokusai’s sumi-e ink drawings are filled with visual energy, humour and often acute accuracy. They provided viewers with rich information about worlds beyond Japan and, having been reproduced as early as 1831 by Philipp Franz von Siebold in Nippon Archiv zur Beschreibung von Japan, provided western viewers with esoteric insights into life in Japan.

Te Papa's collection currently  includes six second edition volumes (1878) of the Hokusai manga: volume II, first published in spring 1815; volume III, spring 1815; volume V, summer 1816; volume VI, 1817; volume VIII, spring 1819; and volume IX, 1819.

See: David Bell, 'Floating world at Te Papa: the Heriot collection', Tuhinga, 30 (2019), pp. 56-81.

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   May 2019