Masayoshi and the Wind in Hokusai’s Wave Off Kanagawa

Katsushika Hokusai: The Wave Off Kanagawa, 1830, detail (Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York JP 2569)

Yes, I do believe that Masayoshi is the Father and that it could also well be the Wind that made Hokusai’s Wave so Great. For quite some time, I have been convinced that Hokusai was first inspired by Shiba Kōkan 司馬江漢 (1747-1818) for his 1830 masterpiece, Under the Hollow of the Wave Off Kanagawa, Kanagawa oki no namiura , 神奈川沖波裏, now most popularly known as The Great Wave. I am still convinced that Hokusai’s first inspiration was Kōkan’s View of Kamakura and the Seven League Beach In Sagami Province, Sōshū Kamakura Shichirigahama no zu 総州鎌倉七里浜図, a painting in oil completed on the 24th day of the 6th month of 1796. Among the many Edoites who went to see the painting when it was donated and displayed at the Atagosan Shrine at Shiba, it cannot be doubted that Hokusai was one of them. And he simply must have thought ‘Well, I can do better.’ He demonstrated this in his plate for the luxurious album of kyōka poems, Threads of the Willow, Yanagi no ito 『柳の糸』, published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō 蔦屋重三郎 (1751-1797) at the New Year of 1797. In his design, he replaced Kōkan’s rather small figures of a fisherman and his attendant by two fashionably clad Edo townswomen talking to a local girl, a man with a load looking on. This group of people thus becomes the direct focus in the composition, but Hokusai also made the wave that already rolls onto the beach in the Kōkan painting, considerably bigger.

Katsushika Hokusai: Spring at Enoshima, from the Threads of the Willow album, 1797 (Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 21.10254)

Some years later, in early Bunka, around 1804-06, Hokusai would again focus on waves, but now their size and might can really be understood from the boats that conspicuously figure in two designs of obviously Western inspired compositions. One of these, in the larger medium aiban format, is titled Honmoku Off Kanagawa, Kanagawa oki Honmoku no zu 神奈川沖本杢之図, written horizontally, thus underlining the Western association, a title somewhat like the Kanagawa oki no namiura of his 1830 design. Here we see two sailing boats among large waves by a rocky coast. The other print, in the smaller medium chūban format, is titled Oshiokuri Boats Navigating the Waves Oshiokuri hatō tsūsen no zu おしおくりはとうつうせんのづ, again written horizontally, in imitation of Western writing. The so-called oshiokuri boats have no sails and are being rowed by a party of men and are used for speedy transport of goods from one harbour to another. Moreover, these are the same as the boats that we see in his 1830 Wave Off Kanagawa print.

Katsushika Hokusai: Oshiokuri Boats Navigating the Waves, c. 1804-06 (Courtesy: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 21.6678)

Consequently, there is an undeniable connection between these two prints of the Bunka period and the Wave Off Kanagawa of 1830: there is the wording ‘Off Kanagawa,’ and the presence of the so-called oshiokuri skiffs. However, the only connection between the Threads of the Willow plate and the 1830 Wave Off Kanagawa print are the waves, rolling onto the beach in the former, and in the open sea in the latter. Moreover, what we see in the chūban format print is a fantastic high-rising billow that seems to find its culmination in the Wave Off Kanagawa print of the Fuji series.

This is how far I was in the introduction to the catalogue of my Hokusai. Prints and Drawings to complement the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1991 (surprisingly, still in print). Later, I also expanded this in an essay titled ‘Influenze occidentali nell’arte di Hokusai’ in Gian Carlo Calzo, Ed., Hokusai. Il vecchio pazzo per la pittura. Milano, 1999, pp. 37-45, and still later also in English as ‘Western influences in Hokusai’s art’ in Gian Carlo Calza, Ed., Hokusai. London, 2003, pp. 23-31. However, this still raises the question what the origin of this high-rising billow in the chūban print might be. And this is where, I think, Kitao Masayoshi (北尾政美 1764-1824) comes in.

To understand how and why, we must remember that Hokusai was designing quite a number of both commercial and privately issued prints of landscapes in the Kyōwa and Bunka Periods (1801-1818), mostly in either the chūban or also the even smaller koban 小判 format. They were views of Edo, of Lake Biwa, the so-called Eight Views in Ōmi Province, Ōmi hakkei 「近江八景」, the Six Crystal Rivers, Mutamagawa 「六玉川」, and no less than seven series on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road, Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi 「東海道五十三次」. But then we should also realize that he had seen none of these places except for the locations in Edo. He, for example, first traveled the Tōkaidō Highway only in the Autumn of 1812. But there was a very good guide for travelling the Tōkaidō Highway, the Illustrated Famous Views Along the Tōkaidō Road, Tōkaidō meisho zue 『東海道名所図会』, a six-volumes guidebook for the journey from Kyoto to Edo by the great entrepreneur in this genre Akisato Ritō 秋里離嶌, with illustrations by several various artists, published in 1797. A large number of plates complement the descriptions of famous sites, the historical background of temples, as well as notes on local specialties and products.

It was this best-selling guidebook that enabled Hokusai to know of the shop of Uirō selling incense at Odawara, that Yui was famous for producing salt, Okitsu for sea products, and Fujieda for lots of fresh fish, Kakegawa for grass cloth made of arrowroot vines, shibori silk being a famous product of Narumi, Kuwana for its hamaguri shells, Tsuchiyama for its so-called sashigushi combs, and in the village of Umenoki, just before reaching Ishibe, there is the large and famous Wachūsan medicine shop, to cite just some examples from one such series dating from 1804.

Katsushika Hokusai: Women at Narumi making shibori silk, from a series of prints on the Tōkaidō Highway, 1804 (Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, JIB13)

The last thirteen plates in the guidebook are the work of Kitao Masayoshi, one of the most productive illustrators of popular novels at the time, some of these already signed Keisai 蕙齋, the name he took then. One of these depicts the hero Nitta Yoshioki (新田義興 1331-1358) on horseback, being lifted by a strange ghostlike wave when he was about to cross the Tama River by Yaguchi 矢口 near Edo, on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1358. Understandably, he would not survive this strange event, causing his death at the young age of 28. His soul is now revered in the Nitta Myōjin Shrine 新田明神 at the village of Yaguchi. Though in all respects not related to either the Kōkan painting or Hokusai’s plate in the Threads of the Willow album, there cannot be any doubt that Hokusai knew this plate by Masayoshi, making it quite likely that this helped him develop first his chūban print of Oshiokuri Boats Navigating the Waves, and much later, in 1830, also his iconic print of the Wave Off Kanagawa.

Kitao Masayoshi: Nitta Yoshioki lifted by a huge wave, from Tōkaidō meisho zue, 1797.

Then the Wind making a Great Wave, as promised above. Hokusai’s initial plan to do a series of views of Mount Fuji dates from 1823. At the end of his Modern Patterns for Combs and Pipes, Imayō kushi kiseru no hinagata 『今様櫛煙管雛形』, that already features eight designs for the decoration of combs that include Mount Fuji, there is an announcement of a series of Eight Fujis, Fugaku hattai 「冨嶽八体」, that would represent ‘the wonders of nature, landscapes as they comply with the four seasons, in clear weather, rain, wind, snow, and in misty skies, that his brush will manifest’ shiki seiu fūsetsu muten no zōka ni shitagai keshiki no kotonaru wo hittan ni arawasu 四季晴雨風雪霧天の造化に随ひ景色の異るを筆端に著す. The publisher of this series of prints would be Nishimuraya Yohachi, indeed the publisher of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series. Just focusing on the first three conditions, could it be that the promised ‘clear weather, rain, and wind’ are the prints of South Wind and Clear Weather, Gaifū kaisei 凱風快晴, Shower Below the Summit, Sanka hakuu 山下白雨, and the wind … indeed making Under the Hollow of the Wave Off Kanagawa, Kanagawa oki no namiura , 神奈川沖波裏. I am also convinced that these three acknowledged masterpieces form part of the first instalment of Fuji prints, though some are recently convinced of a different order of the prints in the series being published.

Katsushika Hokusai: Imayō kushi kiseru hinagata, 1823. (Courtesy The Trustees of the British Museum, 1979,0305,0.432.1)

Interestingly, speaking of Hokusai and Masayoshi in a summary of who matters in the Kansei Period, the Bukō nenpyō 『武江年表』 [Tōyō Bunko, 118, p 18] records that ‘It is said that Hokusai is someone who just imitates and who starts nothing by himself. Well, after Keisai [the later name of Masayoshi] had drawn his Ryakugashiki 『略画式』[4 titles from 1795 to 1800], Hokusai made the Hokusai manga 『北斎漫画』[10 vols. from 1814 to 1819] and it is again the truth that it was the scheme of View of Edo 「江戸一覧図」 [1 large sheet by Masayoshi, 1803] that helped him [i.e. Hokusai] design his View of the Tōkaidō 「東海道一覧の図」 [1 large sheet, 1818].’ 語りて云ふ、北斎はとかく人の真似をなす、何でも己が初始めたることなしとへり。是は「略画式」を蕙齋が著はして後、北斎漫画をかき、又紹真が江戸一覧図を工夫せしかば、東海道一覧の図を錦絵にしたりしなどいへるなり。To some extent I can follow the idea, but I think it is more complicated, maybe for some other time.

Anyway, let this be my contribution to this year’s 200th anniversary of Masayoshi’s (1764-1824) death — which seems to pass completely unnoticed in Japan.