hokusai– tag –

Digital print quality varies enormously — from excellent museum-scan restorations to pixelated stretched files. What resolution actually means, what source quality matters, and how to buy what looks good on your wall.

The Great Wave is on mugs, phone cases, tattoos, and the wave emoji. How a 19th-century Edo print became the most reproduced artwork in human history — and what that ubiquity means.

Everyone knows Hokusai's waves. Far fewer know his bird and flower prints — kachō-ga that show a different kind of attention: intimate, observational, among the finest in the genre's history.

The Fuji Five Lakes — Kawaguchiko, Yamanakako, Saiko, Shojiko, Motosuko — gave Hokusai his most compositionally ambitious Fuji images. A guide to the sacred geography at the mountain's base.

Hokusai spent most of his life in the Sumida area of Edo. The river, its bridges, its festivals, and its floods appear throughout his work. A history of art's most storied waterway.

Hokusai was born, lived, and died in Edo. The city he knew was one of the world's largest — and its streets, bridges, rivers, and markets appear throughout his work.

In his 80s, Hokusai traveled to Obuse to paint a dragon across a temple ceiling. Throughout his career, dragons were a recurring obsession. Here's his most powerful dragon work.

It's the companion to The Great Wave — but most people couldn't name it. Red Fuji is arguably more technically brilliant. Here's what makes it extraordinary.

Hokusai drew ghosts, demons, shapeshifting animals, and supernatural beings with the same precise observation he brought to waves and mountains. Japan's spirit world through his eyes.

Sumo was Edo Japan's national sport and a major subject of woodblock prints. Here's how Hokusai and his contemporaries depicted the wrestlers, ceremonies, and culture of the ring.