48Books: A Month Late Reading Project

Katsushika Hokusai - The Great Wave, 1831.

The most celebrated oh Hokusai’s designs, and very likely the most famous Japanese image in the world, is the print entitled Under the Wave of Kanagawa, popularly known as “The Great Wave”.

“Our feelings are absorbed by the sweep of the enormous wave, we enter into its upwelling movement, we feel the tension between its heave and the force of gravity, and as the crest breaks into foam, we feel that we ourselves are stretching angry claws against the alien objects beneath us.” Herbert Read

Hokusai’s view here seems forbidding. The people in the boats will be lucky to survive, yet they do not appear to show any panic. Instead, they seem to be bowing to the wave. In the traditional Japanese view, humans do not control or attempt to dominate nature, trying instead to live in harmony with all other creatures and the natural forces of the earth.