Fugaku hyakkei

Fugaku hyakkei 富嶽百景

FSC-GR-780.246.1–3

Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

The three-volume Fugaku hyakkei  (One hundred views of Mount Fuji) is a masterpiece of Japanese book illustration. The first printings of its first two volumes are known as the “falcon feather” editions because they bear labels framed by a feather motif. They are a testament to the incomparable quality of design and printing that were achieved through a close collaboration between the master artist and the master block-carvers, who worked under the direction of Egawa Tomekichi, and also the superb printing of the fine line and gray color blocks. Designed by Hokusai in his late seventies, the publication of one hundred visionary landscapes of the sacred mountain was intimately linked to his desire to live for at least one hundred years so he could perfect his art. In a brief and often quoted autobiographical colophon in the first volume of Fugaku hyakkei, Hokusai states that only in his seventies was he able to understand the forms of the natural world, and that each decade of his life brought greater insight into the principles underlying those forms. Thus, at the age of one hundred, he believed his art would reach a divine state, and at one hundred ten, every dot and every stroke would seem to be alive. [1]

The critical contribution made by the block-carvers to the quality of the final illustrations is indicated by the inclusion of their given names on each sheet of the first two volumes. This feature provides unusual evidence for the close study of block-carving techniques. As Roger Keyes has noted, work on the first two volumes was distributed among six block-carvers; the double-page images usually are the work of two block-carvers since they are composed of two separate sheets, each printed from a separate block. The illustrations for the early printings of Fugaku hyakkei  were printed only with a line block and with fine, often subtle gray blocks (Keyes 2006, p. 219). Additional evidence for Hokusai’s painstaking development of each image is provided by several surviving preparatory drawings.

The first two volumes of Fugaku hyakkei  were first published in 1834 and 1835 by Nishimura Yohachi, the publisher of Hokusai’s phenomenally successful Fugaku sanjūrokukei  (Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji), which due to its popularity had been extended to forty-six images. The third volume was probably designed around the same time, but publication was delayed. Dire economic decline resulting from the Tenpō famine was disastrous for Edo publishers, including Nishimura. Among the consequences was the abrupt termination of Hokusai’s masterpiece series of color prints, Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki  (One hundred poets, one verse each, as explained by the nurse) after only twenty-seven prints had been published. Eventually, Nagoya publisher Eirakuya Tōshirō published the third volume, probably around 1849. He also acquired the blocks for the first two volumes and reprinted them as well, creating three-volume sets for sale. [2]

The label and title page of the “falcon feather” volume 1 include two subjects that, in addition to Mount Fuji, are considered to be auspicious in dreams occurring at the New Year: a falcon, represented by the feather border on the label, and an eggplant, represented by the border on the title page on the inside front cover. A wrapper (fukuro)  for volume one has an illustration of a falcon, perched beside the title in the center. The covers of the “falcon feather” volumes 1 and 2 are heavy pink paper embossed with designs of Ōmi hakkei  (Eight views of Lake Biwa), an allusion to the myth that Mount Fuji was miraculously formed from earth removed to form Lake Biwa (Keyes 2006, p. 218).

Hokusai’s illustrations for volume one begin with an image of the goddess of Mount Fuji, Konohananosakuya-hime, whose name means “the one who makes the flowers bloom.” Immediately following is a double-page illustration of the miraculous rise of Mount Fuji as witnessed by courtiers and their attendants during the reign of an ancient emperor. The volume includes one image of the violent destruction that followed an eruption of Mount Fuji in 1707, but in other images Fuji appears still and eternal—the sacred presence upon whose protection Hokusai and many others depended.

In the three volumes, Mount Fuji is shown from varied viewpoints near and far, with each turn of the page bringing a fresh and often surprising image. The effect of Hokusai’s shifting points of view resembles cinematic techniques (Hillier 1980, p. 220). Volume 3 ends with a remarkably simple image rendered in the form of the “one-brushstroke” sketches in Hokusai’s Ippitsu gafu  (see FSC-GR-780.232). The last image functions similarly to a kaō, a single-stroke unique cipher that certified and attested to the authenticity of important documents.

Despite the lower quality of volume 3 and the reprints of volumes 1 and 2, Fugaku hyakkei  is a masterpiece of conception, design, and printing. It expresses Hokusai’s passionate interest in Mount Fuji as a subject and in pushing the artistic expression of the illustrated book beyond any previous limitations. The Pulverer volumes include outstanding early printings of volumes 1 and 2 and a good imprint of volume 3. Together, these books, once in the collection of the American architect and collector Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), provide a complete and exceptional view of Hokusai’s artistic intention at the height of his creative vision in print and book design.

Selected reading:

Matthi Forrer, “The effects of the Tenpō crisis upon the publication of illustrated books by Hokusai and his school,” Andon  8 (1982), pp. 31–37.

Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration  (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 214–25.

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book,  vol. 1 (New York: Sotheby’s Publication, 1987), pp. 873–79.

Roger Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan  (New York: New York Public Library; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), pp. 218–22, 285–86.

Richard Lane, Hokusai: Life and Work  (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1989), pp. 231–41.

Henry D. Smith II, Hokusai: One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji  (New York: George Braziller, 1988).

Toda Kenji, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago (1931; repr., Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2005), p. 262.

Copies in other collections:

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Collection

British Library, London

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Library (NE1325.K3 A64)

Library of Congress, Washington, DC

National Institute for Japanese Literature

New York Public Library

Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden (1353-52A)

[1] See Smith 1988, p. 7, for the full English translation. The book reproduces in their entirety the three volumes of Fugaku hyakkei  in the New York Public Library, Spencer Collection, with detailed commentary and English translations of the entire text.

[2] There are several editions of volume 3, which are described by Matthi Forrer in Eirakuya Tōshirō and Suzuki Jūzō in Ehon to ukiyo-e.