Hokusai gafu 北斎画譜

FSC-GR-780.247.1–5

Commentary by Ann Yonemura

Posted November 2014

This three-volume set of illustrations is printed in ink and light colors. The preface to volume 3 dates it to 1849, the year of Hokusai’s death. According to Toda, this title includes illustrations from an 1820 volume with the same title and is supplemented by other images, including landscapes, still lifes, and bird-and-flower images as well as various scenes of human activity. The Pulverer set is complete and includes rare, surviving fukuro (wrappers) for volumes 1 and 3.

Especially noteworthy are the opening illustrations. Each volume begins with a scene of a nō performer in Okina, an auspicious dance play on the theme of longevity and good fortune. Volume 1 opens with a scene of the Sanbasō dance, and volume 2 begins with a dancer wearing the okina mask of an elderly god. Volume 3 shows a man wearing an elegant costume—like the one worn by the dancer in volume 1—and carrying a lacquer box that might contain a mask. These pages feature intense color and clearly were intended to refer to the world of the gods, which in nō performances were evoked by music, stylized movement, and masks and costumes that obscured the actors’ physical features. By beginning each volume with an evocation of a benevolent god, Hokusai was expressing his personal understanding of the intimate relationship between the divine and visible realms.

Selected reading:

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. 257.

Copies in other collections:

Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Collection (1849 ed.: 3 vols.; 1820 ed.: 1 vol.)

British Library, London (vol. 1 only)

Library of Congress, Washington, DC (vol. 3 only)