Imagining Place: How Do Katsushika Hokusai’s Landscape Prints Combine Local and Transcultural Elements? A Consideration of Cultural Appropriation

Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most influential reformers of Japanese popular art, contributed towards the formation of landscape genre within the ukiyo-e aesthetic. Hokusai’s vision of space reflects his Edokko understanding of place, which he filled with cultural references towards his contemporary identity and Japanese belonging. Furthermore, his genius lies in his enthusiastic, restless spirit that paved his life-long learning and experimentations in multiple stylistic traditions. Influences of Western style and technique can be discovered throughout his ‘early’ woodblock print designs, which marks one of the earliest traces of his tendency of appropriation. His mature landscape designs in the Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji series reflect a synthesis of such appropriations. The forty-six prints of this specific series fuses Western concepts of perspective, colour and shade with famous spaces within Japan that are connected with a common direction towards Mt Fuji. Under the Wave off...Show moreKatsushika Hokusai, one of the most influential reformers of Japanese popular art, contributed towards the formation of landscape genre within the ukiyo-e aesthetic. Hokusai’s vision of space reflects his Edokko understanding of place, which he filled with cultural references towards his contemporary identity and Japanese belonging. Furthermore, his genius lies in his enthusiastic, restless spirit that paved his life-long learning and experimentations in multiple stylistic traditions. Influences of Western style and technique can be discovered throughout his ‘early’ woodblock print designs, which marks one of the earliest traces of his tendency of appropriation. His mature landscape designs in the Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji series reflect a synthesis of such appropriations. The forty-six prints of this specific series fuses Western concepts of perspective, colour and shade with famous spaces within Japan that are connected with a common direction towards Mt Fuji. Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known as the Great Wave, also incorporates such elements, and in addition to the established recognition of Mt Fuji, popularizes the animated wave motif at the same time. This particular design of Hokusai is re-imagined throughout the course of the artist’s lifetime, then in the context of Japonisme, post-war Japan, and through other modern and contemporary re-appropriations. Hokusai’s characteristic landscape of appropriated fusion of influences embarks on the journey of transcultural appropriation that elevates the Wave’s status from a Japanese symbol of identity to that of a global icon. Hokusai’s idea of landscape exemplified in the Great Wave is re-interpreted in multiple contexts, receiving new meanings through appropriations continuously.Show less

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Imagining Place: How Do Katsushika Hokusai’s Landscape Prints Combine Local and Transcultural Elements? A Consideration of Cultural Appropriation