It's no secret that I love Japanese woodblock prints. I usually include them in my haiku posts and even in some of my other posts. There is something very striking about even the most simple of them. Today I want to talk about one of these. The most famous of them all: Hokusai's Great Wave.

^{The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1831) - via Art Institute Chicago}

Few images from Japan are as instantly recognizable as Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Even people who’ve never heard the name Hokusai, or the term ukiyo-e, have seen it somewhere — on T-shirts, album covers, coffee mugs, or even emoji keyboards. Its curling spray has become a universal shorthand for “Japanese art.” But reducing it to pop iconography risks losing the richness of what it actually represents.

The wave was published around 1831 as part of Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. By then, Hokusai was in his seventies, having spent a lifetime experimenting with style and subject matter. That the work most associated with him came so late in life is striking—a reminder that an artist’s peak need not arrive in youth.

At first glance, the drama is obvious: fragile fishing boats tossed under the weight of a monstrous wave, Mount Fuji serene in the distance. The juxtaposition is central. Nature is violent, unpredictable, and overwhelming; human endeavor is small and transient. Yet Fuji, sacred and immovable, remains a calm anchor in the composition.

While undeniably Japanese in its woodblock execution, the wave also reflects foreign influence. Hokusai had access to imported Dutch prints, and one can see a hint of Western perspective in the way the wave curves toward the viewer, threatening to crash right out of the paper. The deep Prussian blue pigment, newly available through trade, gives the print its vivid depth—something unachievable with earlier Japanese dyes.

It’s tempting to view the wave purely as aesthetic spectacle, but its endurance lies in metaphor. For some, it embodies the timeless tension between man and nature; for others, it foreshadows modern anxieties—technology, globalization, forces beyond our control. That the image remains open to reinterpretation is part of its genius.

Ironically, when Hokusai made this print, it was just one in a series, sold cheaply to common people. Today, it hangs in museums worldwide and circulates endlessly online.^[1] Its journey from mass-produced ephemera to cultural icon mirrors the very waves it depicts: movement, transformation, and sheer unstoppable force.

Here it is again:

^{The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1831) - via Art Institute Chicago}

Do we still see the Great Wave as Hokusai intended, or has its omnipresence dulled its impact? Perhaps both. The wave has become both artwork and symbol—timeless in form, yet ever-shifting in meaning, just like the sea itself.

❦

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. 【Support @dbooster with Hive SBI】

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1. That irony applies to all of ukiyo-e. They were in many ways an art form for the working class — cheaply made, with artists often poor themselves. Yet now many, if not most, of those old woodblock prints command huge sums from collectors. ↩