Hokusaï
By Masatsugu MINAMI
His (the Far Oriental’s) art,
wherever fun is possible, fairly bubbles over with laughter. From the oldest
masters down to Hokusaï,
it is constantly welling up in the drollest conceits. It is of all descriptions,
too. Now it lurks in merry ambush, like the faint suggestion of a smile on an
otherwise serious face, so subtle that the observer is left wondering whether
the artist could have meant what seems more like one’s own ingenious
discovery,…....
Those Far Eastern paintings
which have to do with man fall for the most part under one of two heads, the
facetious and the historical. …... impersonality has prevented the Far Oriental
from having much amour proper. He has no particular aversion to caricaturing
himself.
Percival LOWELL, The Soul of the
I.
Percival
LOWELL picks out the painter called MARUYAMA Okio
(1733 – 1795) as a serious and sober side of the Japanese art, and as an
opposite lighter droll part of the artists, chooses the name of KATSUSHIKA Hokusaï as above. We anyway don’t suppose LOWELL was
particularly devoted to the Japanese arts, especially to the pictures; and
furthermore it is known that he tended to regard any Art was inferior to the
Western Science, and so it might be quite unnecessary to mind what he wrote
unreasonably about Hokusaï, while since this point is
rather concerned with his another assertion of the Japanese impersonality
or their lack of imagination, we here to try to be involved.
"The Soul of the
Far East" first appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly, September -
December 1887, and was published from
Houghton, Mifflin & Co,
http://www.kwasan.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~cmo/cmohk/266LtE/266DSt/266DSt.htm
However
this book of
The
book is full of such axioms as the individual and progressive West vs the impersonal and impassive East,
and one may be easily led to the proposition that the Japanese lacks the
originality and holds a spirit of imitation. Even if the Japanese is endowed
with “the power of observation and the kindred capability of perception” they
are not “the cause of soul-evolution” and the soul-evolution is just provided
by the imagination (à la SPENCER)
which is however the very characteristics the Japanese lacks. Any savage, if
confined in his familiar domain, shows a powerful observational and perceptive
ability while once he deviates outside from his boundary, he becomes very
powerless because he is none of imaginative being. “If imagination be the impulse of which increase the individuality is
the resulting motion, that quality should be minimum” in the Far East. “If the individuality be the natural measure
of the height of civilization which a nation has reached, impersonality should
betoken a relatively laggard position in the race.” Eventually
That impersonality is not man’s
earthly goal they unwittingly bear witness; for they are not of those who will
survive. Artistic attractive people that they, their civilization is like their
own tree flowers, beautiful blossoms destined never to bear fruit; for whatever
we may conceive the far future of another life to be, the immediate effect of
impersonality cannot but be annihilating. If these people continue in their old
course, their earthly career is closed. Just as surely as morning passes into
afternoon, so surely are these races of the
Such
theorems as the inferior impersonal languages or impassive vanishing savages
are nowadays those disgusting ideas that have been abandoned by the post-modern
cultural anthropology: Any of pensées sauvages bears fruit in addition to its showy blossoms.
However we should keep in mind the possibility that such a detestable point of
view must have been spread and engraved by this book in the minds of Westerners
and kept even now implicitly.
Here
we don’t delve into discussion about
II.
Hokusaï is referred to by
ncluding pictures,
sketches, hangas etc is said to amount to about forty
thousands, and books with which Hokusaï was concerned
with illustrations are over two hundreds. As an objective fact, his activity,
energy, fecundity as well as his humour and his inquiry about the compositions
and all that are not easily compared even in the West. He changed his habitat
(that is he made his removal) ninety-three times. (We just ironically used the
word habitat here because
At
the time of
As to Hokusaï, slightly later
It
cannot however be conceived that
In
1873 an English surgeon and dermatologist called William ANDERSON
(1842 - 1900) was invited by the Japanese Government as a professor of anatomy
of the newly built
Before that already
FENOLLOSA stated
an opposition to GONSE in that GONSE more heavily valued the Ukiyo-e of the Edo period than other kinds of pictures in
the foregoing eras, and FENOLLOSA accused or ridiculed GONSE because the latter
made lots of mistakes about the historical facts as well as the pronunciations
of Japanese names and places (this must have been caused by perhaps his
learning by the ear). Perhaps to FENOLLOSA, the Ukiyo-e
must have not appeared as a grand-art, and he
especially regarded Hokusaï as a mere artisan, and
considered that Hokusaï’s themes, descriptions,
compositions and so on are all “vulgar”. Just at that time FENOLLOSA was
involved with a survey of ancient temples, and it is known that it was
FENOLLOSA that was permitted to unwrap the bundle of cloth and revealed the
gilded wooded statue of Kuze Kannnon
showing an archaic enigmatic smile at the octagonal Yume-dono (Hall of dreams, maybe built in
the 8th century) near the Horyuji Temple (the oldest wooden temple) in Nara (together
with Kakuzo (Tenshin)
OKAKURA). We should say that the person who discovered the long hidden
magnificent image brilliantly at the area of famous temples could easily ignore
the cheap prints that were liked by the
Later even (after
By 1785
Kiyonaga had reached the height of the art by
substituting for evolution in variety of tints true atmospheric detachment, and
an enhancement of the breadth of his simple flat masses. This, and his nobility
of design, left him momentarily above the prevailing vulgarity of Ukiyoe.
…...
The
gradual decay from Kiyonaga is due to the intolerance
of even esthetic ideas by a people who, now quite
certain that they are to be allowed to care for nothing but novelty and
pleasure, have taken the bit in their teeth, and have declared frankly for a
carnival of riotous excess. …. Hokusai wonderfully mirrors for us the average
thought and bad taste of the populace. ….
In
1890, however, FENOLLOSA made a detailed catalogue for The Exhibition of Paintings of Hokusaï held
at the Japan Fine Art Association, Ueno, Tokio
from 13 to 30 January 1900. There were shown a hundred of real paintings (no
prints), and each was associated by a detailed and devoted account by him. (In
1890 FENOLLOSA returned to
The following
statement is said to belong to FENOLLOSA in a work published in 1912 (after his
death), but its implication is not clear to us: "Hokusaï
is a great designer, as Kipling and Whitman are great poets. He has been called
the Dickens of Japan."
It
was not accidental that any of LOWELL, FENOLLOSSA, and ANDERSON who were all
underestimated Hokusaï was among those who lived long
in the early modernised
It
was quite probable that the proposition of vulgarity stated by FENOLLOSA must
have been easily sublimated to the theorem of impersonality of
III.
As
to the present estimation of Hokusaï that is held
generally domestically or abroad, we should say we don’t need to touch upon
here. However in order to show that there was a possibility of approach to Hokusaï different from LOWELL’s,
we here exemplify by citing the view of MICHEL BUTOR (1926-): BUTOR is well
known here in Japan next to Alain ROBBE-GRILLET as a novelist belonging to the Nouveaux Romanciers
of the 20th Century. BUTOR alluded to
Hokusaï
as follows replying to the interview by Anna OTTEN in 1985:
ANNA OTTEN: What makes you write a new book?
MICHEL BUTOR: I like to explore, everything interests me. Within each book I
explore something new, see various perspectives, consider
certain themes. Often I am reminded of something I have read or written
elsewhere. But within the framework of a certain book, the ensemble acquires
specific significance. Even when I quote another writer, the quotation takes on
a different meaning in the new context. In the final analysis, what thought is
really new? When I look back, I find in ancient books answers to questions I
have asked myself a hundred times.
ANNA OTTEN: But you give different answers.
MICHEL BUTOR: I cannot help transforming or at least modifying them. Each
generation has to find new answers. Cultures change and men change with them.
Nothing stands still. I am not the same from one moment to the next. When
Hokusai sketches his thirty-six and his ten additional views of
http://www.centerforbookculture.org/interviews/interview_butor.html
He
asserts he looks for something new, and uses any theme or perspective in a different
context from those used by some before, and in that case he says he uses the
concept of the transformation or deformation. Any generation finds new answers
to the effect that cultures and beings change. He himself is not the same as
himself a moment ago. This is quite the same when Hokusaï
drew the thirty-six views plus ten additional views of Mt Fuji. Mt Fuji was
differently sketched each time, and his angle was always moving.
It is well known
that the idea of transformation, as was the case of Claude LEVI-STRAUSS (1908-), famous French structuralist,
stemmed from the group or set theory of mathematics.
In
fact, BUTOR made already an essay explicitly about Hokusaï
under the title “Trente-six et dix vues du
For instance,
BUTOR first remarks that the transformation already worked positively in the
case of Claude MONET. It may not be appropriate to interpret the series of La Cathédrale de
Rouen (1894) by the method to evaluate one picture separating from another
because MONET drew a lot of the same cathedral from the same window from the
morning to evening. If the Sun shines, the cathedral shines attractively in pluricolours, and if one follows it as time goes by, it
deforms or transforms to be drawn rather continuously. In the case of MONET,
BUTOR states however that the cathedral is no more than a pretext;
C’est que,
pour Monet, la cathédrale de
Michel BUTOR
However,
according to BUTOR, Hokusaï is more different: Mt
Fuji was no pretext,
and it was not
only veritable but also a sacred mountain. Hokusaï wanted to study its aspects from the whole angles.
Different from MONET, Hokusaï moved flexibly and
looked for another different point of view in accordance with each of the
transformations brought by the time passage, variations of weather like wind,
rain, clear or foggy atmosphere.
…... Hokousaï, pour chacune des
transformations apportées par le passage de heures et le changement
du temps, vent, pluie, ciel
clair ou blume, cherche un autre point de vue.
……fest que le
Michel BUTOR
So,
Hokusaï was not satisfied only with the depictions of
the temporal colour changes of
Hokusaï ne peut
se contenter de multiplier les effets
de couleur, chaque nouvelle
nuance est une autre façon
de voir, une autre liaison du
Et il ne suffit pas seulement de noter que la montagne
change de couleur selon les
moments, de forme selon les
lieux, il faut aussi faire comprendre, sentir de la façon la plus saisissante tous les différents rôles qu’elle joue,
toutes ses multiples vertus et beautés.
Michel BUTOR
BUTOR
noted thus then the delicate nuance of colour and the variety of geometrical
elements in Hokusaï; as to the latter we will deal
with in a later section.
As to the colour,
BUTOR writes about how Hokusaï saw the colour of Mt
Fuji changing 
from the
…...le Fuji à certains
moments, vu de la rivière Sumida, est rouge comme l’écorce d’un pin, comme un
cheval rouge, comme des vêtements
teints de pourpre. Vu du pont Ryogoku au crépuscule, il est bleu comme
l’eau profound, lorsqu’on le
regarde le matin de Koïshikawa après la neige, il est blanc
comme celle-ci, à Umesawa, il a le gris bleuté de certaines grues.
Michel
BUTOR
We
here cease to cite BUTOR, while his discussion is still much wider, and
interestingly he analyses that the remarkable dissertation of Marcel PROUST (1871
– 1922) about the metaphor in the impressionism based on MONET’s
work is more appropriate to the work of Hokusaï, and
finally he closes by discussing that Hokusaï’s 36 +
10 views of Mt Fuji were the litanies offered
to Mt Fuji. If you go to Mishima, you will understand
how
The
statement by BUTOR which we just noted suggests that Hokusaï’s
pictures seriously show the pursuit of a certain prayer through several daily
vulgar objects. We should say this way of displaying transformed cards in a row
must have been so novel and unconventional that it must have been unfamiliar or
rather threatening to the classicists like FENOLLOSA.
The
method of Hokusaï when he produced the Thirty-six and Ten Views of Mt Fuji was
thus quite a refined and novel one. But it should be note that he was conversant
with such a method of depicting an object from various angles from his earlier
period when several sketchbooks of Mangas were
published. That is, the method of displaying cards in a row or transformations
were always familiar to him as well as the perspective representation and some
other geometrical method. Rather we might be able to say that he used several
vulgar objects to guide the method of transformations or deformations. As said,
he even varied his names. Nothing stood still in Hokusaï
in the sense of BUTOR.
IV.
Hokusaï used compasses
and rulers. This was real, as suggested in his sketchbooks. In accordance,
BUTOR also points out that “Hokusaï étudie la forme du Fuji en la rapprochant de verticales qui se concrétiseront dans les poteaux d’un atelier de charpentier à Tatekawa, à des horizontals, les barres
de brumes qui envahissent les marais
à Ono Shinden, à un cercle, le tonneau
que travaille son tonnelier à Fujimihara, à un demi-cercle vertical, le moulin
de rivière qu’il imagine à Onden, près de Tokyo, un demi-cercle horizontal, le pont
de Mannenbashi, à un rectangle, la fenêtre de la maison de thé à Yoshida, etc.” (italic by the
present writer).
The
fact that the structures of Hokusaï’s pictures were
not geometrically simple was otherwise well known as pointed 
out by Ryo YANAGUI
(“Golden Section, second series”
1977). We leave the details to the book, while here we shall borrow an example
in which YANAGUI shows analytically how Hokusaï
depended on the compass and rulers in composing the famous “The Waves off the Coast of Kanagawa.”
The
concept of the Golden Section, known
as the most proportional and beautiful section, was originated in the culture
of the ancient Egypt, but a very new one at Hokusaï’s
time in Japan just imported from the Dejima,
Nagasaki.
Let
two sides of a rectangle satisfy the Golden ratio, and then let the square with
sides made of the shorter side be cut off. Then, the two sides of the remaining
rectangular should satisfy the golden ratio again. That is, if 1:φ makes the golden ratio, then φ should satisfy
1:φ=φ―1:1 or φ2―φ―1=0. So we
obtain φ=(1+5½)/2=1.618….. which is quite irrational. That implies,
we cannot depict correctly the ratio without compass. Just φ should
satisfy the modification φ =1+(1/φ)
=1+(1/(1+(1/φ))….., and so it is possible to give several rational
approximations. The Fibonacci numbers (after Leonardo PISSANO (1170 - 1250)
whose nickname is FIBONACCI): 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, … then appear. For instance, φ is between
approximate rational numbers 8/5 and 13/8. It is very apparent that Hokusaï used this marvellous ratio in his compositions: In
the case of “The Waves off the Coast of
We
should say the above case proves that Hokusaï was
prudent and careful in composing the pictures; in addition to the fact that he
was not simply traditional including the case of the caricatures. In some sense
he must have been threatening to the traditions if we are just concerned with
the compositions.
The
fact that at Hokusaï was eager to absorb the new
techniques implies an antithesis to
Otherwise, 
invented at the
beginning of the 18th Century; it being imported into Japan never
before 1820). Does
One more
additional comment on Hokusaï’s universality: Shigemi INAGA (op.cit.) cited the
illustrations which compared one of CÉZANNE’s
pictures entitled “Mont Saint-Victoire” with the foregoing Hokusaï’s
“Mishima Pass in the Kai Province” (originally
the comparison was due to Pierre
FRANCASTEL (1905-1970)).
Similarly a relationship of 
Hokusaï’s
“Hodogaya on the Tokaidoh Highway S INAGA .
The technique of Hodogaya was also followed by Akira KUROSAWA on several
occasions in his movies; and it also is often employed in recent Takeshi KITANO’s movies.
V.
It
is interesting to note that
The
imagination
If
we could admit this idea, could we say the French was lower than the Americans?
Even if we tentatively discard the problem of art or literature, the
mathematics in
It
was very true that the Japanese in the Meiji era had no natural science mainly
because the country spent a few hundred years having closed the door to the
western countries. Even now our natural science ability is regarded lower (than
the actual state) from the foreign countries. However, if we admit the Japanese
are impersonal, it was not because of that reason that the Japanese was weak at
science. By the same token, we cannot say the Japanese art was established
because of their impersonality. It is an attractive idea of
According to
If
The grounds of
We should rather consider that
(March
2004)