All About Japanese: Hokusai Tsunami

Hokusai Tsunami

Posted by Chika On 11:27 PM

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Hokusai, the Great Wave and the Tsunami
北斎　津波　

- Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) 葛飾北斎 -

神奈川沖波裏 The Great Wave off Kanagawa

- quotes
After the Great Tsunami natural disaster in 2004 Hokusai's famous image could be frequently seen in the press referred to as an early 19th century document of a huge tsunami wave.

Although it is often used in tsunami literature, there is no reason to suspect that Hokusai intended it to be interpreted in that way . . .

The print is today often reproduced as the artistic depiction of a tsunami.
Did Hokusai really have a tsunami in mind when he composed this work?

The waves in this work are sometimes mistakenly referred to as tsunami (津波), but they are more accurately called okinami (沖波), great off-shore waves.

Hokusai's Tsunami Mouse Pad

RedBubble's hokusai tsunami page

Hagane Metal Cover Tsunami-Hokusai

. more reference .

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quote
The Great Wave off Kanagawa 神奈川沖浪裏,
Kanagawa Oki Nami Ura, lit. "Under a Wave off Kanagawa", also known as
The Great Wave or simply The Wave ...
While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is, as the picture's title notes, more likely to be a large okinami - literally "wave of the open sea."
Copies of the print are in many Western collections,...

Edmond de Goncourt described the wave in this way:

"The drawing of the wave is a deification of the sea made by a painter who lived with the religious terror of the overwhelming ocean completely surrounding his country; He is impressed by the sudden fury of the ocean's leap toward the sky, by the deep blue of the inner side of the curve, by the splash of its claw-like crest as it sprays forth droplets."

There are two similar works, dated some 30 years before the publication of The Great Wave, that are its precursors. They are Kanagawa-oki Honmoku no zu and Oshiokuri Hato Tsusen no Zu, both works with subjects identical to the Great Wave: a sailboat and a rowboat respectively. In both precursor works, the subjects are in the midst of a storm, beneath a great wave that threatens to devour them. ...
source : wikipedia

I saw a feature on TV, a take of a high wave with a high-speed camera
and there the breaking wave droplets looked just as Hokusai had painted them
... it was quite amazing!
His eyesight must have been phantastically fine-tuned.

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source :　bbs.kakaku.com

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source :　forbiddenplanet.co.uk

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This is a print to raise money for the Japanese Red Cross distributed directly among the earthquake and tsunami affected Japanese population. All the funds received will be transferred by the Red Cross to the Distribution Committee which is formed around the local government of the disaster affected prefecture in Japan.

source : www.drymounted.com

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