Katsushika Hokusai: The Endless Creative (Part 2)

Why is Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji so popular? And just how influential were his images on the development of Western art? Join Alastair and James as they explore the final tumultuous, and endlessly creative, decades of Hokusai's long life. If you would like to see the artworks included in this episode, switch to video in your podcast app at any time. Artworks in this episode include: Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Province, 1830 Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), 1831 Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Morning, 1831 Katsushika Ōi, Nightscene in the Yoshiwara, 1860 Tsuyuki Kōshō, Hokusai and Eijo in their lodgings, before 1893 Hokusai, Tiger in the Snow, 1849 To see images of the artworks in this episode go to heni.com/storiesofart or visit the Heni Talks YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@HENITalks Hosts: Alastair Sooke and Dr James Fox Additional Research: Catherine Ingram Producer and Editor: Ben Harding Executive Producer: Emma Cahusac Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:19 Hokusai's Artistic Credo 00:03:52 36 Views of Mount Fuji 00:14:58 The Great Wave off Kanagawa 00:30:02 Fire and Tragedy 00:39:13 Final Years 00:43:13 Death and Legacy 00:51:41 The Eternal Wave

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01James Fox?

  Welcome to Stories of Art, I'm James Fox. And I'm Alistair Sook.

• 0:10James Fox?

  A group of travellers is walking along a path near Mount Fuji, when a sudden gust of wind catches them unaware. A woman's dress is blown into her face, a man's beloved hat is snatched off his head, and a backpack is ripped open, sending dozens of valuable sheets of paper hurtling off into the sky. That, Alistair, is a chaotic scene from Hokusai's most thrilling series of images, which we will discuss in this episode. But before we do that, let's remind listeners where we got to in our previous episode. Hokusai is born in Edo, modern-day Tokyo, in 1760. He takes on various jobs in his youth, is sacked in his 30s,

• 0:53James Fox?

  but goes on to make a name for himself as a freelance artist. He loses two wives, one daughter, gets struck by lightning, has a stroke, but races through into old age without pausing for breath. This, then, is the second and last episode on the story of Katsushika Hokusai.

• 1:19James Fox?

  We're now in the 1830s, and Hokusai, though by no means a young man, he's now in his 70s, he's about to get a second wind. And I just thought, Alistair, I would read this famous quote by Hokusai. You've got to do it. It's so fantastic, and I think it captures everything you need to know about him. And this is what he writes:

• 1:40James Fox?

  "Ever since I was six, I have been obsessed with drawing the shapes of things. By the time I was 50, I had published countless drawings, but nothing I produced before the age of 70 is worthy of note. Not until I was 73 did I begin to understand the structure of nature as it truly is, the structure of animals, plants, trees, birds, fish, and insects. Thus, by the time I am 80, I would have made some real progress. At 90, I will have fathomed the mystery of things. At 100, I will surely have reached a phenomenal level. And when I'm 110, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I would ask anyone living as long as I do

• 2:25James Fox?

  to see I am true to my word." Isn't that great?

• 2:29Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's mind blowing. It's such a phenomenal quotation. It's like his, well, it's come to be seen as his personal artistic credo. I quite like it for a number of reasons, but one of them, just to be purely subjective, is we're both now in our 40s. And it's really great and inspiring to hear someone say that nothing they did until they were 70 is worth any attention whatsoever. I think that's inspiring. It also strikes me, and this is just again, this is a personal experience thing, but over the years, I've interviewed lots of contemporary living artists, obviously. And invariably, really strong, good artists hate being asked about past work.

• 3:14Alastair Sooke?

  I remember vividly going to talk to the sculptor, British sculptor, who's dead now, Anthony Caro. He was really big in the 60s. And I kept on saying, so what was it like in the 60s? And he's like, I don't care about the 60s. I care about what I'm working on now, what I'm making tomorrow. And I think that's a sign of real creativity that's sort of surging forward and that, that, that creative restlessness. You really get it in, in that quote.

• 3:39James Fox?

  You absolutely do. And the other thing is, he's completely right because it's in his 70s that he goes on to produce perhaps his greatest work. Certainly more exciting, more famous than anything he's made before. And the works we're about to discuss, Alastair, prove it, absolutely the case. So in the early 1830s, when he's in his early 70s, Hokusai embarks on a new series of woodcut prints that are called the 36 Views of Mount Fuji.

• 4:08Alastair Sooke?

  Probably worth clarifying that confusingly, there aren't 36 views of Mount Fuji. There are 46 in the end.

• 4:13James Fox?

  There are 46. He makes an additional 10 because it's so successful. But I think before we get going, we do need to probably say something about Mount Fuji itself.

• 4:22Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, of course, of course.

• 4:24James Fox?

  I mean, I'm sure all of our listeners. Can picture Mount Fuji, it's this ludicrously perfectly shaped mountain.

• 4:31Alastair Sooke?

  A cone, sort of perfect cone.

• 4:32James Fox?

  It's a perfect cone, it's actually a volcano. And it had erupted actually last not long before Hokusai was born, in the early 1700s. But it's this perfect shape and it's become a great symbol of Japan.

• 4:44Alastair Sooke?

  And where is it in Japan?

• 4:45James Fox?

  Well, it's just outside of Tokyo, of Edo, so where he lived. So he would have grown up and he would have been able to see the great conical shape of Mount Fuji in the distance on a clear day. And it is, it's such a kind of epitome of Japan. You see it together with cherry blossom, usually there's a bullet train in the foreground. It's absolutely everywhere and it's very symbolically important. Symbolic, not just of Japan itself, but of Edo, of spiritual beliefs, about this idea of purity, about nature, about the seasons, all these big ideas that are very important to Japanese people get crystallized in the form of that mountain.

• 5:23Alastair Sooke?

  So, I mean, it is, it's a sacred peak. I mean, is it fair to even think of it as itself a kind of deity?

• 5:31James Fox?

  It is in some ways deity. I'm trying to think actually if there is any comparison in the UK, and I can't really think of anything. I mean, it's, it's part White Cliffs of Dover, part Westminster Abbey.

• 5:44Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 5:44James Fox?

  Part Stonehenge, it's got these spiritual connotations, but it also feels like a very important landmark. It's not just nature, it's also culture, it's religion, it's got absolutely everything. And artists had been fascinated by Mount Fuji and writers had been fascinated by Mount Fuji for hundreds and hundreds of years. Hokusai is by no means the first person to embrace it. But one of the things that happens in this period, in the 1820s and the 1830s, is that partly as a result of the great peace and stability of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

• 6:18James Fox?

  There is fantastic infrastructure, then as now. There's great infrastructure in Japan now. As you go on the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, you can see the mountain outside. But even back then, in the 1820s, 1830s, there was a massive tourist industry. People were travelling all over Japan and they were travelling to visit Mount Fuji and they were climbing up Mount Fuji, which is seen as a very important thing for a Japanese person to do.

• 6:40Alastair Sooke?

  So there's an appetite for imagery of these places that people are visiting. They become famous.

• 6:46James Fox?

  There is an appetite for landscape imagery in general.

• 6:49Alastair Sooke?

  Fascinating.

• 6:49James Fox?

  And we begin to see more and more landscape appearing.

• 6:53Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it is interesting because I know that around this same period, this late phase where he makes his most famous print imagery, there are other series as well, aren't there? Just to kind of set that in context. So we're about to discuss in some depth the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. But he also depicts the waterfalls of all the provinces.

• 7:11James Fox?

  Those are lovely pieces.

• 7:12Alastair Sooke?

  Or I think there's another one, the bridges in all the provinces. So it gives a sense, again, of that, the commercial imperative, the publishers recognizing there is an appetite, a need within the Japanese public for images like this. And Hokusai is essentially, he's catering to it.

• 7:27James Fox?

  He's catering to the... This is how it still is the case now. You know, you might see online the famous photograph of Mount Fuji and you think, oh, I want to go and see that myself. And so you'll seek it out and then you might take a photograph yourself or you might buy a postcard next to the viewpoint. That is exactly what these images are doing.

• 7:47Alastair Sooke?

  And as you established earlier in this conversation in the previous part, these prints are relatively inexpensive. So they're affordable things that people can buy and then put up and it's within reach for many, many people.

• 8:03James Fox?

  We mentioned it in the previous episode, didn't we? That you could buy these woodcuts for the price of a large bowl of noodles. So we're talking three or four pounds. You could buy a Hokusai. You cannot get a Hokusai for that money nowadays. And so a number of people are making landscapes at this time. There are lots of images of Mount Fuji, but really, I think he depicts it like no one. Before him.

• 8:26Alastair Sooke?

  Well, it's interesting that you say that he depicts it almost as though, I mean, I know you're not really saying this, but almost as if it's in a sort of singular fashion. Because the extraordinary thing about this series of images is how much variety, how inventive compositionally these pictures are. There is this, he used to be at the British Museum, it's a wonderful specialist scholar of Japanese art, a man called Timothy Clark, who curated a very big Hokusai show at the British Museum a few years ago. I mean, he refers to this specific publication as one of the greatest illustrated books ever. And he has this phrase, which has always stayed with me, that it's almost as if within the series, Hokusai is playing a game with the viewer of hide and seek with Mount Fuji.

• 9:11Alastair Sooke?

  Because sometimes it takes a while, you're looking at an image and you're thinking, here's, say, people walking along and going about their business, or labourers on a roof or whatever. But sorry, where's the mountain? And it's tiny, it'll be sort of far away in the distance. And that's quite wonderful in terms of just thinking about it artistically, this kind of inventiveness he's bringing.

• 9:30James Fox?

  Yeah, as I was coming over here this morning, I actually thought it reminded me of the great Japanese film Rashomon.

• 9:36Alastair Sooke?

  Ah.

• 9:37James Fox?

  You know, the Kurosawa film, because the great thing about the Kurosawa film, what makes Rashomon so important is he tells the same story from four different perspectives, one story after the other, after the other. No one had really ever done that in cinema before. But in a way, that's what Hokusai's doing. He's depicting this one mountain, but he's doing it from every different possible perspective. He's doing it from different angles, from different distances, different weather conditions, different lighting conditions, different foregrounds. Sometimes you're right, sometimes the mountain is very obviously visible, it's the only thing. And sometimes you can barely see it, it's hidden behind something. So it's so restlessly ingenious and inventive.

• 10:17Alastair Sooke?

  Did you say that it's partly that he's depicting the mountain at different times of the day?

• 10:23James Fox?

  Oh, yes, certainly.

• 10:24Alastair Sooke?

  In different seasons, different moments in the year. I think that, as an artistic invention, is really...

• 10:33Alastair Sooke?

  This sounds hyperbolic, but profoundly important because later on that influences some big, big name western artists, we'll come on to this, but this is the moment, in a sense, where some of the seeds of, weirdly, western modern art are being laid in the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji in the early 1830s.

• 10:54James Fox?

  Well, we will come to that, it's really very interesting, but I just have to say, this series, I just, I love it so much.

• 11:01Alastair Sooke?

  Have you got some favourites?

• 11:03James Fox?

  I've got, I mean, every single one, I find every single image thrilling and delightful and exciting in a different way, I think every picture is a winner. Everyone has something audacious about it, do you know what I mean? I mean, every image, there's some, whether it's an amazing compositional device, or an extremely madly brave use of colour, or an ingenious play on form, or there's a great joke, or they're hilarious, the ideas you feel at this point in Hokusai's life, in his 70s, are just tumbling out of him. You know, he can't contain them. The inventiveness, the ingenuity of his image-making in this time is awe-inspiring.

• 11:43Alastair Sooke?

  Can I say, I mean, this is, this is a very brief, I know, I can always feel it when I go on a tangent and you're a bit, "Oh god, come on, stick to the story", but there is something that I find so fascinating in art history, and it is a phenomenon that art historians have created and come up with, which they call "late style", and it's much debated and disputed about what it is, but if you buy into it, it is the idea that great artists often, when they have a very long life, in the final years of their life, they somehow feel uninhibited, unfettered, and they start to create art

• 12:24Alastair Sooke?

  in, they just break all of the rules, it's a sort of supreme ease and confidence. The great examples would be Rembrandt, or in this is western art, someone like Matisse, but it seems to me that Hokusai is another archetypal example of the great late style of an old-age artist.

• 12:43James Fox?

  That's really interesting, I don't know, I feel that in some ways, when you look at these images, though, they feel like a young man's art, because they are so... Joyfully irreverent, rule breaking, full of energy, full of vitality. They feel very fresh. You wouldn't think that these are the late works of an artist, but I just think they are remarkable. I think in some ways, you will disagree with me here, Alice, because you're a more subtle thinker than I am.

• 13:08Alastair Sooke?

  I'm glad about that.

• 13:09James Fox?

  But I think they make a mockery of everything that's happening in Europe at the time. You know, in the 1830s, you compare European art of the 1830s to what Hokusai is doing with these images. Is there anything remotely as convention busting as what he is producing in this series?

• 13:24Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, that is just sheer provocation, James. I cannot quite, I mean, I get what you're saying. They are tremendously important. I'm not sure I'd completely write off the Western tradition at this moment. Nevertheless, I hear very, very loud and clear and agree with your tremendous passion for these images.

• 13:42James Fox?

  But what is there? I mean, if you think what is there in Europe? Okay, Turner is beginning to produce some very significant landscapes at this point, but he's not gone completely wild.

• 13:52Alastair Sooke?

  But are we having to compare piece for piece 1831 with 1831 in, say, France? Because by the 19th century, quite a lot's happened in the Western tradition that is itself quite revolutionary and radical and exciting, which is not in any way to downplay Hokusai. I wonder whether, in a sense, you're channeling, rightly so, and I get it, what a lot of Western artists in the 19th century start to see. They start to see an alternative to that tradition they're steeped in. And it's really exciting to them because suddenly you have anarchic viewpoints. You have a very flat, bold use of colour, strange compositions. These are things which people like, I don't know, Degas or Monet or Van Gogh or Gauguin, they're all really thrilled by.

• 14:34Alastair Sooke?

  And possibly we are their children, in a sense, in taste terms, in still finding those same exciting points about Hokusai's art.

• 14:43James Fox?

  Well, let's, I mean, there are 36, there are actually 46. He actually then goes on to make 100 views of Mount Fuji in black and white, which are less famous. I think we should home in on one of them. And we should home in on the most famous of them all, which is of course the great wave of Kanagawa. Do you want to describe this?

• 15:04Alastair Sooke?

  This is probably the most famous image in all of Japanese art. And what you see is a huge storm wave out at sea on the left of the image, which is a deep, deep blue and rearing up like some sea monster or kraken or serpent. And it's about to break on top of in between other smaller wave peaks, you suddenly spy, I think it's one, two, three narrow speedy boats, which have people inside them that are clearly cowering and huddled because they feel that this great breaker is about to smash on top of them and it's going to imperil their, their lives.

• 15:46Alastair Sooke?

  And in the distance, talked about the hide and seek of Fuji, you think it's a strangely conical blue and white wave that's afar away. And suddenly you go, ah, there is the mountain, which you see almost through the wave. And, and, and this is a kind of key point about it, isn't it? It's suddenly there's this sense of depth and perspective and just tiny at the back, but the waves echo its sacred form is the nearly 4,000 metre or whatever it is, high peak of Mount Fuji.

• 16:16James Fox?

  Well, you mentioned actually earlier how often the mountain is hiding. And it's true that it does, in this picture hides in plain sight, in that many people will recognise this image. It's one of the most famous images, not just in Japanese art, but in, in global image making. And yet, how many people spot the mountain? It looks like a wave, doesn't it? You have to look closely to recognise what this is. I think this image is rightly famous because it is so graphically simple, isn't it? It's become a kind of logo in a way.

• 16:47Alastair Sooke?

  It's definitely a logo. It, it, I mean, some people talk about it being the first maybe viral work of art. I, I think the thing that just comes across, it's fascinating to hear what you're saying because you've set up a context where for Hokusai and the original audience, the context is thinking about Mount Fuji, which is here in the background. Part of its resonance now, I think people, when they look at it, they may not see Mount Fuji at all, but what they will immediately recognise is this Elemental tussle between man and nature.

• 17:19James Fox?

  Which is more relevant even now, in this age of rising sea levels and climate crises and the tsunamis that Japan has faced in recent years.

• 17:27Alastair Sooke?

  So I think it's taken on additional sort of catastrophic resonance, if you like.

• 17:31James Fox?

  And it's particularly dramatic, actually, if you are a Japanese viewer, because if you are looking at this image from a Western perspective, we in the West read images, just as we read text, from left to right. And Japanese people read images and text from right to left. And so if you're a Western viewer, you are travelling with the wave, you're surfing the wave, it's lots of fun.

• 17:54Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 17:54James Fox?

  If you are a Japanese viewer, you are being hit by that wave.

• 17:58Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:59James Fox?

  And it's nowhere near so much fun. And so I think we don't, in the West, completely capture how audacious, how violent that image actually is.

• 18:09Alastair Sooke?

  It's such a good point. And then when you actually look at the big wave itself, we should describe too the way Hokusai has given it form, because you have these large, undulating, the underside of the wave, which is deep blue, but it seems to be breaking in this moment, and the foamy crest of the wave, the top of it, you have what look like tiny little, loads of them, talons, claws, as though it is itself some sort of monstrous figure. And you have these, these white, I mean, this is such bravura, in terms of the artisanship that's gone in, if that's a word, that's gone into creating this image, these tiny flecks of foam, which seem to be coming off the crest of the wave, little white dots, which start to scatter over in the image, above the area where in the

• 18:53Alastair Sooke?

  distance we see Mount Fuji, and it becomes as though the, is it foam, or is it a representation almost of snowfall on the summit of Mount Fuji? There's a wonderful quote, which I just, it's sort of irresistible, because it throws to this story that, I know I've been talking about quite a lot, but the European reception of this Japanese art. You have a moment in the 19th century in France, where a very famous French writer, Edmond de Goncourt, he talks about, and uses this phrase to describe, those little talons that you see at the top of the wave, and his phrase is as though the wave's crest seems to disperse in une...

• 19:29James Fox?

  I'm gonna try the French.

• 19:30Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, please. Une pluie de gouttelettes, a rain of droplets, which are formed as de griffes d'animaux. The animal claws. And there's this sense of something animalistic that's within the wave itself.

• 19:43James Fox?

  Well, this, I think, is is part of Japanese religious history. Because if you look back in Japan, all the way through to Shintoism, there is a long-held ancient sense within Japan of natural forms, whether they be rocks, or trees, or waves, or mountains, having a spirit.

• 20:01Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 20:02James Fox?

  Being an animate beings. And I think absolutely Hokusai is drawing on that. He's depicting Mount Fuji as a kind of being in its own right, an entity. But he's also depicting the wave as a kind of monster. I think it's deliberate.

• 20:16Alastair Sooke?

  I quite, in a funny way, that I sometimes think when I look at the little talons, they almost look like, you know, you get those head massages? With the sort of implements that, you know, the sort of long spindly metal bits. It's like lots, lots of those that potentially could be a slightly nicer experience. But taking tongue out of cheek for a second. The other thing I think when I look at this, and you've mentioned the famous quote, where he's saying, look, anything I did before a certain age is not worth looking at. This isn't the first time that Hokusai depicts waves. And if we're being brutally honest, some of those earlier depictions of waves that Hokusai creates, they're not that good. They look really hard and rigid. They seem, they always, whenever I see them, they look a bit like they could be some sort of laser beam light show. Or they look like, do you remember those boiled sweets, fox's glacier mince?

• 21:01James Fox?

  Yes, of course.

• 21:01Alastair Sooke?

  Of course. They have, they, that's sort of like that, they feel like they have that consistency, that texture. So they're, they're hard. Whereas here, you have a sense of great undulating motion, a sense of the study of water. He's, he's evoked something of the spirit of water, if you like, the essence of it.

• 21:20James Fox?

  And I think those claws are also, in some ways, a technical solution. Remember, he spent that time in his early years as a block cutter. How do you depict froth?

• 21:31Alastair Sooke?

  Hmm.

• 21:31James Fox?

  How do you depict something as amorphous as water by cutting a line into a block of wood?

• 21:36Alastair Sooke?

  Such a good point, yeah.

• 21:36James Fox?

  Let's remember this is a wood block cut. And he has created the solution, which is the creating these various graphic claws, talons, fingers, whatever we want to call them, as a way of expressing that kind of frothy foaminess.

• 21:49Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, and it's interesting because you do read it as the viewer. You can see it's not naturalistic.

• 21:56James Fox?

  No.

• 21:56Alastair Sooke?

  It is stylized and yet it communicates something of the frothiness of froth instantly.

• 22:03James Fox?

  And the other thing it does visually, which I find so exciting, is this image becomes a kind of fractal.

• 22:08Alastair Sooke?

  What do you mean?

• 22:09James Fox?

  Well, those fingers, those chlorine fingers echo the overall shape, the overall claw-like shape of the wave.

• 22:16Alastair Sooke?

  I see.

• 22:18James Fox?

  It is made from this very actually economical set of shapes. You've got half-circles, you've got claw-like shapes that is building this extremely complex composition. I think the other thing that we should say is the color is very important.

• 22:34Alastair Sooke?

  Ah, yes.

• 22:35James Fox?

  Because Hokusai uses for this image and for many of the images in the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, a brand-new pigment that has pretty much only recently arrived in Japan, and that is Prussian Blue.

• 22:50Alastair Sooke?

  So this is, it's called Prussian Blue because it's first synthesized in Berlin.

• 22:54James Fox?

  Yes.

• 22:54Alastair Sooke?

  So this is a European pigment. And I think one of the things that I find so fascinating when, because you've begun by saying this is such a famous work of art. You know, we've established this is the first sort of, if you like, viral work of art. And it's seen as being an exemplar of Japanese-ness, of Japanese art. But actually, in terms of that depth of perspective, looking through to the mountain, in terms of, as you say, the use of this Prussian Blue pigment. It's got a relationship with European developments, European art as well.

• 23:23James Fox?

  Absolutely. So Prussian Blue had been invented, as you say, in Berlin. It's a very good pigment, actually. I'm obviously not as splendid as ultramarine, but a very practical, lightfast pigment.

• 23:36Alastair Sooke?

  When you say lightfast, you mean it doesn't fade in the light?

• 23:38James Fox?

  Doesn't fade, doesn't fade. And the blues that Japanese artists had at their disposal before this were not lightfast.

• 23:45Alastair Sooke?

  And interestingly here, you do see another blue. There is an indigo which is used for, I think the characters on the left, but also the outlines, right?

• 23:51James Fox?

  Yeah. Indigo was the standard blue, the go-to blue. There were a couple of others as well, but the go-to blue for Japanese printmakers, and it wasn't very lightfast. And so in the late 1820s, in the lead-up to the creation of this work, Prussian Blue starts to find its way into Japan. So we say that trading routes were closed. They weren't completely closed, where there were some Dutch traders who were able to do some things. And we think it's the Dutch trading posts that bring the first little batches of Prussian Blue.

• 24:24Alastair Sooke?

  I think I'm right in saying that Hokusai actually creates some European-style paintings earlier in his life for some of those Dutch traders.

• 24:31James Fox?

  Yes.

• 24:32Alastair Sooke?

  So we know that there's an established relationship there.

• 24:35James Fox?

  Yes, and in his manga, which we discussed in the previous episode, he actually does a whole page on European-style perspective, where he was teaching Japanese artists how to create spatial recession in the way that Europeans did. So he was aware, you know, trading routes weren't completely closed. There were bits and pieces coming through. And in about 1829, 1830, the lead-up to this series, Prussian Blue prices fall. And this is when the publisher, and I say publishers, as we discussed in the previous episode, have all the power, came to Hokusai and said, "Let's do a series based on Prussian Blue." And actually, the series is advertised with the words "Prussian Blue." It says "A series of images of Mount Fuji in Prussian Blue."

• 25:20Alastair Sooke?

  As though presumably that's quite exotic for people. Always a bit of a sort of European sophistication.

• 25:26James Fox?

  It's a novelty. And so that is why, I think, another reason why... This he decides to focus this image on the sea because it gives it an opportunity to put lots of this new Prussian blue into the picture. But it's a it's a fantastic, fantastic picture.

• 25:41Alastair Sooke?

  Do you have a sense of who these people are in the boats?

• 25:44James Fox?

  Well, they are fishermen. There are debates about what specifically they're going to do. People have tried to identify the exact geographical area. We know it's off Kanagawa. We think they're perhaps they actually haven't finished fishing, but they're heading to the port to pick up fish. They're going to then take up the coast to the next town.

• 26:04Alastair Sooke?

  One of the things that I find quite fascinating about this is that it's quite rare, I think, in Hokusai's output to find an image like this where you're actually right on the outside and looking back towards Japan. If you see that Mount Fuji, it's basically a symbol of Japan. Here we are outside looking in. And so some people have read into the image, is it this image of great anxiety? That it's outside forces maybe coming to threaten Japan. Maybe that's psychologically in the in the mass subconscious what's going on. Why an image like this resonates then. But I also have this sort of slightly off the

• 26:48Alastair Sooke?

  slightly random theory. But if you like, this has been very successful in the West. And in a sense, you could argue that this compositional device looking from outside into Japan is a mirror, if you like. It's sort of self reflexive for Western viewers where we are ourselves looking at Japan from the outside. And I just wonder whether maybe that's a little added element for its success.

• 27:13James Fox?

  That's very interesting. What about comparing it to someone like Turner? You know, Turner in this time is depicting dramatic storms and seas. There's one great story in which Turner at around the same time goes out onto a ship in the middle of a snowstorm and lashes himself to the to the mast in order to observe the the sea and the elements in their full ferocious majesty. Do you feel there's something, there's some productive comparison there between what's happening in Japan in the 1830s? What's happening in other landscape traditions at this time, the Romantic period?

• 27:52Alastair Sooke?

  I I think there's a hugely productive comparison to be made there. I can't help noticing that Turner's born only a few years after Hokusai. John Constable, another great landscape artist in Britain, is born just a year after Turner. And so, I don't know why, there seems to be this sort of global zeitgeist moment where landscape, for different reasons in different places, is becoming a central motif within art. You talk about the famous story of Turner lashing himself to the mast. The painting that comes out of that is phenomenally exciting. And if I'm being completely honest, and I don't think you're going to like this, I hadn't thought about it.

• 28:32James Fox?

  Don't say it.

• 28:33Alastair Sooke?

  I've got to say, it has a similar cyclonic, vortex-like element. But it feels, in the Turner painting, it's almost, it's like, sort of semi-abstract, it's just swirling, you just sense it. In a much more visceral way, you feel you're at sea in a storm. This is brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and I love it. But I cannot get away, and I think this is true of a lot of Japanese art in general, there is this sense, which is for granted, it's not like this is a demerit, but it is stylized. You never forget the artifice. Partly, as you say, for technical reasons, how can you convey?

• 29:10James Fox?

  I'd like to see Turner carve a woodblock.

• 29:12Alastair Sooke?

  Well, indeed, exactly, exactly.

• 29:14James Fox?

  But anyway, it's very interesting to reflect on this period of time. You're right, on opposite sides of the world, very different pictorial traditions, people are turning to landscape, they're turning to depict landscape in particularly powerful ways. And we will say more about the Great Wave, we'll talk about its legacy and its global impact in a moment. But let's go to a break, and after it, we will return to complete the story of Hokusai's life, which I'm afraid, dear listener, continues to be stalked by chaos.

• 30:02James Fox?

  Welcome back. It's 1839. Hokusai is 79 years old and not content with having been struck by lightning, which we discussed in the previous episode. Hokusai now finds himself trapped in an inferno. A fire breaks out in his home. Hokusai braves the flames and runs in to save his precious paintbrushes, but everything else is lost.

• 30:24Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, this is terrible. I mean, supposedly he had this wooden cart, didn't he, which you've mentioned, I think, in the previous episode, that he supposedly moved house 93 times. And quite often, you'd imagine, there he goes from one rented place to the next, pulling this wooden cart, which contains all of these reference drawings that he's created, which is artistic tools. He needs this stuff. And at this moment in 1839, all of that goes up in smoke.

• 30:49James Fox?

  All of that goes... I mean, he was moving for lots of different reasons. One thing was economic insecurity, which was always part of his life. Apparently, there's also that he was filthy. Have you heard this? Apparently, he never tidied up. And sometimes his home got so filthy that you just thought, "I'll just leave and move houses." And so he would move houses, and then the clutter would build, and he'd decide to move again. It's an economical solution in some ways.

• 31:13Alastair Sooke?

  It may be also worth, just very, very briefly, I mean, it's not just Hokusai as an individual who's suffering at this moment, is it? Because I think in the 1830s, you suddenly have a moment of economic uncertainty. There are a number of famines. And there is a point where the shogunate, the military government, is having to provide for up to maybe 700,000 people. There's unrest in the countryside because people just were not able to eat, you know? So it is a time of difficulty and stress. I do wonder whether maybe there's something about the appetite for these often quite peaceful landscapes. Interestingly, the most famous view of Mount Fuji from the series we've just been discussing in Japan isn't what we know as the Great Wave. It's a different image.

• 31:56James Fox?

  The Red Fuji.

• 31:57Alastair Sooke?

  The Red Fuji. And that just feels, you know, where there's a particular, very rare light effect, I think very early in the morning, where the peak, entire peak, looks like it's glowing red. You see a wonderful sky effect, tiny little trees, and the general feel is one of serenity and peace, which clearly, in Hokusai's personal life and for many people living in Japan at this moment, was not within reach, quite.

• 32:19James Fox?

  Not within reach. And I think we also need to recognise, we forgot to say this earlier, is that... And it's still the case even today that Japan and Japanese people are terrorised by nature in a way that we aren't in this country. There are volcanoes, there are earthquakes, there are tsunamis, there are constant fires tearing through Edo at the time as well. It is something that is part of Japanese life, that nature can be extremely dangerous. We live in a relatively benign countryside in the UK.

• 32:47Alastair Sooke?

  Temperate's British weather that we're obsessed with, but it's kind to us.

• 32:50James Fox?

  This is not the case for people of Hokusai's lifetime, people who live in Japan. So he's just had a fire tear through his home. And as he, as we move into the 1840s and Hokusai moves into his 80s, his health begins to decline further.

• 33:07Alastair Sooke?

  Is this related to the stroke?

• 33:09James Fox?

  Possibly. We don't know. I mean, he is obviously in his 80s. This is very old for a Japanese person at this point.

• 33:15Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, can I, I mean, just something I came across when I was, you know, ahead of this conversation. I mentioned this scholar, Timothy Clark. His line, it really hit home for me. After this fire, as he's approaching, he's around about 80, and he describes Hokusai's condition as being reduced to near nakedness, looking like a beggar. And this is the state in which Hokusai, you know, the great Hokusai is facing what would be his final decade.

• 33:41James Fox?

  Yeah. I mean, he's virtually bed bound at this point, actually. So in his final years, he didn't really leave his bed. In fact, he spent six months of the year, the cold months of the year, under a lice-infested quilt.

• 33:54Alastair Sooke?

  Look, the light, I'm so glad you brought this up. We need to have a moment with the lice-infested quilt because are you referring, there is an image, isn't there?

• 34:02James Fox?

  There is a famous image of him at work with his daughter, who, his daughter actually goes on to become a very fine artist in her own right.

• 34:10Alastair Sooke?

  She's a key character for the story here.

• 34:12James Fox?

  So she actually takes on to become his carer, his apprentice. She produces some fantastic works. There's a painting she makes of the Yoshiwara, which is the brothel district at night, and it's Phenomenally good.

• 34:24Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, I think there is a school of thought that wonders whether in these final years, she's clearly a talented independent artist in her own right. How much is she contributing to the Hokusai studio output?

• 34:36James Fox?

  Yeah, we don't, I mean, we don't know, but I think quite a significant amount, probably.

• 34:40Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, the, the drawing where you can see him, I mean, is it worth just briefly describing it?

• 34:45James Fox?

  Yes, yeah.

• 34:46Alastair Sooke?

  Because this is, it's, it's a drawing which was created by one of Hokusai's pupils and given to Hokusai's first major biographer. And you can see two figures in an interior. And one of them is using a brush to create a drawing, probably on paper, laid down on the floor on a tatami mat. And that is Hokusai. And he's semi obscured because he has this quilt, the lice infested quilt.

• 35:12James Fox?

  The lice infested quilt.

• 35:13Alastair Sooke?

  Lice infested quilt, as it will forever be known now, which is over his shoulders. And suppose he doesn't really move from that, keeping warm. And he's partially obscured, maybe out of respect by some timber beam in the foreground. But you can just see these bristling, I think they're eyebrows, and his hand, and a sense of his ongoing, persistent creative force. The daughter is on, as the viewer looks at the image, to the left. And she has this very long, she's sitting, she's not smiling, she has an unconventional hairstyle, and she has this very long tobacco pipe. I think all of those things give her this sense, certainly to a sort of modern viewer, certainly to me, sense of independent spirit. And, and you have in this place, there's a box on the wall where you could keep some tangerines. And all of that dirt you described about, I think there's evidence of that here, where

• 35:58Alastair Sooke?

  you can see a lot of refuse discards just piled up in one corner.

• 36:02James Fox?

  Yeah, very Hokusai.

• 36:03Alastair Sooke?

  It's, it's this real sense of the texture of his life at this moment, in what it would have been the 1840s.

• 36:08James Fox?

  Yeah, I mean, the 1840s, his life is not very rich. He's either painting or sleeping.

• 36:14Alastair Sooke?

  Right.

• 36:15James Fox?

  And all of the practicalities are being sorted out by his daughter. But you know, by this stage, Alastair, in the 1840s, he'd already lived twice as long as the average Japanese person. He'd done extremely well. But he was really determined to live even longer than that, as the quote that we started this podcast with. He was drinking potions, did you know this?

• 36:35Alastair Sooke?

  For longevity.

• 36:36James Fox?

  He was inventing these potions and drinking them in the hope that he could keep himself alive. And you know, the other thing he was doing in these final years in the 1840s, he was every morning when he woke up. He would sort of remove the lice-infested quilt.

• 36:49Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 36:50James Fox?

  And he would make a drawing of a lion.

• 36:52Alastair Sooke?

  Ah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:53James Fox?

  A Chinese lion. And then, almost like throwing salt over your shoulder, whichever shoulder it is, he would throw it out of the window. And this was seen as his daily exorcism. This was to bring good luck. This was to ward off evil spirits.

• 37:05Alastair Sooke?

  Okay, I mean, this is very telling evidence for how a lot of imagery is being used in Japan at the time. Because in the previous part, we did talk a bit about the so-called Spring Pictures, the shunga. I'm going to mention them again, James. And one of the things we do know about shunga is that sometimes they would have what scholars would call as an apotropaic function. In other words, they could be used to ward off evil. You might have one of these pictures if you were going into battle to protect you. Or it could ward off disease, say, smallpox. And that's what he's doing with these pictures of Chinese lions. It also has a wonderfully performative aspect to it. To tie it to those earlier moments in his career where he is creating these enormous,

• 37:49Alastair Sooke?

  ephemeral performances, works of art. Here he is, it's almost like a sort of, it seems so lavish as a creative gesture to spend time doing this and then just chuck it out the window.

• 37:59James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Alastair Sooke?

  Nevertheless.

• 38:01James Fox?

  But it's still, it's further evidence of his absolute creative fecundity, isn't it?

• 38:06Alastair Sooke?

  Yes, yes.

• 38:06James Fox?

  Even right at the end of his life, he can barely move, he can't even stand up, he's still producing image after image after image after image.

• 38:15Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, there is, I wanted to read this because I found there's this brilliant quote from a letter that comes from the mid 1840s. At this point, Hokusai is about 87. And this person is describing him, and this is clearly him on a sort of, in a good moment at the end of his life. He says, "Even now, he, Hokusai, does trick paintings without glasses." Okay, guy's 87. "And detailed these block-ready drawings, the ones that would be applied to the blocks for the people to carve and then to print, without stooping over. Last spring in the rains, he walked from this place, Nishi Ryo Kogu, as far as Nihon Bashii." So he's still active.

• 38:51James Fox?

  Hmm.

• 38:51Alastair Sooke?

  "And he was in fine fettle and didn't feel tired." Which is really sweet.

• 38:56James Fox?

  That's very uplifting, isn't it?

• 38:57Alastair Sooke?

  You might be him at that point, thinking, "I want to get to at least 100, possibly 110," and think... I've got a pretty good shower.

• 39:03James Fox?

  Well, and he goes on in the final three months of his life. He paints what some consider to be his last masterpiece, which is the Tiger in the Snow. Which is actually, I've chosen this one in a way, Alistair, because it's a painting. We often think of Hokusai exclusively as a woodcut artist, but actually, he worked in all kinds of media.

• 39:26Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 39:26James Fox?

  And he painted a lot of paintings at the end of his life. And this is a hanging scroll, it's painted on silk. I just love this picture.

• 39:35Alastair Sooke?

  It is amazing, it is amazing. It's amazing partly for, you know, if we're moving away from the printmaking, where it was commercial imperatives often dictating subject matter. I think what you find in this freer late style Hokusai is he turns to painting where it's much more personal.

• 39:50James Fox?

  Yes.

• 39:50Alastair Sooke?

  And he paints a number of motifs, often with these exotic beasts. So you've mentioned the Chinese lions, there are some monsters, there are demon quellers. And he paints here a tiger.

• 40:02James Fox?

  Yeah, he would never have seen a tiger because there were no tigers in Japan. They were, tigers only existed on the Asian continent. But it's a wonderful picture, we should describe it for our listeners. It's this wonderful, flowing, sinuous tiger that's flying through the air. It's shooting past these snow-covered bamboo branches. It's looking delightful, its body is serpentine, it's got this perhaps even smiling face. And one of the things I love about this picture is the way that Hokusai has depicted the snow. Either whether it's in the middle of a blizzard, or whether it's the snow falling off the bamboo branches that the tiger makes its way through.

• 40:44James Fox?

  He has just spattered, I mean, you talk about Jackson Pollock, I mean, spattering white paint across the surface of the silk. It's just such a vital image, isn't it?

• 40:53Alastair Sooke?

  I think another detail that I love is the way that those, what plant is it? We're talking about bamboo, which is like thick snow on top, but you see these little spiky elements.

• 41:04James Fox?

  Claws again, claws again.

• 41:05Alastair Sooke?

  He loves the claws.

• 41:05James Fox?

  He loves the talent.

• 41:06Alastair Sooke?

  And what was the, I think the word you used before was fractal. I mean, I don't know if I'm using this correctly now, but you have again here the claws of the tiger, which we can see all four of them, and they're very pointy, they're highlighted on the claws, they're very three-dimensional. They are clearly echoed visually by these sort of black bamboo spokes poking through. They look like there are lots of snowy tiger claws, as if. There's a great oneness somehow to the cosmos. And, and you know, you look at this and you just think it must be about psychological projection. This must be in some way a self-portrait. It's this tremendous final flourish in which Hokusai is expressing something of his own true artistic identity. I mean, that tiger looks, I think you used the word flying, it's anatomically all over

• 41:51Alastair Sooke?

  the shop. I mean, it just in no way does it resemble a tiger. It's barely even striped. They look like these sort of, you know, the patterns are amoebas which are forming and reforming along his eyes.

• 41:59James Fox?

  It's got a green nose.

• 42:00Alastair Sooke?

  He's got a green nose and that weird grin. But nevertheless, there is something so engaging about it, which is, it's totally beguiling.

• 42:09James Fox?

  I completely agree with you, and I think a lot of scholars agree with you, that this is a kind of symbolic self-portrait. It's a kind of final fling, isn't it? And the idea that Hokusai is sitting in his home, he's bed bound, he's emaciated, and he still sees himself as this vital, unstoppable being, surging like a child through the snow.

• 42:30Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's slightly weird in a way, isn't it? Because it's that desire to live forever, I mean, or to live for incredibly long. I know he isn't quite 110 when he paints this, but that, that famous quote that you mentioned before, where he's aspiring to create a work of art where every dot and every stroke is as if it's alive.

• 42:47James Fox?

  Yes.

• 42:48Alastair Sooke?

  I think you feel that here.

• 42:49James Fox?

  You feel that. And you know, there's on the, on the far right of the image, the bottom right, there's a seal.

• 42:55Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:56James Fox?

  A red seal. That seal reads a hundred. So he's still got hope. He's still holding out hope, but unfortunately, even Hokusai couldn't fight immortality in the end. And in the early spring of 1849, he falls ill.

• 43:12Alastair Sooke?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:13James Fox?

  And he knows death is coming. There's a wonderful quote, can I read this? He writes to his friend.

• 43:20James Fox?

  He writes, "Enma, Enma is the god of the underworld. Enma is preparing to retire from business due to old age. So he has had a nice little house built in the country and has asked me to join him there to paint him a kakemono. This is why I have to leave. And when I go, I'll take my paintings with me. I shall rent a small flat in Netherworld Street.

• 43:45Alastair Sooke?

  Wow.

• 43:46James Fox?

  Where I shall be happy to welcome you when you're passing through.

• 43:48Alastair Sooke?

  Oh, that's gorgeous.

• 43:50James Fox?

  And on.

• 43:51Alastair Sooke?

  A small flat in Netherworld Street. I'd like to go and live there now.

• 43:54James Fox?

  And you know, at four AM on the 10th of May, 1849, when he's 88 years old, he finally dies. And do you know, Alastair, what his final words are?

• 44:06Alastair Sooke?

  Go on, tell us.

• 44:07James Fox?

  He says, "If heaven would only allow me five more years, I could have become a true artist."

• 44:14Alastair Sooke?

  It's incredible that even at that point, he's still, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's an amazing humility, in a sense, isn't it? And, and still, at the moment of death, to be thinking about the possibility that you could have improved in those final few seconds of life. He could still have just learnt something he could have done the next tiger would have been just that little bit better, you know?

• 44:34James Fox?

  It's humbling, it's inspiring, and it's, it just captures him. It captures him in his impish self, sense, sense of humour. It's got everything that I love about Hokusai. But let us talk in this final few minutes of this episode, Alastair, about his legacy.

• 44:49Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 44:49James Fox?

  Because Hokusai dies as he lives, in poverty. Famous in Japan, completely unknown in 1849, really, around the world. But not long after his death, the Tokugawa Shogunate, which has been running Japan for over 250 years at this point, begins to crumble. The Americans force open the Japanese ports, trading with the rest of the world begins to start up. And in the 1850s and the 1860s, a flood of Japanese objects.

• 45:22Alastair Sooke?

  A great wave, you could even call it.

• 45:24James Fox?

  A great wave, thank you very much, yes. A great wave, a tsunami of Japanese objects of lacquerware, of ceramics, of fans, of textiles, of books, begin to pour west.

• 45:35Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 45:35James Fox?

  Into Paris, into London, into Vienna, into America. And one of the really interesting things about this, and it's been said many times, but it's so fascinating, is that when these Japanese merchants were packing up these wonderful objects to be sold on the continent in Europe, they used these ukiyo-e prints, they used woodblock prints, including Hokusai's woodblock prints, simply as wrapping paper, as padding, because the images were so worthless, they were so cheap, the paper was so easy to come by, that they'd scrunch them up and use them to fill up the boxes. And of course, when modern artists, modern Western artists, who, you know, at this point in the 1856s were becoming tired of academic conventions and were looking for new ways

• 46:20James Fox?

  of making images, when they saw these woodblock cards, not just by Hokusai, but many of them by Hokusai, they were astonished.

• 46:27Alastair Sooke?

  It's such a key moment in the story of modern Western art, and this is, it's the origin story, really, where Hokusai and other artists associated with Japanese art of that era suddenly become this huge and unexpected influence on the course that Western painting is taken. And it's such a big phenomenon, this great wave of Japanese art and artifacts that arrives in the West, that very quickly, there's a term that's coined to describe it, it's a French word, japonisme.

• 47:00James Fox?

  japonisme.

• 47:01Alastair Sooke?

  The sort of japonisme, bien sûr. And, you know, there is this idea, I think I mentioned it before, that even in the 1850s, someone is coming across, a French artist is coming across in a print shop, Hokusai's manga, and immediately you have that engagement with the art. And when you start looking at the roll call of artists who are... Not just touched by, but genuinely thrilled and excited by Japanese art. It's extraordinary. So in Britain, you get a lot of stuff which is being sold at Liberty, the department store around the corner from where we're recording this now. And we know that there are people who either bought objects there or they've expressed their interest in Japanese art and culture. I mean, the artists include Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Byrne Jones, James Aber McNeil Whistler.

• 47:44James Fox?

  Whistler does some very Japanese-inspired pieces.

• 47:48Alastair Sooke?

  Of course, William Morris. But it's almost, it's in France and it's the avant-garde in Paris where it gets really exciting because there you have people like Monet, Degas, you have Van Gogh, who are encountering all of these prints. And I-

• 48:02James Fox?

  Do you know what Degas says of Hokusai?

• 48:05Alastair Sooke?

  Tell me.

• 48:05James Fox?

  He says, "Hokusai is not only one artist among others in the floating world. He is an island, a continent, a world in himself."

• 48:14Alastair Sooke?

  Well, I mean, given the length of his life and given his output, and I mean, that's, it's a brilliant summation, isn't it? For the extent that he created.

• 48:22James Fox?

  What do you think these modern French artists, these impressionists and post-impressionists, what do you think they're seeing in Hokusai's work and in other Japanese works that is exciting and liberating?

• 48:34Alastair Sooke?

  I think it's, you've alluded to it in what you said just before. They are frustrated with the Western tradition. They feel that what had ossified this great sort of Renaissance explosion and over various centuries, it's become this academic, conventional way of representing the world, which is bound up with various socio-political things that they object to. And they need to find a new way of representing the world that chimes with the great modern spectacle that they see around them. Post-industrial revolution. And what they're finding in those Japanese prints are things like- Asymmetrical composition.

• 49:14James Fox?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Alastair Sooke?

  You know, this really pure use of colour, line, decorative motifs. There's a great and very famous painting, a portrait by Manet. So, one of the great French 19th century artists. And he's painting the writer Zola. I'm sure you know it. It's in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. And the reason I mention it is that this picture, where you see Zola sitting, it's like a sort of key text, as it were, for Japanesema. Because there you have a Japanese screen. You have, on the wall, there's a Japanese print. It's a statement in this portrait of everything that Zola and Manet and people like that at the time were interested in. It's a great celebration of, here's this new way of making art and we can take stuff from it.

• 49:59James Fox?

  Yeah, it's not just exoticism. Obviously, that's playing a role. People are excited at all this stuff that's coming from the other side of the world. There's also something in the image making.

• 50:08Alastair Sooke?

  Yeah.

• 50:09James Fox?

  That is unheard of at the time. It's, as you say, it's these amazing diagonals, these asymmetric compositions, things cropped halfway across, which of course Degas and many other artists begin to use. It's these very theatrical viewpoints. It's this flattened space.

• 50:23Alastair Sooke?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:23James Fox?

  It's rhythm. It's these big blocks of bright colour that is obviously part of the woodblock tradition as well, that they translate into painting. So it's immensely influential. And what do you think? I mean, it's a counterfactual. But had these Japanese images not been discovered.

• 50:40Alastair Sooke?

  Yes.

• 50:40James Fox?

  And encountered by European artists in the 1860s, 70s, would we still have seen Impressionism and those other movements unfold in the same way?

• 50:50Alastair Sooke?

  I mean, it's a fascinating question. I mean, I personally, I love this moment in art history. There are a whole number of areas which artists are looking to, which are not just Japanese art, which are basically non-conventional academic Western painting. So it could be, for example, slightly later, maybe it's the art of children. Maybe it's street art, maybe it's graffiti, maybe it's folk art of various other cultures. But lots of avant-garde artists, final years of the 19th century, early years of the 20th, they're looking elsewhere. And I think this interest, the obsession with hokusei and Japanese art should be seen in that wider context. Nevertheless, you've just described them. There are particular hallmarks to the way that those Japanese images that are constructed, which you can just see wholesale. They're taken, they're adopted and then transformed by Western artists. So it would have been

• 51:35Alastair Sooke?

  a different story, for sure.

• 51:36James Fox?

  Yeah. Well, I think we are still, in many ways, living through an era of Japonisma now. I mean, the Great Wave in particular, you cannot move for the Great Wave.

• 51:47Alastair Sooke?

  I've been meaning to tell you this. I have a six-year-old son and we have been methodically going through Tintin.

• 51:53James Fox?

  Yes.

• 51:54Alastair Sooke?

  And there is a moment in one of the very early Tintins, The Cigars of the Pharaoh, where Tintin and Snowy find themselves in a sarcophagus out at sea. They're drifting around, they've been chucked off some ship. I mean, in a sarcophagus, bit weird, we don't need to get into that. And there's a storm and you suddenly see the final panel of this particular page is Tintin saying to Snowy, "We're lost", as they are approaching an enormous storm wave.

• 52:20James Fox?

  Oh, and does it have a chlorine-like quality to it?

• 52:23Alastair Sooke?

  Totally does. It feels, it's clearly on Hergé, you know, the author of Tintin. It's clearly a homage to Hokusai. Something I'd never thought until you were talking earlier about the Great Wave, though. It's really interesting because when you look at, and this is Western, this is now Western art, Tintin, Tintin and Snowy are on the left and Hergé has put that wave on the right of the image to show that as the Western viewer, you read it left to right and there's the danger.

• 52:49James Fox?

  He got the memo.

• 52:50Alastair Sooke?

  He got the memo.

• 52:51James Fox?

  No, I mean, speaking of Offspring, my seven-year-old son, last week, came back and was talking to me from school, talking to me about Hokusai.

• 53:00Alastair Sooke?

  Really?

• 53:00James Fox?

  I said, "Hang on a second, I'm doing Hokusai, what are you talking about?" And they had done Hokusai's wave at school.

• 53:05Alastair Sooke?

  James, I should have taken the week off.

• 53:06James Fox?

  I know, and he has drawn, he has drawn his own wave. They were all encouraged to draw that wave. But I think as you travel around the country now, you can see the wave everywhere. It's on, you know, in merchandising, everywhere. You go into shops, you can find it on notepads, you can find it on t-shirts.

• 53:21Alastair Sooke?

  Is this in Japan you're talking about?

• 53:23James Fox?

  No, here. If you, if you step out into London, you will find it everywhere. It's inspired logos, the Quicksilver logo, for instance. It's on the front cover of books. There's a recent, very successful novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, has the Great Wave on the front of it. So it's absolutely everywhere and I like to think. That Hoxsey, the man who always craved immortality, would be delighted that 175 years or so after his death, we are still talking about him.

• 53:54Alastair Sooke?

  For sure. I mean, James, I thought that was an exhilarating conversation. Thank you very much.

• 53:58James Fox?

  Thank you. Until next time, goodbye.

• 54:01Alastair Sooke?

  Goodbye.

• 54:07Alastair Sooke?

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