1 00:00:16,500 --> 00:00:20,340 There's something outstandingly dedicated about Hokusai. 2 00:00:22,180 --> 00:00:26,900 He doesn't shy away from things that are dangerous or that are challenging 3 00:00:26,900 --> 00:00:28,660 or that are controversial. 4 00:00:28,660 --> 00:00:31,420 And I think that's part of his heroism. 5 00:00:48,660 --> 00:00:50,860 Hokusai is the person who invented modern art. 6 00:00:50,860 --> 00:00:54,340 He is the person who taught us that you don't need to stick within 7 00:00:54,340 --> 00:00:56,820 the tradition in which you were brought up. 8 00:00:56,820 --> 00:01:01,060 You don't need to follow the master. You can cut and paste and bring things together. 9 00:01:01,060 --> 00:01:04,180 CLUCKING 10 00:01:04,180 --> 00:01:10,780 I must have first seen Hokusai prints when I was at the art school 11 00:01:10,780 --> 00:01:12,660 in Bradford. 12 00:01:12,660 --> 00:01:19,820 Their depiction of space, his way of looking at the world, 13 00:01:19,820 --> 00:01:22,300 appealed to me straightaway. 14 00:01:23,540 --> 00:01:30,260 Hokusai saw that, on a flat surface, everything is an abstraction, 15 00:01:30,260 --> 00:01:34,860 everything. I mean, I was inspired by Hokusai there. 16 00:01:36,820 --> 00:01:40,260 From the time when I was six until I was over 80... 17 00:01:41,540 --> 00:01:44,180 ..not a day went by when I didn't take up my brush. 18 00:01:45,740 --> 00:01:48,180 And yet I still can't even paint a single cat. 19 00:01:49,300 --> 00:01:50,540 It won't come out as I wish. 20 00:02:10,380 --> 00:02:13,900 Hokusai's born in Edo, which is what we now know as Tokyo, 21 00:02:13,900 --> 00:02:15,420 in the middle of the 18th century. 22 00:02:17,300 --> 00:02:20,300 It's the biggest city in the world, so it's a thoroughly commercial, 23 00:02:20,300 --> 00:02:22,660 thoroughly sophisticated place. 24 00:02:22,660 --> 00:02:23,940 A consumer society, if you like. 25 00:02:34,740 --> 00:02:37,900 He's born into the working-class districts of Edo, 26 00:02:37,900 --> 00:02:39,780 and he's adopted into an artisan family. 27 00:02:46,900 --> 00:02:50,100 Hokusai was born and lived for most of his life on the east bank of 28 00:02:50,100 --> 00:02:55,060 the Sumida River. And the Sumida River is a locus of transport, 29 00:02:55,060 --> 00:02:58,460 but also the river was turned over, particularly in the summer, 30 00:02:58,460 --> 00:03:02,220 to fireworks and big barges with banquets and partying. 31 00:03:02,220 --> 00:03:06,100 So I think Japanese people would have associated the Sumida River with pleasure. 32 00:03:21,020 --> 00:03:24,180 Very young, he starts to get interested in drawing - 33 00:03:24,180 --> 00:03:27,460 by his account, from the age of six, he was drawing things all the time. 34 00:03:28,740 --> 00:03:30,740 And he's born in the right place at the right time - 35 00:03:30,740 --> 00:03:33,020 a society with a huge hunger for 36 00:03:33,020 --> 00:03:36,860 sophisticated renditions of the world around them. 37 00:03:36,860 --> 00:03:40,060 And there's a huge demand for prints of the celebrities of the day. 38 00:03:50,660 --> 00:03:51,780 In the city of Edo, 39 00:03:51,780 --> 00:03:54,020 the Kabuki theatres and brothel district 40 00:03:54,020 --> 00:03:55,980 on the northern outskirts of the city 41 00:03:55,980 --> 00:03:58,060 were the subjects for the Floating World school - 42 00:03:58,060 --> 00:03:59,700 this huge popular school of art. 43 00:04:04,500 --> 00:04:07,620 It's a kind of joie de vivre, a mind-set, 44 00:04:07,620 --> 00:04:10,420 which really got going in the middle of the 17th century. 45 00:04:10,420 --> 00:04:12,820 So, by the time Hokusai's born in 1760, 46 00:04:12,820 --> 00:04:14,260 it's already more than 100 years old. 47 00:04:18,300 --> 00:04:20,780 The Floating World really 48 00:04:20,780 --> 00:04:24,380 illustrates the world of downtown Edo. 49 00:04:29,020 --> 00:04:31,620 I mean, in the way that, when we look at a Vermeer painting, 50 00:04:31,620 --> 00:04:33,740 we disappear into a Dutch world 51 00:04:33,740 --> 00:04:35,780 and we understand it through the painting. 52 00:04:35,780 --> 00:04:37,980 I think that's what we can do through these prints. 53 00:04:37,980 --> 00:04:40,340 For a minute, we can disappear into that world 54 00:04:40,340 --> 00:04:42,180 and understand a little bit about it. 55 00:04:47,980 --> 00:04:51,180 The process by which these prints were produced was a publisher - 56 00:04:51,180 --> 00:04:53,060 that was the person with the money, 57 00:04:53,060 --> 00:04:55,820 who knew which courtesan was really popular, 58 00:04:55,820 --> 00:04:57,740 which actor was really popular. 59 00:04:57,740 --> 00:05:02,420 And so the publisher would go to the artist and commission an image. 60 00:05:02,420 --> 00:05:05,660 And it would then be taken to the carvers, who carved the blocks. 61 00:05:05,660 --> 00:05:08,460 And when the blocks were finished, they were taken to the printer's. 62 00:05:10,140 --> 00:05:13,620 As a teenager, Hokusai apprentices to a woodblock cutter. 63 00:05:13,620 --> 00:05:16,660 So the first thing he does as an artist is learn how to cut the blocks. 64 00:05:16,660 --> 00:05:18,020 It's a very complex process. 65 00:05:20,860 --> 00:05:23,300 The original drawing, which is on very thin paper, 66 00:05:23,300 --> 00:05:25,900 is reversed and actually glued down onto the blocks. 67 00:05:35,260 --> 00:05:39,580 And the carver then carves to reproduce that brushed line in wood. 68 00:05:43,300 --> 00:05:45,900 And that is the phenomenal skill of those carvers. 69 00:05:54,620 --> 00:05:56,660 One of the greatest challenges, 70 00:05:56,660 --> 00:05:59,900 when you're trying to carve a brushed line in wood, 71 00:05:59,900 --> 00:06:02,220 is how you imitate that part of the line 72 00:06:02,220 --> 00:06:03,860 where the ink is starting 73 00:06:03,860 --> 00:06:08,580 to run out, which is highly valued aesthetically in calligraphy. 74 00:06:08,580 --> 00:06:12,660 And these carvers are able to imitate that in wood. 75 00:06:15,660 --> 00:06:18,060 And very often, they carve in the same direction 76 00:06:18,060 --> 00:06:19,780 that the line was actually brushed. 77 00:06:23,020 --> 00:06:26,260 Then Hokusai entered the studio of an artist called Katsukawa Shunsho, 78 00:06:26,260 --> 00:06:29,340 who was right at the epicentre of the Floating World school 79 00:06:29,340 --> 00:06:30,780 of popular art. 80 00:06:30,780 --> 00:06:32,460 And Shunsho, his teacher, 81 00:06:32,460 --> 00:06:35,580 was doing thousands of colour wood block prints of the Kabuki actors, 82 00:06:35,580 --> 00:06:38,260 who were the superstars of popular culture of the day. 83 00:06:38,260 --> 00:06:41,380 So Hokusai's earliest published prints are very much 84 00:06:41,380 --> 00:06:43,020 in the style of his teacher. 85 00:07:19,020 --> 00:07:20,380 JANGLING 86 00:07:34,220 --> 00:07:36,380 We do have a very early print, from 1779, 87 00:07:36,380 --> 00:07:38,740 of a very famous actor, Segawa Kikunojo, 88 00:07:38,740 --> 00:07:41,260 the third generation in this particular acting lineage. 89 00:07:43,300 --> 00:07:46,100 The really interesting thing is that you have an actor in front of 90 00:07:46,100 --> 00:07:48,780 a partition and then, on the right of the actor, 91 00:07:48,780 --> 00:07:50,540 we have a screen with waves. 92 00:07:50,540 --> 00:07:53,420 And of course, water will become, throughout Hokusai's career, 93 00:07:53,420 --> 00:07:54,380 a preoccupation for him. 94 00:07:55,620 --> 00:07:58,420 He never abandons water or waves as a theme. 95 00:07:58,420 --> 00:08:01,340 So even in the first work that we have, we see some of what's to come. 96 00:08:03,580 --> 00:08:06,420 When he was very young, he was very talented. 97 00:08:06,420 --> 00:08:11,340 I mean, prodigies are a bit rare in visual art. 98 00:08:11,340 --> 00:08:13,180 They're common in music, aren't they? 99 00:08:13,180 --> 00:08:17,980 But I mean, he was a little prodigy, like Picasso or something. 100 00:08:22,580 --> 00:08:25,260 While Hokusai was struggling to make ends meet, 101 00:08:25,260 --> 00:08:28,140 a man came and asked him to paint a picture for the Boys' Day. 102 00:08:29,460 --> 00:08:33,220 Hokusai immediately prepared red pigment and drew a picture of Shoki, 103 00:08:33,220 --> 00:08:34,140 the Demon Queller. 104 00:08:35,420 --> 00:08:37,500 The customer very satisfied with the picture 105 00:08:37,500 --> 00:08:40,420 and paid the artist two gold Ryo. 106 00:08:40,420 --> 00:08:43,460 This was the payment that ultimately made Hokusai confident that he could 107 00:08:43,460 --> 00:08:45,540 earn his living as an artist 108 00:08:45,540 --> 00:08:48,580 and vowed to the bodhisattva Myoken that he would succeed. 109 00:08:51,220 --> 00:08:54,340 Hokusai's family belongs to a particular sect of Buddhism. 110 00:08:54,340 --> 00:08:55,900 But in fact, for Hokusai, 111 00:08:55,900 --> 00:08:59,500 the divinity who becomes enormously important is Myoken. 112 00:08:59,500 --> 00:09:03,260 Myoken is a Buddhist deity, if you like, a bodhisattva, 113 00:09:03,260 --> 00:09:05,300 associated particularly with the North Star. 114 00:09:06,340 --> 00:09:07,820 And at a certain point in his life, 115 00:09:07,820 --> 00:09:11,340 he renames himself by the name we know today - Hokusai. 116 00:09:11,340 --> 00:09:12,460 It means North Star. 117 00:09:12,460 --> 00:09:14,020 North Star Studio, actually. 118 00:09:15,700 --> 00:09:18,420 It's the one point in the heavens that doesn't move, 119 00:09:18,420 --> 00:09:20,740 whereas the whole of the rest of the heavens move around it. 120 00:09:20,740 --> 00:09:22,900 So, for Hokusai, it's a fixed point, 121 00:09:22,900 --> 00:09:27,580 which is a potential source of huge spiritual strength. 122 00:09:28,620 --> 00:09:30,140 We do know that, for Hokusai, 123 00:09:30,140 --> 00:09:33,300 Myoken is associated particularly with the Kosho-ji Temple, 124 00:09:33,300 --> 00:09:34,500 which still exists today. 125 00:09:34,500 --> 00:09:37,700 It still has a hall within it dedicated to Myoken. 126 00:09:37,700 --> 00:09:39,780 And Hokusai himself produces an image of this 127 00:09:39,780 --> 00:09:40,900 quite early in his career. 128 00:11:05,540 --> 00:11:10,220 He becomes acquainted with some very sophisticated cultural networks of 129 00:11:10,220 --> 00:11:12,060 men of wealth, men of taste. 130 00:11:12,060 --> 00:11:16,740 And in Edo at this time, you have these huge clubs of popular poets. 131 00:11:16,740 --> 00:11:21,700 They come together and they have these outrageous poetry parties, 132 00:11:21,700 --> 00:11:24,340 where they compose what are called crazy verses. 133 00:11:24,340 --> 00:11:28,980 And it's Hokusai who's one of the artists of choice who they then hire 134 00:11:28,980 --> 00:11:32,380 to do little beautiful designs to accompany their poems. 135 00:11:37,500 --> 00:11:42,540 The first singing of the warbler is more impressive than listening to 136 00:11:42,540 --> 00:11:46,620 your parents' objections to getting up early on a spring morning. 137 00:11:55,140 --> 00:11:57,340 Moving into the early 19th century, 138 00:11:57,340 --> 00:12:00,700 there's a new genre of popular illustrated literature 139 00:12:00,700 --> 00:12:02,060 that is really big. 140 00:12:02,060 --> 00:12:05,940 And Hokusai is working with the leading author of these adventure stories, 141 00:12:05,940 --> 00:12:09,020 an author called Takizawa Bakin, providing the illustrations. 142 00:12:09,020 --> 00:12:12,300 And these illustrated printed books are phenomenally popular. 143 00:13:19,780 --> 00:13:22,900 Tametomo let loose a whistling arrow aimed at a ten-foot rock 144 00:13:22,900 --> 00:13:23,900 shaped like a cactus. 145 00:13:26,580 --> 00:13:28,540 The rock split right down the middle, 146 00:13:28,540 --> 00:13:30,580 sending bits flying in all directions. 147 00:13:34,700 --> 00:13:36,380 A big chunk fell into the sea 148 00:13:36,380 --> 00:13:40,580 and spray shot up like the blow of a whale in the shallows. 149 00:13:40,580 --> 00:13:43,740 Waves struck back against the land and the ground shook. 150 00:14:03,060 --> 00:14:06,780 Oh, my God, I can't really believe you had to walk that far just to get 151 00:14:06,780 --> 00:14:08,380 to the end of all these volumes! 152 00:14:08,380 --> 00:14:10,300 Look at how many there are! 153 00:14:10,300 --> 00:14:12,300 To think that I did it all... 154 00:14:13,460 --> 00:14:15,060 VOICEOVER: In the early 1980s, 155 00:14:15,060 --> 00:14:19,060 I started a catalogue raisonne of Hokusai's prints. 156 00:14:19,060 --> 00:14:25,460 And by the end of the 1980s compiled about 15,000 photographs. 157 00:14:25,460 --> 00:14:29,100 And, in fact, doubled Hokusai's known work. 158 00:14:29,100 --> 00:14:32,140 But that was just the tip of the iceberg with Hokusai. 159 00:14:32,140 --> 00:14:34,820 By God, the guy's a genius, you know? 160 00:14:34,820 --> 00:14:36,140 He's really amazing. 161 00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:46,740 When Hokusai was 45, he came to the notice of the shoguns, 162 00:14:46,740 --> 00:14:49,380 the military governor of Japan. 163 00:14:49,380 --> 00:14:54,180 So the shogun put out the word that he'd like to have this artist do him a demonstration. 164 00:14:58,420 --> 00:15:02,660 But the leading painter of the day, Tani Buncho, was also invited. 165 00:15:02,660 --> 00:15:04,060 And Tani Buncho painted 166 00:15:04,060 --> 00:15:06,700 these breathtaking landscapes and mountains 167 00:15:06,700 --> 00:15:08,780 and things like that. And then it was Hokusai's turn. 168 00:15:10,140 --> 00:15:14,100 And he got this sheet of paper and he spread it out 169 00:15:14,100 --> 00:15:17,020 and he had a whole pot, which was just blue ink, 170 00:15:17,020 --> 00:15:22,020 so he brushed this onto the length of this long sheet of paper. 171 00:15:25,380 --> 00:15:27,020 And people were just sitting there. 172 00:15:27,020 --> 00:15:29,020 The shogun was sitting there, thinking, 173 00:15:29,020 --> 00:15:30,980 what on earth is this all about? 174 00:15:30,980 --> 00:15:34,820 And so then he opened a basket and he took out a rooster 175 00:15:34,820 --> 00:15:38,060 and he dipped the rooster's feet in red ink 176 00:15:38,060 --> 00:15:42,220 and he then plopped the rooster along the length of this blue strip. 177 00:15:43,780 --> 00:15:46,060 And then when he finished doing that, he said, 178 00:15:46,060 --> 00:15:48,940 "This is autumn leaves on the Tatsuta River," 179 00:15:48,940 --> 00:15:51,580 which was a famous subject of classical painting. 180 00:15:51,580 --> 00:15:53,380 And that took everybody's breath away. 181 00:15:54,700 --> 00:15:59,500 His clever trick was a pure surprise to everyone present. 182 00:15:59,500 --> 00:16:03,340 Buncho, who was sitting next to Hokusai, said, 183 00:16:03,340 --> 00:16:05,860 "I could not keep my palms from sweating." 184 00:16:50,540 --> 00:16:54,900 When he was 50, he stopped doing a lot of the commercial prints that he 185 00:16:54,900 --> 00:16:56,380 did, and he just began travelling. 186 00:16:58,740 --> 00:17:02,020 He went down to Nagoya for a while, and then this friend of his, 187 00:17:02,020 --> 00:17:05,700 who was a pupil, said, "Look, stay with me as long as you want. 188 00:17:05,700 --> 00:17:09,980 "Here's materials, paint as much as you like, draw as much as you like." 189 00:17:09,980 --> 00:17:13,220 Then he invited a bunch of his friends for a party. 190 00:17:13,220 --> 00:17:15,060 And he said, "Tonight, Hokusai, 191 00:17:15,060 --> 00:17:16,980 "you're going to do some drawings for my friends." 192 00:17:21,980 --> 00:17:24,220 People would call out subjects and they'd say, 193 00:17:24,220 --> 00:17:26,180 "How about doing a dragon?" 194 00:17:26,180 --> 00:17:27,980 And he'd just... HE IMITATES DRAWING 195 00:17:27,980 --> 00:17:29,020 ..draw a dragon. 196 00:17:30,300 --> 00:17:32,580 Or, "How about doing a prostitute?" you know? 197 00:17:51,580 --> 00:17:55,100 And that carried on through the night, and a publisher, 198 00:17:55,100 --> 00:17:58,380 who lived in that area, thought, this would make a great book to publish. 199 00:17:58,380 --> 00:18:01,580 And so they compiled all these things, and that was 200 00:18:01,580 --> 00:18:03,900 the first manga, which means random drawings. 201 00:18:03,900 --> 00:18:06,180 Enormously influential. And they really took off. 202 00:19:38,940 --> 00:19:42,540 Hokusai himself titled Hokusai Manga. 203 00:19:42,540 --> 00:19:44,660 He used the word manga. 204 00:19:44,660 --> 00:19:49,940 But each illustration is quite different from modern manga. 205 00:19:49,940 --> 00:19:53,060 It's a very good point. Hokusai's manga, when you look at it, 206 00:19:53,060 --> 00:19:54,300 it really draws you in. 207 00:19:54,300 --> 00:19:55,700 But there is no story line. 208 00:19:55,700 --> 00:19:59,420 Whereas Hokusai's illustrated novels propels you through visually, 209 00:19:59,420 --> 00:20:03,260 so Hokusai's manga and Hokusai's illustrated novels, 210 00:20:03,260 --> 00:20:04,860 when taken together, 211 00:20:04,860 --> 00:20:07,940 can be seen as a foundation for contemporary manga. 212 00:20:07,940 --> 00:20:09,660 They're separate and they're different, 213 00:20:09,660 --> 00:20:13,620 but they all are incremental steps to getting what we have today 214 00:20:13,620 --> 00:20:16,660 as a fully line-driven narrative. 215 00:21:19,980 --> 00:21:23,340 He did observe all kinds of things, 216 00:21:23,340 --> 00:21:25,740 all kinds of people. 217 00:21:25,740 --> 00:21:29,180 I mean, the drawings are marvellous drawings. 218 00:21:29,180 --> 00:21:32,940 They're beautiful. I mean, he's always looking fresh. 219 00:21:32,940 --> 00:21:34,860 He's a great artist, Hokusai. 220 00:21:34,860 --> 00:21:36,220 A great artist, yeah. 221 00:21:48,980 --> 00:21:50,740 Traditionally, Japanese people 222 00:21:50,740 --> 00:21:53,300 believe the zodiac cycle repeats every 60 years. 223 00:21:53,300 --> 00:21:57,700 So the big change comes when Hokusai turned 61. 224 00:21:57,700 --> 00:22:01,620 And there's a sense in which, if you live that long, you're born again. 225 00:22:03,380 --> 00:22:05,700 Your zodiac cycle is repeating so you can, in a sense, 226 00:22:05,700 --> 00:22:07,220 start your life again. 227 00:22:09,380 --> 00:22:14,140 60, for every Japanese person who should live that long, was a marker. 228 00:22:14,140 --> 00:22:19,460 It meant that the first significant part of your life was finished. 229 00:22:19,460 --> 00:22:20,860 And that, from now on, 230 00:22:20,860 --> 00:22:22,820 you had a whole different group of things 231 00:22:22,820 --> 00:22:24,420 that you should be attending to. 232 00:22:26,220 --> 00:22:28,500 Hokusai's never happy with one name. 233 00:22:28,500 --> 00:22:30,380 He keeps on kind of ringing the changes. 234 00:22:30,380 --> 00:22:33,620 Once he's passed 60, he becomes the old man, crazy to paint. 235 00:22:33,620 --> 00:22:35,180 So the changes, the big changes, 236 00:22:35,180 --> 00:22:37,260 seem to correspond to changes in style, 237 00:22:37,260 --> 00:22:41,500 changes in interest. We can see him embarking on a new phase of artistic experimentational growth. 238 00:22:47,180 --> 00:22:50,060 People think of Japan as closed during this period - it wasn't. 239 00:22:50,060 --> 00:22:53,420 The Dutch go up to Edo, now Tokyo, every year. 240 00:22:53,420 --> 00:22:55,700 They know that Hokusai is the biggest name in town. 241 00:22:55,700 --> 00:22:57,140 They commission paintings from him. 242 00:22:59,140 --> 00:23:04,020 The big commission of his early to middle 60s came in 1822. 243 00:23:04,020 --> 00:23:06,220 Dutch merchants, working in Japan, 244 00:23:06,220 --> 00:23:11,260 commissioned Hokusai to do a series of paintings showing typical scenes 245 00:23:11,260 --> 00:23:14,260 of Japanese life, but they're absolutely unique 246 00:23:14,260 --> 00:23:18,460 for the very interesting hybrid style that he came up with 247 00:23:18,460 --> 00:23:20,900 where there's a deep sense of spatial recession 248 00:23:20,900 --> 00:23:22,140 within the picture, 249 00:23:22,140 --> 00:23:25,340 a deep European-style perspective system. 250 00:23:25,340 --> 00:23:28,820 It's also as if there is a single light source 251 00:23:28,820 --> 00:23:31,300 casting shadows in the picture. 252 00:23:31,300 --> 00:23:34,300 This is completely revolutionary in a Japanese context. 253 00:23:34,300 --> 00:23:37,220 So we've got Japanese scenes painted in this hybrid, 254 00:23:37,220 --> 00:23:39,980 halfway between Japanese and European style. 255 00:23:47,460 --> 00:23:51,660 There's an incredible scene where travellers are suddenly caught in 256 00:23:51,660 --> 00:23:53,220 a thunderstorm. 257 00:23:53,220 --> 00:23:55,780 There's a lightning flash across the back of the picture. 258 00:23:55,780 --> 00:23:57,860 And the figures are caught in this fitful light. 259 00:23:57,860 --> 00:23:59,460 It's almost like a strobe light 260 00:23:59,460 --> 00:24:01,900 with a really dark, thunderous sky behind. 261 00:24:01,900 --> 00:24:04,260 And again, this is really totally revolutionary 262 00:24:04,260 --> 00:24:05,500 in a Japanese context. 263 00:24:09,660 --> 00:24:11,260 Things seem to be going well. 264 00:24:11,260 --> 00:24:13,700 He has this major commission from the Dutch which 265 00:24:13,700 --> 00:24:15,740 he successfully completes. 266 00:24:15,740 --> 00:24:18,140 But then, in the late 1820s, 267 00:24:18,140 --> 00:24:20,660 Hokusai seems to be hit by a succession 268 00:24:20,660 --> 00:24:22,820 of personal life challenges. 269 00:24:22,820 --> 00:24:25,300 He had a minor stroke of some kind. 270 00:24:25,300 --> 00:24:28,980 Then suddenly, in 1828, his second wife died. 271 00:24:30,180 --> 00:24:34,060 And he's constantly exasperated by the behaviour of his grandson, 272 00:24:34,060 --> 00:24:35,740 running up huge gambling debts. 273 00:24:37,620 --> 00:24:40,100 And Hokusai was continually paying off his debts. 274 00:24:40,100 --> 00:24:41,820 And so he got into debt. 275 00:24:41,820 --> 00:24:46,420 And finally, Hokusai lost his house and then took refuge in a temple. 276 00:24:46,420 --> 00:24:48,340 He hid out. 277 00:24:48,340 --> 00:24:51,580 This spring, no money, 278 00:24:51,580 --> 00:24:52,580 no clothes. 279 00:24:53,900 --> 00:24:54,940 Barely enough to eat. 280 00:24:56,300 --> 00:24:59,500 If I can't come to an arrangement by the middle of the second month... 281 00:25:00,900 --> 00:25:02,260 ..then no spring for me. 282 00:25:04,180 --> 00:25:07,500 One of the key documents for visualising Hokusai in his 80s 283 00:25:07,500 --> 00:25:08,900 is a drawing 284 00:25:08,900 --> 00:25:10,660 which was done by one of his pupils. 285 00:25:10,660 --> 00:25:12,820 Tsuyuki Kosho is his name. 286 00:25:12,820 --> 00:25:15,700 And it shows Hokusai and his daughter, Oei, 287 00:25:15,700 --> 00:25:17,900 in very humble rented dwellings. 288 00:25:20,300 --> 00:25:23,700 Hokusai has a heater quilt pulled over him, 289 00:25:23,700 --> 00:25:25,860 and Tsuyuki quotes Hokusai. 290 00:25:27,460 --> 00:25:31,860 No matter who comes to visit, I never leave the heater. 291 00:25:31,860 --> 00:25:35,580 When I'm tired, I pick up the pillow beside me and go to sleep. 292 00:25:35,580 --> 00:25:39,300 When I wake from sleep, I pick up my brush and keep drawing. 293 00:25:41,860 --> 00:25:43,780 The 1820s is clearly a difficult decade, 294 00:25:43,780 --> 00:25:45,340 but that recession from the world 295 00:25:45,340 --> 00:25:47,140 is a way of pulling himself together 296 00:25:47,140 --> 00:25:50,980 and pulling together the ideas that are going to become the triumph of 297 00:25:50,980 --> 00:25:54,100 his next decade, the 1830s, his 70s. 298 00:25:54,100 --> 00:25:55,900 And it's at this point that we begin 299 00:25:55,900 --> 00:25:59,140 to see the germ of what will become the Thirty-six Views Of Mount Fuji. 300 00:26:12,900 --> 00:26:14,580 Ever since earliest recorded times, 301 00:26:14,580 --> 00:26:17,900 Mount Fuji has been important to Japanese people. 302 00:26:17,900 --> 00:26:21,460 It's by far the largest physical feature in the Japanese islands 303 00:26:21,460 --> 00:26:25,860 and dominates completely central Japan and the area around it. 304 00:26:25,860 --> 00:26:28,580 It was celebrated in literature, but more importantly, perhaps, 305 00:26:28,580 --> 00:26:31,100 for Hokusai, Fuji was always considered a deity. 306 00:26:39,620 --> 00:26:41,020 And the whole idea of the series 307 00:26:41,020 --> 00:26:46,060 Thirty-six Views Of Mount Fuji is to set up interesting pictures that 308 00:26:46,060 --> 00:26:49,180 make Mount Fuji the fulcrum of our world, the centre of our universe. 309 00:27:31,020 --> 00:27:33,860 I think, in the middle of his career, we can see his interest migrating. 310 00:27:33,860 --> 00:27:35,820 The human interest is there but, increasingly, 311 00:27:35,820 --> 00:27:37,860 his eye is drawn to the landscape behind it. 312 00:27:39,340 --> 00:27:44,300 Hokusai is the guy who enables landscape within the Japanese artistic tradition, 313 00:27:44,300 --> 00:27:46,820 the first one who begins to focus on the landscape as landscape. 314 00:28:20,940 --> 00:28:25,900 The Great Wave is undoubtedly Hokusai's most famous work by far. 315 00:28:25,900 --> 00:28:29,380 The Japanese title is Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura, 316 00:28:29,380 --> 00:28:34,260 which we translate as Under The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. 317 00:28:34,260 --> 00:28:36,900 And we're out at sea in the Pacific Ocean, 318 00:28:36,900 --> 00:28:41,300 looking back under this great sudden storm wave towards Mount Fuji on 319 00:28:41,300 --> 00:28:43,180 the horizon in the distance. 320 00:28:43,180 --> 00:28:47,380 Hokusai has digested the lessons of European perspective that he learnt 321 00:28:47,380 --> 00:28:50,700 in his middle years, and now he's playing with that. 322 00:28:50,700 --> 00:28:54,660 Mount Fuji is the highest physical feature in Japan by far. 323 00:28:54,660 --> 00:28:57,060 And yet Hokusai has arranged the picture 324 00:28:57,060 --> 00:28:59,220 so that it appears that Mount Fuji 325 00:28:59,220 --> 00:29:02,140 is dwarfed by the great storm wave, and the foam 326 00:29:02,140 --> 00:29:04,220 and the water that comes off the great wave 327 00:29:04,220 --> 00:29:08,100 then starts to seem like snow falling onto the peak of Mount Fuji, 328 00:29:08,100 --> 00:29:10,820 which famously was always snow-covered all the year round. 329 00:29:20,020 --> 00:29:21,740 Many people don't notice at first 330 00:29:21,740 --> 00:29:24,020 that there are actually boats in this picture. 331 00:29:24,020 --> 00:29:26,860 There are three of these fast delivery boats, 332 00:29:26,860 --> 00:29:30,580 and they've taken delivery of a catch from the fishing fleet, 333 00:29:30,580 --> 00:29:32,660 and they're trying to deliver it as fast as possible 334 00:29:32,660 --> 00:29:34,780 to the fish markets in the centre of Edo. 335 00:29:34,780 --> 00:29:37,060 And then suddenly, this freak wave has come up 336 00:29:37,060 --> 00:29:39,500 and the oarsmen are all cowering down. 337 00:29:39,500 --> 00:29:41,180 They've obviously made the decision 338 00:29:41,180 --> 00:29:43,740 to go straight through the wave rather than try and escape from it. 339 00:29:48,980 --> 00:29:50,340 So it's a huge drama, 340 00:29:50,340 --> 00:29:52,220 and these are very heroic people at work. 341 00:29:53,980 --> 00:29:57,940 It's typical of Hokusai to focus more on the world of working people 342 00:29:57,940 --> 00:29:58,940 than anything else. 343 00:30:03,100 --> 00:30:07,140 We have a relationship being described between a very dynamic 344 00:30:07,140 --> 00:30:09,060 world of water 345 00:30:09,060 --> 00:30:11,860 and of human endeavour dwarfed by the energies of nature. 346 00:30:13,180 --> 00:30:16,220 Then in the middle, we have Fuji - this unmoving thing, 347 00:30:16,220 --> 00:30:18,940 a still centre to a world of change. 348 00:30:21,980 --> 00:30:25,580 Most of the prints in the Thirty-six Views have some kind of relationship 349 00:30:25,580 --> 00:30:27,340 between human activity and the mountain. 350 00:30:28,700 --> 00:30:31,380 So we see people in the landscape with their hats blowing off... 351 00:30:41,860 --> 00:30:43,540 ..people working in Edo itself. 352 00:30:45,740 --> 00:30:47,500 Hokusai is interested in the human world, 353 00:30:47,500 --> 00:30:49,340 he's interested in the natural world, 354 00:30:49,340 --> 00:30:50,940 he's interested in the spiritual world. 355 00:30:50,940 --> 00:30:53,820 Above all, he's interested in the relationship between these things. 356 00:31:00,780 --> 00:31:02,340 You know, the sea is totally 357 00:31:02,340 --> 00:31:04,540 in charge of these little fragile boats. 358 00:31:04,540 --> 00:31:09,100 And so, however beautiful a Hokusai work is, 359 00:31:09,100 --> 00:31:13,780 it is this sense of awe in the face of nature 360 00:31:13,780 --> 00:31:16,420 that, at once, one is aware of. 361 00:31:26,060 --> 00:31:29,740 This curve of the wave, 362 00:31:29,740 --> 00:31:32,100 which I find to be the most difficult thing 363 00:31:32,100 --> 00:31:33,500 when painting the sea, 364 00:31:33,500 --> 00:31:35,100 is made from many curves. 365 00:31:35,100 --> 00:31:41,180 And the fact that that line changes adds to the movement of the wave. 366 00:31:41,180 --> 00:31:47,020 I mean, what is exciting about it, of course, is that distilled moment 367 00:31:47,020 --> 00:31:48,700 before this wave is going to crash. 368 00:31:52,580 --> 00:31:55,620 I see it in one of his earlier paintings - 369 00:31:55,620 --> 00:31:56,700 an early wave... 370 00:31:59,260 --> 00:32:01,180 ..which is pretty solid... 371 00:32:02,820 --> 00:32:06,580 ..and static. I mean, it could be a building, really. 372 00:32:06,580 --> 00:32:10,740 It's doesn't immediately say water. 373 00:32:10,740 --> 00:32:14,380 I mean, I think there were 20 years or something between these waves, and... 374 00:32:15,820 --> 00:32:20,620 Ah! It's a sort of earlier prelude leading up to... 375 00:32:21,740 --> 00:32:26,980 ..what has become the iconic image of Hokusai. 376 00:32:47,860 --> 00:32:51,220 That image of The Great Wave 377 00:32:51,220 --> 00:32:53,700 has entered not just my consciousness, 378 00:32:53,700 --> 00:32:58,420 but the world's consciousness, and so it's sort of inside one. 379 00:32:58,420 --> 00:33:00,220 You know, you're always up against it, 380 00:33:00,220 --> 00:33:02,540 like you're up against Rembrandt in a self-portrait. 381 00:33:06,260 --> 00:33:09,540 I'm really coming to think that, in this image particularly, 382 00:33:09,540 --> 00:33:12,180 Hokusai is inventing modern animation. 383 00:33:12,180 --> 00:33:15,340 The Great Wave is caught 384 00:33:15,340 --> 00:33:17,780 just at the moment where it's about to fall. 385 00:33:17,780 --> 00:33:21,900 And all of the little tentacles of foam are just caught in suspended 386 00:33:21,900 --> 00:33:25,140 animation, like the claws of an animal, 387 00:33:25,140 --> 00:33:27,060 coming down, threatening these fishing boats. 388 00:33:27,060 --> 00:33:31,300 This, to me, is anticipating modern animated cartoons. 389 00:33:33,060 --> 00:33:35,380 Disney animation, for example, is very similar. 390 00:33:35,380 --> 00:33:38,300 You've got a bold outline and very flat colour. 391 00:33:38,300 --> 00:33:40,180 And it's entirely probable that 392 00:33:40,180 --> 00:33:42,540 people who worked at Disney in the early days 393 00:33:42,540 --> 00:33:46,500 had seen Japanese prints, had possibly even seen the technique. 394 00:33:46,500 --> 00:33:50,020 And that aesthetic carried over into the early days of films. 395 00:33:58,140 --> 00:33:59,940 The Great Wave would have been printed from 396 00:33:59,940 --> 00:34:01,220 four planks of cherry wood. 397 00:34:03,820 --> 00:34:06,300 One side was so-called key block, 398 00:34:06,300 --> 00:34:09,420 which would have printed the outlines and the text on the image. 399 00:34:15,260 --> 00:34:17,340 The rest of the blocks would have been left in 400 00:34:17,340 --> 00:34:19,860 relief to print each of the colours in succession. 401 00:34:26,300 --> 00:34:29,100 Hokusai would have been involved in making the decisions about what 402 00:34:29,100 --> 00:34:32,420 colours to print, including the brilliant Prussian blue pigment. 403 00:34:33,580 --> 00:34:35,820 But as the printing run wore on, 404 00:34:35,820 --> 00:34:38,180 the publisher and the printers would start to cut corners. 405 00:34:39,740 --> 00:34:41,740 And sometimes, the colours would change. 406 00:34:48,020 --> 00:34:51,500 The audience for a print like this is anybody. 407 00:34:52,820 --> 00:34:55,860 If you had just more than the price of a double helping of noodles, 408 00:34:55,860 --> 00:34:59,380 you could buy a Great Wave in 1831. 409 00:34:59,380 --> 00:35:00,580 These are mass-produced - 410 00:35:00,580 --> 00:35:04,740 maybe as many as 8,000 impressions of this design printed at the time. 411 00:35:04,740 --> 00:35:06,540 It's an incredibly democratic art form. 412 00:35:17,060 --> 00:35:21,460 NHK, Japan's national broadcaster, has brought over special 8K cameras, 413 00:35:21,460 --> 00:35:24,180 and they're going to be filming in the most incredible detail. 414 00:35:24,180 --> 00:35:26,260 And therefore, we can blow things up 415 00:35:26,260 --> 00:35:28,300 and start to really appreciate the detail 416 00:35:28,300 --> 00:35:30,020 of these amazing works by Hokusai. 417 00:35:33,300 --> 00:35:36,620 There's a level of detail that we're able to see 418 00:35:36,620 --> 00:35:39,700 that's beyond what we can see with our naked eyes. 419 00:35:39,700 --> 00:35:43,820 We begin noticing things that we had never noticed before 420 00:35:43,820 --> 00:35:47,820 when we've been looking at them for years and years in the flesh. 421 00:35:55,780 --> 00:35:58,620 This is a treat. Yes, it is. It sure is. 422 00:36:03,020 --> 00:36:04,620 In Japan, interestingly enough, 423 00:36:04,620 --> 00:36:06,740 the most important print is not The Great Wave. 424 00:36:06,740 --> 00:36:09,420 The most important print is what we know as Red Fuji. 425 00:36:09,420 --> 00:36:12,820 Clearly, in Japan, in the modern period, Fuji itself 426 00:36:12,820 --> 00:36:16,860 became the centre of a very important set of ideas about national identity. 427 00:36:16,860 --> 00:36:19,980 You didn't want Fuji from a distance - you wanted Fuji in its glory. 428 00:36:28,620 --> 00:36:30,660 Oh, God, look at that! 429 00:36:30,660 --> 00:36:31,660 Wow! 430 00:36:32,660 --> 00:36:33,900 Oh, that's astonishing! 431 00:36:37,940 --> 00:36:39,580 What's happening here, I wonder? 432 00:36:41,500 --> 00:36:43,500 I'm seeing something like a wiping line. 433 00:36:43,500 --> 00:36:46,100 Yes, yeah. Are you seeing those kind of horizontal... Oh, I do. 434 00:36:46,100 --> 00:36:51,060 The top lines of these clouds have been fairly smoothly cut 435 00:36:51,060 --> 00:36:54,900 whereas the bottom edge consistently has been abraded. 436 00:36:54,900 --> 00:36:58,940 He's using really abrasive leaf over rush. 437 00:36:58,940 --> 00:37:00,780 You use it as a kind of sandpaper to... 438 00:37:02,580 --> 00:37:04,580 ..give it... It's not a sharp line. 439 00:37:04,580 --> 00:37:08,780 It gives it a kind of fudged quality. 440 00:37:08,780 --> 00:37:10,180 It couldn't be anything else. 441 00:37:10,180 --> 00:37:12,500 It couldn't be anything else. What an amazing effect. 442 00:37:12,500 --> 00:37:13,740 Uh-huh. 443 00:37:13,740 --> 00:37:15,940 I mean, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant conception. 444 00:37:15,940 --> 00:37:18,020 Because, otherwise, it would look totally dead. 445 00:37:18,020 --> 00:37:20,500 Yeah. I suspect a lot of the reproductions that have been made, 446 00:37:20,500 --> 00:37:22,860 it probably is just a straight line. Mm-hm. 447 00:37:30,620 --> 00:37:33,420 What could that be? Nothing but surprises. 448 00:37:37,300 --> 00:37:39,740 Certainly, this is a really large volume as well. 449 00:37:40,860 --> 00:37:43,780 When I started really working on his art, 450 00:37:43,780 --> 00:37:47,740 I realised that what came to be known as Red Fuji 451 00:37:47,740 --> 00:37:50,060 Hokusai never meant to be read. 452 00:37:50,060 --> 00:37:53,740 In fact, he probably would have been scandalised if he saw it looking 453 00:37:53,740 --> 00:37:56,580 like it looks in these pictures here. 454 00:37:56,580 --> 00:38:01,260 But I was visiting a Swiss collector in Basel, Dr Walter Verling, 455 00:38:01,260 --> 00:38:04,060 who had a small collection, and we were looking at his prints, 456 00:38:04,060 --> 00:38:06,740 and then he said, "I have one other print I'd like to show you, 457 00:38:06,740 --> 00:38:10,260 "but I have to apologise for it because it's so faded." 458 00:38:10,260 --> 00:38:13,980 And then he pulled out this print, which is in the albums here. 459 00:38:13,980 --> 00:38:15,140 And I saw what he meant 460 00:38:15,140 --> 00:38:17,860 because the colours were very light in the sky 461 00:38:17,860 --> 00:38:19,660 and on the mountain itself. 462 00:38:19,660 --> 00:38:23,460 And it was a very different kind of tonality and a very different effect 463 00:38:23,460 --> 00:38:27,540 than on all the impressions I had ever seen in my life, which were 464 00:38:27,540 --> 00:38:30,140 hundreds, but then I looked and noticed that there's 465 00:38:30,140 --> 00:38:31,860 a little penumbra of blue around 466 00:38:31,860 --> 00:38:33,100 the tip of the mountain. 467 00:38:33,100 --> 00:38:35,300 And I realised that that had to have been printed 468 00:38:35,300 --> 00:38:38,220 specially from a specially inked and carved block, 469 00:38:38,220 --> 00:38:39,660 and it was intentional. 470 00:38:39,660 --> 00:38:42,620 It wasn't accidental. And so then I looked more carefully, 471 00:38:42,620 --> 00:38:46,140 and I realised there's nothing accidental about the print at all, 472 00:38:46,140 --> 00:38:49,340 and that that was the earliest impression in the world 473 00:38:49,340 --> 00:38:52,780 and that that was what Hokusai saw and meant to be seen. 474 00:38:58,540 --> 00:39:01,540 It was harder to print for various reasons. 475 00:39:01,540 --> 00:39:03,820 And the publishers, who weren't very scrupulous, 476 00:39:03,820 --> 00:39:05,500 they were just cranking them out, 477 00:39:05,500 --> 00:39:08,780 and so everybody got caught up with Red Fuji. 478 00:39:08,780 --> 00:39:13,380 And it was enormously popular in his lifetime and afterwards. 479 00:39:17,180 --> 00:39:21,740 What he was in fact revealing was the quality of light 480 00:39:21,740 --> 00:39:23,340 just before dawn. 481 00:39:23,340 --> 00:39:24,620 It was like a revelation. 482 00:39:30,500 --> 00:39:31,540 Oh, God! 483 00:39:36,740 --> 00:39:37,740 Incredible. 484 00:39:38,860 --> 00:39:42,380 What this technology has given me a chance to discover 485 00:39:42,380 --> 00:39:44,700 is that the Pink Fuji 486 00:39:44,700 --> 00:39:47,860 is even more complex than I had even dreamed of 487 00:39:47,860 --> 00:39:51,740 because I've been used to thinking that these little treelike shapes at 488 00:39:51,740 --> 00:39:54,580 the base of the mountain were all printed from one block. 489 00:39:54,580 --> 00:39:57,820 And, in fact, they're printed from three different blocks, 490 00:39:57,820 --> 00:40:01,260 inked with very subtly different shades of blue. 491 00:40:01,260 --> 00:40:05,780 And so it gives the whole forest a very lively quality, 492 00:40:05,780 --> 00:40:07,140 which is extraordinary. 493 00:40:08,660 --> 00:40:13,300 You think of it as such a monumental and abstracted design but, actually, 494 00:40:13,300 --> 00:40:14,900 there's so much more subtlety in there. 495 00:40:16,740 --> 00:40:20,180 Up here, you see these little triangles of pale green 496 00:40:20,180 --> 00:40:23,340 along the slope of Mount Fuji? 497 00:40:23,340 --> 00:40:25,500 Never, ever noticed that before. 498 00:40:25,500 --> 00:40:28,580 But it's clear that all of this has been very carefully calculated. 499 00:40:28,580 --> 00:40:30,940 And it gives life. 500 00:40:30,940 --> 00:40:33,540 And it's almost like the trees are shimmering, aren't they? 501 00:40:33,540 --> 00:40:35,420 They are, yeah. They're alive. 502 00:40:44,380 --> 00:40:49,100 The discovery of this new version of the Red Fuji is a wonderful example 503 00:40:49,100 --> 00:40:54,100 of how something that has become a conventional icon of Japanese art 504 00:40:54,100 --> 00:40:57,820 in general is actually not what Hokusai had in mind at all. 505 00:40:57,820 --> 00:41:01,780 So what I was able to say to the Swiss collector was, Walter, 506 00:41:01,780 --> 00:41:05,380 this is not a faded print. 507 00:41:05,380 --> 00:41:08,060 VOICE BREAKING: This is the best one I've ever seen. 508 00:41:09,380 --> 00:41:11,340 It's really a moment for both of us. 509 00:41:16,500 --> 00:41:19,460 The Thirty-six Views Of Mount Fuji did prove incredibly popular. 510 00:41:19,460 --> 00:41:21,740 And then, straight on from that, 511 00:41:21,740 --> 00:41:24,740 they start to issue even more Fuji designs - 512 00:41:24,740 --> 00:41:27,220 the famous One Hundred Views Of Mount Fuji. 513 00:41:27,220 --> 00:41:31,060 And yet further opportunity for Hokusai 514 00:41:31,060 --> 00:41:34,180 to explore Fuji from all sides, 515 00:41:34,180 --> 00:41:36,580 in all weathers, from all vantage points. 516 00:41:36,580 --> 00:41:39,900 And, in fact, some of the compositions in this book are incredibly eccentric. 517 00:41:39,900 --> 00:41:42,900 He's deliberately stretching the limits of composition 518 00:41:42,900 --> 00:41:44,500 to pay homage to the mountain. 519 00:41:47,940 --> 00:41:52,220 At the back of volume one of One Hundred Views Of Mount Fuji is like 520 00:41:52,220 --> 00:41:54,700 a little potted autobiography. 521 00:41:54,700 --> 00:41:58,620 This is Hokusai looking back at his career up to this point, 522 00:41:58,620 --> 00:42:01,620 up to his mid-70s, and basically dismissing it. 523 00:42:03,980 --> 00:42:09,660 From the age of six, I had the desire to copy the form of things. 524 00:42:09,660 --> 00:42:13,340 And from about 50, my pictures were frequently published. 525 00:42:14,460 --> 00:42:20,020 But until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. 526 00:42:20,020 --> 00:42:21,420 At 73 years, 527 00:42:21,420 --> 00:42:26,460 I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees... 528 00:42:27,740 --> 00:42:29,940 ..and the structure of birds, 529 00:42:29,940 --> 00:42:32,780 animals, insects and fish. 530 00:42:34,940 --> 00:42:40,980 Thus, when I reach 80 years, I hope to have made increasing progress, 531 00:42:40,980 --> 00:42:45,900 and at 90 to see further into the underlying principle of things 532 00:42:45,900 --> 00:42:51,500 so that, at 100 years, I will have achieved a divine state in my art. 533 00:42:51,500 --> 00:42:58,220 And at 110, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. 534 00:43:04,620 --> 00:43:07,580 Hokusai is saying, well, you know, I've been pretty mediocre, 535 00:43:07,580 --> 00:43:08,940 but I've done a lot of work. 536 00:43:08,940 --> 00:43:10,860 But you haven't seen anything yet 537 00:43:10,860 --> 00:43:13,540 until you've seen what's going to happen when I go forward from this. 538 00:43:15,180 --> 00:43:16,860 He always thought he'd get better. 539 00:43:16,860 --> 00:43:21,740 Well, the Chinese have a saying, painting is an old man's art. 540 00:43:23,140 --> 00:43:27,460 Meaning you should get better because you know more 541 00:43:27,460 --> 00:43:30,500 and you're more experienced at doing it. 542 00:43:30,500 --> 00:43:34,900 I like to think I'm like that, actually. 543 00:43:34,900 --> 00:43:38,220 People say I've gone off, but I don't think so. 544 00:43:42,540 --> 00:43:47,100 There is a number of quite informal self-portraits by Hokusai from 545 00:43:47,100 --> 00:43:48,940 different stages in his career. 546 00:43:48,940 --> 00:43:55,100 And he's beguilingly informal in the way he depicts himself. 547 00:43:55,100 --> 00:43:57,180 It's not a pompous view at all. 548 00:43:59,500 --> 00:44:00,580 In the early period, 549 00:44:00,580 --> 00:44:03,180 when he's working a lot on the popular literature, 550 00:44:03,180 --> 00:44:06,460 he comes in almost as a tiny cartoon character in some of the pictures. 551 00:44:08,660 --> 00:44:12,780 But later in life, thinking of his 80s, 552 00:44:12,780 --> 00:44:15,940 he does a little lightning sketch of himself pointing, 553 00:44:15,940 --> 00:44:19,740 gesticulating quite excitedly to something outside the picture 554 00:44:19,740 --> 00:44:22,540 and seems to be talking to somebody at the same time. 555 00:44:22,540 --> 00:44:25,100 And then the text above the self-portrait 556 00:44:25,100 --> 00:44:27,380 is apologising for not producing 557 00:44:27,380 --> 00:44:31,620 what the publisher wants and saying that he's sending instead 558 00:44:31,620 --> 00:44:35,580 some old drawings which Hokusai did in his 40s, so four decades earlier. 559 00:44:35,580 --> 00:44:39,140 And although he was an immature artist at that time, 560 00:44:39,140 --> 00:44:41,660 maybe there's something amongst these drawings that you can use. 561 00:44:46,940 --> 00:44:50,140 He trundled around for his entire life with a cart 562 00:44:50,140 --> 00:44:52,100 that had his archive in it - 563 00:44:52,100 --> 00:44:55,820 all of his drawings, all of his copies of paintings that he'd seen. 564 00:44:59,820 --> 00:45:02,980 But in 1839, his house caught fire. 565 00:45:02,980 --> 00:45:04,580 He jumped out the window with his brush 566 00:45:04,580 --> 00:45:07,380 and his daughter jumped out the window with her brush, 567 00:45:07,380 --> 00:45:08,620 but that cart was burned. 568 00:45:12,780 --> 00:45:15,980 Hokusai rushed out of the house with only a painting brush in one hand. 569 00:45:17,140 --> 00:45:20,100 His daughter, Oei, immediately followed him. 570 00:45:20,100 --> 00:45:24,020 They lost all their possessions, clothes and painting materials. 571 00:45:25,180 --> 00:45:27,540 They were nearly naked and looked like homeless beggars. 572 00:45:34,060 --> 00:45:37,300 And from that time on, he didn't do any more drawings, 573 00:45:37,300 --> 00:45:39,380 he didn't do any more prints, to speak of, 574 00:45:39,380 --> 00:45:41,740 and his life took a radical change. 575 00:45:43,060 --> 00:45:48,300 In Hokusai's 80s, and certainly in the last three years, 88, 89, 90, 576 00:45:48,300 --> 00:45:50,900 it's almost exclusively paintings that he's working on. 577 00:45:57,940 --> 00:45:59,020 I mean, he was 88. 578 00:45:59,020 --> 00:46:00,100 He was going for it. 579 00:46:00,100 --> 00:46:02,340 He was just, like, "I'm going to do something new." 580 00:46:05,460 --> 00:46:09,940 And he, at that point, couldn't care whether anybody else notices or not. 581 00:46:09,940 --> 00:46:13,020 He was going to go as far as he could for as long as he could. 582 00:46:16,580 --> 00:46:18,820 In his last years, we have a sequence of paintings 583 00:46:18,820 --> 00:46:19,900 where he's trying to 584 00:46:19,900 --> 00:46:21,940 bring the world as we know it to life on the page. 585 00:46:23,580 --> 00:46:27,020 He's trying to reach beyond the surface of things 586 00:46:27,020 --> 00:46:29,300 to the life of things. 587 00:46:29,300 --> 00:46:32,740 And in the British Museum, there's a wonderful scroll of a duck - 588 00:46:32,740 --> 00:46:34,740 the duck is actually swimming on the page. 589 00:46:46,700 --> 00:46:49,140 Wow! Astonishing. 590 00:46:49,140 --> 00:46:51,220 Just astonishing. 591 00:46:51,220 --> 00:46:53,460 I'm so much more aware of individual strokes. 592 00:46:53,460 --> 00:46:55,540 Yeah, absolutely. 593 00:46:55,540 --> 00:46:59,020 Cos you can see that there's lots of small, black accents 594 00:46:59,020 --> 00:47:00,580 which are separate strokes. 595 00:47:00,580 --> 00:47:02,220 Completely separate strokes. 596 00:47:02,220 --> 00:47:04,300 And different colours. Black on top of grey. 597 00:47:04,300 --> 00:47:06,060 Yeah. 598 00:47:06,060 --> 00:47:08,340 It's a wonderful, wonderful painting. 599 00:47:08,340 --> 00:47:10,660 When I look at the feathers, you can 600 00:47:10,660 --> 00:47:13,740 just see that they're varying thicknesses of line, 601 00:47:13,740 --> 00:47:16,900 they're spaced not evenly, not uniformly. 602 00:47:16,900 --> 00:47:21,100 I mean, there's just a rawness about the detail in that painting. 603 00:47:21,100 --> 00:47:23,300 Nobody but he could have drawn the ducks. 604 00:50:28,620 --> 00:50:34,900 HE CHANTS AND SINGS 605 00:50:37,460 --> 00:50:39,460 I think that, like many people in Japan, 606 00:50:39,460 --> 00:50:42,180 he had completely internalised Buddhism. 607 00:50:42,180 --> 00:50:45,820 It wasn't a set of beliefs, it was a way that you lived your life, 608 00:50:45,820 --> 00:50:47,220 and he saw it all around him. 609 00:50:50,900 --> 00:50:55,380 The way that he drew birds in the sky, the way that he drew plants, 610 00:50:55,380 --> 00:50:58,220 it isn't just a person who is just sitting in front of a plant 611 00:50:58,220 --> 00:50:59,260 and transcribing it 612 00:50:59,260 --> 00:51:00,460 or sketching it out. 613 00:51:00,460 --> 00:51:05,140 It was a person who digested it, made it their own, internalised it, 614 00:51:05,140 --> 00:51:08,380 and had become the plant or the fish or whatever it was. 615 00:51:10,380 --> 00:51:13,100 When I'm looking at Hokusai's late paintings, 616 00:51:13,100 --> 00:51:15,460 they're the most incredible art works. 617 00:51:15,460 --> 00:51:17,140 Technically, they're extraordinary. 618 00:51:17,140 --> 00:51:19,500 But it's not just a tour de force. 619 00:51:19,500 --> 00:51:23,900 There's a vital consciousness inhabiting those creatures, 620 00:51:23,900 --> 00:51:28,380 those figures, that is looking out at me, wanting to engage with me. 621 00:51:28,380 --> 00:51:31,580 And that just fills you with energy. 622 00:51:33,340 --> 00:51:39,260 The Chinese say you need three things for painting - the hand, 623 00:51:39,260 --> 00:51:43,340 the eye and the heart. Two won't do, 624 00:51:43,340 --> 00:51:45,940 which is, I think, very, very good. 625 00:52:14,820 --> 00:52:16,660 It's a spectacular painting. 626 00:52:16,660 --> 00:52:18,540 Absolutely incredible. 627 00:52:18,540 --> 00:52:20,140 Both of them are. What a pair. 628 00:52:26,940 --> 00:52:28,500 I mean, there's no doubt about it, 629 00:52:28,500 --> 00:52:30,660 that they were meant to be hung together as a pair. 630 00:52:31,980 --> 00:52:35,140 Cos we have the same mounting, the same size, 631 00:52:35,140 --> 00:52:37,540 the dragon and the tiger is a traditional subject 632 00:52:37,540 --> 00:52:38,820 in East Asian art, and... 633 00:52:40,420 --> 00:52:44,020 ..they have pretty much identical signatures from Hokusai's 90th year. 634 00:52:50,620 --> 00:52:55,660 The dragon is crawling up out of a tornado that it's making itself 635 00:52:55,660 --> 00:52:59,380 and staring out at us with this incredibly inhabited expression. 636 00:53:02,300 --> 00:53:04,740 Hokusai has painted dragons dozens of times 637 00:53:04,740 --> 00:53:06,380 at this point in his career. 638 00:53:06,380 --> 00:53:10,060 But at 90, in the final months of his life, God knows how he did it, 639 00:53:10,060 --> 00:53:11,060 but he cracked it. 640 00:53:13,300 --> 00:53:16,860 We felt, when we were looking at images of this painting, 641 00:53:16,860 --> 00:53:18,620 that it must have been painted in reverse - 642 00:53:18,620 --> 00:53:21,220 basically, starting with the colour of the paper, 643 00:53:21,220 --> 00:53:22,420 which is the highlights 644 00:53:22,420 --> 00:53:24,220 all over the composition, 645 00:53:24,220 --> 00:53:26,460 and then working back through 646 00:53:26,460 --> 00:53:29,740 a succession of ever darker shades of grey ink 647 00:53:29,740 --> 00:53:32,540 until you finally get to the black. So you're working in reverse. 648 00:53:32,540 --> 00:53:35,740 Hokusai has mentally worked all of this out before he even touches 649 00:53:35,740 --> 00:53:37,300 the brush to the paper. 650 00:53:37,300 --> 00:53:41,140 So, underneath all of these individual dragon scales 651 00:53:41,140 --> 00:53:43,660 is a line which has completely different character 652 00:53:43,660 --> 00:53:44,780 from its neighbour. 653 00:53:44,780 --> 00:53:48,620 He's just totally incapable of painting the same line twice. 654 00:53:48,620 --> 00:53:52,700 But always remembering to leave, at the edge of the spines, 655 00:53:52,700 --> 00:53:55,140 the unpainted paper as the highlight. 656 00:53:56,740 --> 00:53:58,940 You can't make any mistakes with this kind of painting. 657 00:53:58,940 --> 00:54:01,420 It's not an oil painting where you could rub something out 658 00:54:01,420 --> 00:54:02,860 and try it again. 659 00:54:02,860 --> 00:54:05,500 Once you put the brush to paper, you're committed. 660 00:54:05,500 --> 00:54:08,300 I just... Full of awe. 661 00:54:08,300 --> 00:54:09,220 How did he do it? 662 00:54:25,260 --> 00:54:29,820 In 1849, he was renting a lodging from a temple called Henjoin, 663 00:54:29,820 --> 00:54:32,620 doing the paintings of his final few months. 664 00:54:35,060 --> 00:54:37,740 He died at the end of the fourth month of his 90th year, 665 00:54:37,740 --> 00:54:41,660 so there's just a few months when the paintings which are signed "aged 90", must have 666 00:54:41,660 --> 00:54:44,940 been done. And these include the sublime painting 667 00:54:44,940 --> 00:54:48,500 of the dragon flying into the sky around Mount Fuji 668 00:54:48,500 --> 00:54:50,980 and going off up into the heavens... 669 00:54:50,980 --> 00:54:51,860 It's glorious. 670 00:54:53,620 --> 00:54:55,780 ..which is rightly regarded as 671 00:54:55,780 --> 00:54:58,580 one of the most sublime late Hokusai works. 672 00:54:58,580 --> 00:55:01,740 It's so moving because he's bringing together the imagery 673 00:55:01,740 --> 00:55:02,780 of such a long career. 674 00:55:08,500 --> 00:55:09,980 You take one look at the painting, 675 00:55:09,980 --> 00:55:14,380 and what jumps out at you is this startling, almost frightful, 676 00:55:14,380 --> 00:55:16,460 oversimplification of Mount Fuji. 677 00:55:20,860 --> 00:55:23,500 Then, to the top of the painting, 678 00:55:23,500 --> 00:55:26,700 is a smudge, which you induce is clouds, 679 00:55:26,700 --> 00:55:28,780 and then in the smudge there's some kind of a figure. 680 00:55:32,700 --> 00:55:34,940 But then you see it's a dragon floating up and 681 00:55:34,940 --> 00:55:38,020 drifting up above the mountain into the sky and disappearing. 682 00:55:40,180 --> 00:55:42,700 And then you think, well, son of a gun! You know. 683 00:55:42,700 --> 00:55:46,340 That's almost like an epitaph for himself. 684 00:55:46,340 --> 00:55:48,900 He's saying, "So long," you know. 685 00:55:48,900 --> 00:55:52,380 "Enjoy my work." You know, "You will really get a lot 686 00:55:52,380 --> 00:55:55,300 "out of these pictures if you get into it like I did!" 687 00:56:10,620 --> 00:56:13,300 In the little inscription that Hokusai puts next to his signature, 688 00:56:13,300 --> 00:56:16,380 he says, "I'm aged 90, I was born in a Dragon Year." 689 00:56:18,060 --> 00:56:22,820 I am painting this on a Dragon Day in my 90th year. 690 00:56:45,460 --> 00:56:50,180 HE PRAYS 691 00:57:12,980 --> 00:57:18,220 There's something so outstandingly dedicated about Hokusai 692 00:57:18,220 --> 00:57:21,620 and about his stalwart approach to what he was doing. 693 00:57:21,620 --> 00:57:23,740 It's sort of incomparable. 694 00:57:23,740 --> 00:57:27,620 I think that he was one of the great heroes. 695 00:57:27,620 --> 00:57:29,260 S... Sorry, I'm crying. 696 00:57:34,500 --> 00:57:35,540 He never gave up. 697 00:57:37,100 --> 00:57:38,980 He kept experimenting. 698 00:57:38,980 --> 00:57:41,420 He kept doing new things. 699 00:57:41,420 --> 00:57:45,580 He just felt that he had a connection with life, which was precious. 700 00:57:48,620 --> 00:57:49,900 He worked all his life. 701 00:57:49,900 --> 00:57:51,180 He had a long life. 702 00:57:51,180 --> 00:57:54,620 I mean, he just worked, didn't he? That's all he did. 703 00:57:54,620 --> 00:57:56,340 Well, that's all I do, actually. 704 00:57:56,340 --> 00:58:00,500 But I'm not as good as Hokusai. 705 00:58:05,540 --> 00:58:09,380 If heaven will afford me five more years of life... 706 00:58:10,660 --> 00:58:12,900 ..then I'll manage to become... 707 00:58:14,020 --> 00:58:15,140 ..a true artist.