London’s British Museum has unveiled 103 rare drawings originally created by Katsushika Hokusai for an unpublished illustrated encyclopaedia, titled “The Great Picture Book of Everything.” This is the first chance to see the new acquisition of long obscured works by the great 19th century Japanese master, most famous for his woodblock print, The Great Wave. Simultaneously, the museum is offering several NFTs, specially created from the Hokusai portfolio, to celebrate this exhibition.

TEXT: Nicholas Stephens
IMAGES: Courtesy the Trustees of the British Museum

“Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything” at London’s British Museum presents a global first look at 103 drawings produced by the late Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) in the 1840s for an illustrated encyclopaedia. These 103 drawings owe their existence to the dazzling imaginative breadth of the artist, and to the fact that the tome itself was never published. To create a woodblock print, the artist’s drawing would first be placed over cherrywood, and the paper would then be cut through with chisels and knives exactly on the lines the artist had indicated. Therefore, all 19th century Japanese woodblock prints require a loss of the original drawing. Luckily, The Great Picture Book of Everything never reached print form.

Produced in the later stages of Hokusai’s life, these drawings have previously been in the possession of French collector Henri Vever, resurfaced in 2019 in Paris, where it was last publicly recorded at an auction in 1948, and acquired by the British Museum last year. In the intervening lockdown period, much scholarly work has been underway, with experts at the British Museum researching in cooperation with other great Hokusai collections, most notably in Boston and Paris. In a moving testament to the generosity and resilience of human nature, the purchase was made possible through a bequest by Theresia Gerda Buch, who had fled Nazi Germany to safety in England in 1939. The chain of coincidence and good fortune to bring these masterpieces to their first show in London is an odyssey in its own right.

Known in the West since the Japonisme era of the 1870s, Hokusai’s work is continually treasured by new audiences. His Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave) (c. 1831) has become a cult icon, reproduced in many different forms, and conjures up the majesty of the sea, with a child-like, comic book quality. Of the estimated 8000 prints of this image produced in the Edo period, only 111 are known to have survived. The British Museum owns three, of which two are displayed in this exhibition to create context.

Visiting this exhibition is to be made aware of the many fields of human endeavour and enquiry, and also of intellectual avenues unexplored. Hokusai was unafraid to broaden his outlook from the frothy appeal of the floating world, and it shows. Broadly, the subject of the drawings is threefold: Buddhist India, Ancient China and the Natural World. Who can claim to have knowledge across all three?

The Japanese illustrated encyclopedia was an established tradition by Hokusai’s time, but it was a bold enterprise. It’s worth remembering that Hokusai would not have been able to travel to the world outside of Japan because during his lifetime, travel was interdicted by the Shogun rulers. Therefore Hokusai lived in his imagination. The fruits of this imagination, the humour, the tenderness, and the vivacity are astoundingly acute in his drawings.

Have you ever thought about what it would be like if a porcupine, goat and civet cat got together for a conversation? What would it look like if a man with an elongated neck asked for light from a man with a hole in his chest six feet away? These postcard-sized images linger long in the memory: flesh mummified in honey for 100 years was said to have medicinal properties, and one scene shows how a man might serve his friend this delicacy, carving off a slice with the nonchalance of your local kebab vendor.

Hokusai is known to have chanted the lotus sutra and to have kept a Buddhist shrine in his home, and many Buddhist episodes are fondly told with the pithiness of a Chekhov short story. Highlights include Virudhaka, who plotted the destruction of the Buddha’s family, the Shaka Clan, receiving the righteous lightning bolt in punishment for his misdeeds. The whirling revolution and spiky explosion prefigure modern manga by about a century. Another compelling image is that of Daoist master Zhou Sheng reaching to pluck the moon from the sky. He had heard pilgrims lamenting that they would never see the fabled lunar palace for themselves, and he flew to the moon to bring it back to them. The impression of the low oxygen, vertiginous height is rendered through the looming pinnacle of a Chinese-style mountain and a cloud ladder of amorphous, wispy air. The breathless, upward trajectory is exhilarating.

The Chinese illustrations offer accounts of scientific breakthroughs and humanity’s journey out of darkness. There are torches that never extinguish, a severed head leaping out of a cauldron to exact revenge on his enemies, and a Confucian scholar sheltering in the rain inside the empty shell of a giant peng bird.

There are mellow portrayals of intelligence and genius, including the dizzy joy of the first discovery of paper or the first time music was played. The arhats, on a long and patient road to enlightenment, are depicted as wizened, kindly souls casting a benevolent eye on humanity. Fox spirits are revealed in mirrors, and two ghosts enjoy a game of chess.

There are beautiful depictions of animals, including a patient bear waiting under a waterfall for his lunch. The peng bird is one of many fantastical animals on display. I enjoyed the mythical animals as much as the real ones, with the trunk-nosed baku, hooverer-up of nightmares, emerging as a favourite. It is said that a Japanese child may call out three times for the baku to come and eat his or her bad dream upon waking. This must be done sparingly, as if the baku is still hungry, he will eat your hopes and desires too. Almost every drawing urged me to undergo more research and learn something new.

This exhibition is on the fourth floor of the British Museum, a 990,000 square-foot institution with a collection of eight million objects. Cocooned in this vast building, “The Great Picture Book of Everything”, in just two rooms, fully lives up to its name.

Hokusai: The Great Picturebook of Everything
30 September 2021 – 30 January 2022
British Museum, London

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