June 15, 2015 • 30 mins
Hokusai lived during a time when there wasn't a lot of contact between Japan and the West. But even so, he drew influence form Western art, and Western art was greatly influenced by his own work.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from stuff
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry. So that's time.
I went to the Museum of Fine Art Boston and
(00:21):
saw that time capsule that had been pulled out from
the cornerstone of the Old Statehouse. I had three things
on my to do list on that trip. There was
that time capsule. There was Gustav Klimps Adam and Eve,
which was on loan from a museum in Vienna. And
there was a huge exhibition of artwork by the Japanese
artist best known as Katsushika Hokusai. And in addition to
(00:45):
that to do list, I wound up also seeing lots
of Leonardo da Vinci sketches and some World War One
propaganda posters, and a whole series of photos inspired by
the earthquake and tsunami that stretched Japan in So just
to give you a sense of how many amazing things
there are at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Uh,
if you've never heard of Hokusa, you will probably still
(01:08):
recognize his most famous work, which is under the Wave
Off kind of Gawa, which is better known as the
Great Wave. This is the one that shows three little
boats in the shadow of an enormous, menacing frothing wave,
with Mount Fuji shown in the background. Hokus I lived
during a time when there was not a lot of
contact between Japan and the West, but even so he
(01:30):
drew some influence from Western art, and then Western art
was later greatly influenced by his own work and from
others from the time period when he lived. His career
was also extremely long and diverse, and his work was
just prolific. This collection of work at the m f
A in Boston is huge, and the temporary exhibition of
(01:50):
it is so big that we actually had to take
a break from looking at it and go eat and
come back because it's enormous. Uh. The m f A
actually describes its collection of Japanese art as the largest
and finest outside of Japan. So Hokusi is who we
were going to talk about today. Hokosa I was born
in Edo, which is now Tokyo, in seventeen sixty and
(02:11):
he lived during Japan's Edo Period, also called the Tokugawa Period.
The Edo period lasted for about two hundred fifty years
starting in the early sixteen hundreds. Hoka size work grew
directly from a number of social changes that took place
in Japan during this period. The period before the Tokugawa
came to power was known as the Sengoku period, and
(02:34):
it was also nicknamed the Warring States period because it
was marked with war, unrest, and strife. The Tokugawa took
several steps to try to secure their power and prevent
a return to the state of perpetual conflict once they
were in power. The first was that the Tokugawa Shoguns
banned Christianity and expelled all Europeans from Japan except for
(02:57):
the Dutch, and the Dutch were exempt because they had
and tried to convert the Japanese, but even Dutch contact
with Japan was limited, as was Japan's contact with its
nearer neighbors of China and Korea. The second was that
the Tokugawa required the feudal lords, who were known as
the damio who ruled Japan's provinces in their stead, to
(03:19):
maintain two residences. One was an edo and the other
was back in their home province. The daimyo were expected
to travel back and forth between these residences while their
families stayed in Edo full time. The residences of the
Daimio were expected to be lavish and opulent, and when
they traveled back and forth between their home provinces and Edo,
(03:41):
they were expected to do so at great luxury and
with a large retinue of mostly unmarried samurai. There was
an ulterior motive to all this. The Tokugawa and Edo
always had an eye on the Damio's families, which basically
functioned as a tacit threat to their safety to keep
the Imo in line. And in addition to all of that,
(04:04):
they had to spend so much money on these multiple
residences and the travel back and forth that the daimio
could never afford to raise an army to challenge the
Tokugawa's power. So it was sort of a way to
keep everybody in line. And as a side note, this
plan was not entirely successful. In one a group of
ronan or masterless samurai tried to orchestrate a coup against
(04:28):
the Tokugawa. Even though the Daimio were employing quite a
lot of samurai, there were many others who were effectively
out of work. Once the Warring States period was over. However,
these requirements that were placed on the Daimio affected life
for other people in Japan as well. Number One, people
were traveling a lot. Even though Japan wasn't having much
(04:49):
contact with the rest of the world, travel within its
own borders really became its own industry. Five major highways
connected Eddo to the rest of Japan and and these
were lined with places to rest, eat, arranged transportation, buy things,
and make religious observances. The most famous of these was
(05:10):
the Tokaido Road also called the Eastern Sea Road, and
this connected Edo to Kyoto before going on to Osaka.
And although the Daimio traveled these roads at great expense,
ordinary people were also using them. Society under the Tokugawa
became divided into four classes. There were warriors, farmers, artisans,
and merchants. And even though the merchants were technically at
(05:32):
the bottom of the pile since they just sold the
work of other people rather than creating work of their own,
a lot of the merchants became quite rich. Japan became
home to a thriving middle class thanks to all of
these different industries and the increased commerce that was coming
with people traveling everywhere and maintaining multiple residences in Edo.
(05:54):
Visiting Daimio and their large retinues of samurai tipped the
gender balance within the city, spawning another industry, one of
pleasure and entertainment to cater to their interests. This whole
world of fashion, luxury, and amusement became known as the
floating world or okio. The newly wealthy merchants and artisans
had access to the floating world as well, but also
(06:16):
spawned a whole school of art called you ki o
A or Pictures of a Floating World, and these were
basically pictures, paintings and wood black prints of things like
pleasure districts, courtisign's, geisha tea houses, kabuki actors, that sort
of thing, and they were hugely popular among the growing
middle class. It was in this school of art that
(06:37):
Hokuside trained as an artist, and we're going to talk
about how that training came about after a brief word
from a sponsor. So to return to Hokusai specifically, we
know a lot more about his professional life than about
his personal life. There's a fair amount of contradiction when
it comes to the details of his biography. Thanks to
its age and the fact that a lot of knowledge
(06:58):
of it that survives today. It's kind of glean from
a wide range of sources, like introductions he wrote to
his own books and notes from other artists that were
compiled well after his death. He was born Kawamura Tokitao.
He had an uncle named Nakajima isay who was a
mirror polisher. This was actually a prestigious position because mirrors
(07:21):
at the time were mainly made from bronze rather than
silvered glass. Mirror polishing required a special and exact set
of skills, and Hocusized uncle had no heir to train
to take over this position, so hocusis uncle adopted him,
and later on reflections, refractions, lenses, and optical effects would
become a huge part of hocusized work. Hocus I started
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writing and drawing at the age of six, and these
are two skills that are really connected quite closely in
Japanese culture thanks to the use of kanji in written language.
Later on, hokus I would also say that anyone who
could write could also draw, and he would create the
paintings that were basically built up from a series of
written words. It's unclear whether hokus I just didn't want
(08:07):
to be a mirror polisher, or whether he didn't get
along with his uncle, or whether he correctly concluded that
bronze mirrors were going to go out of fashion, but regardless,
as a teen he did not pursue his uncle's line
of work. He worked instead for a publisher and a
lending library, and he worked as a block carver, making
blocks for woodblock prints, even though he demonstrated a talent
(08:30):
for art at a very young age, and his uncle's
position meant he could get access to the showgun's official
painters hocus, as formal education in art didn't actually start
until he was nineteen, he joined the studio of Katsukawa
Centual a uk O a artist in seventeen seventy nine.
Katsukawa some shows specialty was woodblock prints of kabuki actors.
(08:54):
While working in Katsukawa's studio, hokus I signed his Prince
Shun rule, which is a combination of a character from
his teacher's name plus an additional character, and this was
traditionally how art students would sign their work with like
a character from their teacher's name plus another character of
their own choosing. Hokus I worked with the Katsukawa School
(09:14):
until seventeen, and these years are known as hokus as
Chunro period. During this period, he also illustrated about fifty books,
and he made woodblock prints of a lot of subjects
that were common in the u k o A School.
Although little of his painting work survives from this period,
it's clear that he studied painting at the Katsukawa School
as well. Hokus I also started experimenting with Western style
(09:38):
vanishing point perspectives in his work during this time, and
that's a theme that would resurface later on. I will
find some visual resources to look at and link them
from our show notes about Western style banishing point perspectives
services the way that perspective has traditionally worked in in
various Asian art. Because it's hard to explain with word,
(10:00):
some show died in seventeen ninety two, and two years later,
for reasons that aren't completely clear, hokus I left the
school and stopped using the name shun Row. He found
another position now that Tawaria family hired him to train
their son, whose father, an artist, had died. Hokus I
was allowed to use the name Suli, which was the
(10:22):
name of the deceased father, until his son was ready
to assume his role as heir and leader of the
family's school. The Tawaria family apparently had quite a bit
of wealth and status, so while he was with them,
hokus I had access to the best paints, inks, and
other art materials, and for about four years he produced
(10:42):
a large number of privately commissioned prints known as surimono,
as well as a number of paintings. Working with privately
commissioned prince gave Hokusi some artistic freedoms he didn't have before.
He didn't need to worry about sticking with less expensive
printing inks because the print runs themselves were much smaller
and everything was being paid for by his patrons. A
(11:04):
lot of these works were commissioned by poetry clubs as
accompaniment for playful works of poetry. Because of this work
in private commissions, Hokusai developed friendships with many prominent poets
and other well known figures, and he seems to have
been quite financially prosperous during his story period as well.
It was in the spring of when the Tauriyah Air
(11:26):
assumed control of the family school that Hokosa gave up
on the soul Re name and began working under the
name Hokusai Tokimasa. He would continue to change his name
from time to time after this point, which is a
pretty common practice among artists in the Edo period, but
the name Hokusai is the one that he really became
recognized for. He became so well known under that name
(11:48):
that even as he used other names, he would often
add Saki no Hokusai or the former Hokusai to his works.
It's like the artists formerly known as prince Um. After
leaving the Tawaraya family, he also experimented with a lot
of forms of art besides the standard prints, paintings, and
book illustrations that had made up a large portion of
(12:09):
his work before. He made a board game depicting a
journey from Edo to several pilgrimage sites and back again.
He also created puzzles and a deck of playing cards
based on the tail of Genji. He produced books of
his own, including manuals on how to draw, and he
published sketch books known as manga. He also made lots
and lots of dioramas. These were intricate illustrations that were
(12:31):
printed on one flat sheet or maybe two. You really
needed a lot of them, and they were meant to
be carefully cut out and then assembled, with the cut
pieces standing up vertically, which would create a three dimensional scene.
Many of these were extremely complex and detailed. One of
the prints in the m f AS exhibition is one
of these, uncut and working from a copy of it.
(12:52):
Curators tried to create an assembled version to kind of
accompany it so you could see the flat one as
it was printed and the assembled one. It's took them
multiple tries to get it to do. We mentioned before
that we don't know a great deal about Hokusai's personal life,
but what we do know is that he experienced a
series of tragedy starting around eighteen twenty. His oldest daughter
(13:14):
had married one of his students, and they divorced in
eight six. Hokosa became very very ill, and a year
later his wife died. His grandson, son of the daughter
who had divorced, did something. The details of what exactly
it was are unclear, but whatever it was led Hokusai
into some really huge financial problems. His third daughter, on
(13:36):
the other hand, was named katsushika Oi, and she became
a wonderful artist on her own, and it's possible that
she helped her father with some of his work. I
actually originally wanted to do the episode on her because
she seems to have been quite a character who loved
sake quite a lot, and she would sometimes substitute one
of the characters in her name for one meaning drunk
instead when she signed her artwork. But unfortunately, yeah, we
(13:59):
know even less about her and have way less of
a body of work to drop round to talk about
uh katsushika Oi than we do about her father. And
it's possible that all these tragedies and the lack of
money that followed were what spurred hokus I into making
his most famous work of art, thirty six Views of
Mount Fuji. As its name suggests, there are thirty six
(14:20):
prints each featuring Mount Fuji in some way, and the
Great Wave is one of those. The series fit in
well with a trend that was rushing through Japan at
that point, which was sets of full sized landscape prints
that worked together as a series. Another of these series
that you may have heard of is Hero. She gaves
fifty three stations of the Tokaido Road. Hokusai himself also
(14:44):
did a series on the stations of the Tokaido Road,
but hero she Gays became more famous than than hocus
Size did. Thirty six Views of Mount Fuji was also
inspired by Prussian blue ink, which was newly available in
Japan and known as Berlin Blue there. It led to
a huge demand for artwork that used the color blue,
(15:05):
and while the public clamored for azerier or prints done
entirely in shades of blue, hocus I started using the
blue paint for the outlines on his landscapes, which had
traditionally been black, and he also used them for prints
of birds and flowers. Hocus I also used lots of
blue in his work in general during this craze for blue,
and some of the prints in the thirty six Views
(15:25):
of Mount Fuji in their first edition printing, are almost
entirely blue. As people became less enamored with the color blue.
The same blocks would then be used to print new
editions of these works, but with more colors in them
that they weren't quite so overwhelmingly blue. After the success
of the thirty six Views of Mount Fuji, hocus I
(15:46):
created just an enormous number of landscape prints, but around
eighteen thirty four eighteen thirty five, he ran into some
trouble with his publisher, and the details, as is often
the case with his story, are unclear, although it seems
as though a publisher that he'd been working with on
several multi volume books of Prince suddenly went bankrupt, and
consequently later books that were supposed to come out went unpublished.
(16:11):
With this problem with his publisher, hoku Size commercial output
really dropped tremendously. Japan was also hit with an enormous
economic depression from eighteen thirty three eighteen thirty seven, and
that dried up demand for hokus Size work, and his
studio and its contents were destroyed in a fire in
eighteen thirty nine. In spite of all this and of
(16:36):
the changes in the market for artwork, hokus I continued
to be tremendously creative right through the end of his life.
He experimented with paintings and festival floats, and he designed
a sculpture. He died in eighteen forty nine, at the
age of ninety by the Japanese method of counting and
eighty nine by the Western method. Uh. He said he'd
be a truly skilled painter if he lived to be
(16:58):
a hundred. And at that point he had put out
just an enormous body of work, a lot of it
just extremely playful. He experimented with new ways of approaching artwork,
he made all of these creative strides. But he was like, Yeah,
if I could just live to be a hundred, then
I'd be a really skilled painter. Just ten more years
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to get me there. So he drew and painted so
many things, but so much of his work was in
the form of wood black prints, And we're going to
talk a little bit more about how these prints were
made and also about how hokus I later influenced Western art.
After another brief word from a sponsor. So often when
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we talk about visual artists on the show, we're talking
about people who made each piece of art as one thing.
So painters and sculptors and potters and textile artists, they
make a work of art, and while you can see
pictures of that work of art or maybe make prints
of it, there's only one original. Like you go to
a museum and you see the Mona Lisa, there's one
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of it. That's not the case for one of hokusis
primary media, the wood block print. Hokus size wood block
prints include all the typical subjects of the ukio A school,
as well as waterfalls, birds and flowers, dragons, ghosts and monsters, fish, lanterns.
It goes on and on in a huge range of subjects.
(18:26):
Printmaking isn't unique to Japanese art, but in the Edo
period in particular, wood black prints were a very popular
form of art in Japan. First, the artist would create
the picture. Then a block cutter would put that picture
face down onto the wooden block, secure it there, and
very very carefully cut out the block along the lines
of the artwork. A black and white work could use
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just one block, but for a color work, the block
carver would take an impression of that original carving to
make a different block for each layer of color. To
make the actual print, print printmakers inked the block lay
paper over it, and they rubbed the back to transfer
the ink onto the paper. This made print making a collaborative,
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collective form of art, and says Hocusi himself had worked
as a block carver, he had perspectives that came from
all parts of this process. There was no press involved
that a lot of people think of when making prints.
With these blocks, printmakers could make lots and lots of
copies of the same work of art, which is why
you can find copies of the Great Wave and other
(19:31):
Edo period prints that came from those original blocks in
museums all over the world rather than just one museum.
And it also meant that a lot of people living
at the time were able to afford to buy his
work and have artwork on their walls. Hocusis work was
actually at one point even printed on papers for rice snacks,
almost like collectible cereal boxes like the the snack manufacturer
(19:54):
was was hoping that people would want to buy their
snacks more so they could have more hocus I art
from the wrappers. I love it. I wish we could
get works of art with our snakes. Uh. Commodore Matthew
Perry arrived in Japan on July eighteenth of eighteen fifty three,
just a few years after hokusis death, and acting on
behalf of the U. S Government, he demanded that Japan
(20:15):
open trade to the West. Although Perry's fleet was small,
Japan had no navy with which to defend itself, and
so it was forced to negotiate. Japan and the United
States signed a trading agreement in eighteen fifty four. Further
treaties followed, most of them unequal and benefiting the other
trading partners more than Japan. Naturally, this affected Japan as
(20:38):
a nation dramatically. For example, the Tokugawa Shogunate fell and
was replaced by an emperor. But our focus here is
really going to stay on the artwork. While hokusized work
had begun to fall out of imperial favor, this newly
opened trade with the West sparked a craze for Japanese
art and culture fans. Kimonos, screens, and porcelain were in
(21:01):
huge demand in the West. Diplomats, tourists, and officials who
visited Japan also came home with the artwork that they
bought while living there. A big part of the m
f as Japanese artwork collection is actually a donation from
Dr William Statist Bigelow, who lived in Japan from eighteen
eighty two to eighteen eighty nine and then donated the
collection of art that he acquired while there to the
(21:23):
museum in nineteen eleven. For those who didn't acquire their
Japanese art and artifacts by visiting Japan. All this enthusiasm
for Japanese culture had the unfortunate effect of giving Westerners
a rather warped and stereotypical view of Japan. However, would
black prints and other Japanese art wound up being hugely
(21:44):
influential to artists in the West as well, and this
are this influence became known as japan is m. Felix Brequamant,
who was a French Impressionist painter, found a set of
Hoku sized manga in Paris in eighteen fifty six. He
started sharing hocusize work with his artist friends, and soon
other Impressionist artists were really seeking out and learning from
(22:06):
hocus size art as well as the other as well
as the work of other artists from the uk O
A school. The Impressionist painters started to imitate the use
of color, lines and perspectives along with hocus eyes, often
very playful treatment of visual subjects. Claude Money acquired about
two hundred and fifty Japanese prints, twenty three of them
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by Hokusai, and then, like Hokusai, he made a practice
of painting the same thing in many angles and from
many settings, you can see this clear Japanese influence, for
example in Ari DeLux, Devan Japonet and Vincent van gos
La Cartisen and a series of etchings by Mary Cassatt. Yeah,
(22:49):
if you, if you sort of line up lots of
uh hocus i prints and other work from the uk
A school next to lots of Impressionist and post Impressionist work. Um,
it's pretty easy in a lot of cases, even for
a late person who's not like deeply uh and meshed
in the world of art and art history, to see, um,
(23:10):
to see the progression from this Japanese art style into
Western art. It's pretty fascinating. I love it. I love it.
I do too this well. And so I did not
know how enormous this exhibition was when I went in there. Uh.
I thought it was about half the size that it was.
And then I came around a corner and there was
(23:31):
basically that entire size of what I had just seen,
doubled again or stuff. Uh. And a lot of it
is really incredible. Um, some of it. You know, there's
a whole, a whole Japanese artwork section of the museum
that you can see at any time, even when this
exhibition is not part of it anymore. UM. But I
do really like that, uh, that this artwork was printed
(23:55):
on mass and popularly consumed. UM. And so you know,
lots of folks just bought prints as a matter of course,
And you have all these prints that are still in
pristine condition that date back to the eighteen fifties and
before in museums all over the world. I think that's
pretty interesting. It's fabulous. Do he has it has less
(24:17):
of the concern about where that art should rightfully be
since the same prints are also available in many museums
in Japan. And it's a question that comes up sometimes
when we're talking about art and what is in museums
around the world and where it came from. Yeah, do
you also have some interesting listener mail to share with us?
I do. It is about our recent two part episode
(24:41):
on Frankie Manning. I have been pleasantly surprised by our
email about Frankie Manning. Uh. Based on past experience, I
had expected our conversation about cultural appropriation, which you could
say applies to this episode two. Uh. I expect that
that to make people really mad based on some previous
(25:01):
experience on the podcast but most of the people who
have written and have been extremely sweet. Um. I some
of the email we've gotten has been a little misguided,
but it's mostly very nice. So I this is a
case where like sometimes we've read really angry email that
people have sent us to explain why why. That's not
(25:22):
the point of view that we were talking about. But
like people who have written have just been so sweet
that I don't really want to embarrass anyone who sent
us sweet email. UM. Instead, I'm going to read this
one from Stephen. Stephen says, Hello, Tracy and Holly. You
do a great show. I've been listening to the podcast
for years now and it really got me interested in
the other house stuff works, podcasts and beyond. This has
(25:43):
truly given me great listening for long car drives and
working around the house. Keep up the good work. You
guys did a great job covering Frank Frankie Manning. So
about your question regarding whether it is appropriate or not
to have Lindy Hop dancing at your wedding, I started
dancing back when the Revival was at his height. In
I've enjoyed six counts swing at eight count Lindy Hop
(26:04):
and eventually Blues dancing in quotation marks that's another story.
Though I've listened to and taken lessons from Frankie Manning.
Based on my experience, you were correct when you mentioned
that Frankie was more than happy to teach anyone who
wanted to learn. He devoted most of the rest of
his life to teaching after Aaron and Steve Mitchell Ridge
reached out to him. Whenever I saw him teach a class,
(26:25):
he was having the time of his life. I have
also attended lectures slash sermons given by another wonderful person
from that area, Don Hampton, as I understand it, though
I cannot confirm it from research. She was fourteen years
old and on that trip to Rio with Frankie in
the dance troupe. In fact, at the outbreak of the war,
she was the first person they sent back home since
(26:46):
she was so young. She is of that era to
knew Frankie and a number of the original dancers intimately,
so when she talks about dancing, she is a person
of authority who was around and it was all beginning.
Below is a link to a video of John Hampton
talk can get Frankie Manning's birthday party in New York City.
This echoes a talk I heard her give at Swing Out,
New Hampshire in two thousand five. She discussed her becoming
(27:09):
aware of the swing revival that was occurring in the nineties,
and that a friend brought her to the dance club
where people were swing dancing. She was absolutely tickled that
people had started up dancing again, and one of her
comments was and most of them were white. Her words,
she didn't shouldn't mind that the dance wasn't as fully
attended by African Americans. She was just happy someone was
(27:30):
continuing the tradition, even if they were of a different
different ethnicity. She's one of the sweetest people you could
ever meet, and it has always been a joyed to
hear her talk about dancing and it's positive impact on
our culture and how it can bridge human differences. And
then he gives us a link. I'm gonna stick that
link in the share notes. The sound isn't great, but
you'll get a great feel for what she's like as
a person. Pay particular attention to her talk at the
(27:52):
seven minute mark. I've heard Frankie talk a number of
times and would be happy to share for the stories
you have about his life and dancing if you want
to hear them. Sorry about the length of this email,
don't apologize. It's great. I'm sure you get plenty of mail,
which we definitely do, and then he says, I hope
you have a good time at your wedding. Um, I
wanted to read this one. We've gotten several great emails,
(28:14):
and I wanted to read this one because it's sort
of another perspective from somebody who was dancing UH at
the time I have. We've gotten several that sort of
echo the thing that I said, which is that when
I was learning swing dancing, zero of this information about
where Lindy Hop came from was really included in uh
in the class, like sometimes Frankie Manning would be mentioned,
(28:36):
but not a lot about his history or where he
came from or how this dance developed. Um. We did
even get an email from somebody who said this like
her experience was similar to that, and she had just
assumed that Frankie was white because everyone else who was
taking dance with her was also white. So it seems
like a logical conclusion. So I think there are Uh.
The trend in our email is that we have had
(28:59):
lots of folks who started Lyndy Hop dancing while Frankie
Manning was still alive and had the opportunity to learn
directly from him, um and who all seemed to have
a very uh nuanced and thoughtful approach to the idea
of cultural appropriation in money hup. And then a lot
of people who came along after uh Frankie Manning had
passed away and and he wasn't so personally present in
(29:21):
Lindy Hop anymore, who had similar experiences to what I had,
which is that that just was never mentioned and it
was not something we thought about or knew about it
all until much later. So all of that ties together
and a big ongoing conversation that basically boils down to
just think about what you're doing, and be thoughtful and
listen to other people. Uh and and and don't take
(29:42):
for granted that something is okay to just do without
thinking about it. If you would like to write to
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(30:04):
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(30:25):
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History dot com. For more on this and thousands of
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from stuff
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry. So that's time.
I went to the Museum of Fine Art Boston and
(00:21):
saw that time capsule that had been pulled out from
the cornerstone of the Old Statehouse. I had three things
on my to do list on that trip. There was
that time capsule. There was Gustav Klimps Adam and Eve,
which was on loan from a museum in Vienna. And
there was a huge exhibition of artwork by the Japanese
artist best known as Katsushika Hokusai. And in addition to
(00:45):
that to do list, I wound up also seeing lots
of Leonardo da Vinci sketches and some World War One
propaganda posters, and a whole series of photos inspired by
the earthquake and tsunami that stretched Japan in So just
to give you a sense of how many amazing things
there are at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Uh,
if you've never heard of Hokusa, you will probably still
(01:08):
recognize his most famous work, which is under the Wave
Off kind of Gawa, which is better known as the
Great Wave. This is the one that shows three little
boats in the shadow of an enormous, menacing frothing wave,
with Mount Fuji shown in the background. Hokus I lived
during a time when there was not a lot of
contact between Japan and the West, but even so he
(01:30):
drew some influence from Western art, and then Western art
was later greatly influenced by his own work and from
others from the time period when he lived. His career
was also extremely long and diverse, and his work was
just prolific. This collection of work at the m f
A in Boston is huge, and the temporary exhibition of
(01:50):
it is so big that we actually had to take
a break from looking at it and go eat and
come back because it's enormous. Uh. The m f A
actually describes its collection of Japanese art as the largest
and finest outside of Japan. So Hokusi is who we
were going to talk about today. Hokosa I was born
in Edo, which is now Tokyo, in seventeen sixty and
(02:11):
he lived during Japan's Edo Period, also called the Tokugawa Period.
The Edo period lasted for about two hundred fifty years
starting in the early sixteen hundreds. Hoka size work grew
directly from a number of social changes that took place
in Japan during this period. The period before the Tokugawa
came to power was known as the Sengoku period, and
(02:34):
it was also nicknamed the Warring States period because it
was marked with war, unrest, and strife. The Tokugawa took
several steps to try to secure their power and prevent
a return to the state of perpetual conflict once they
were in power. The first was that the Tokugawa Shoguns
banned Christianity and expelled all Europeans from Japan except for
(02:57):
the Dutch, and the Dutch were exempt because they had
and tried to convert the Japanese, but even Dutch contact
with Japan was limited, as was Japan's contact with its
nearer neighbors of China and Korea. The second was that
the Tokugawa required the feudal lords, who were known as
the damio who ruled Japan's provinces in their stead, to
(03:19):
maintain two residences. One was an edo and the other
was back in their home province. The daimyo were expected
to travel back and forth between these residences while their
families stayed in Edo full time. The residences of the
Daimio were expected to be lavish and opulent, and when
they traveled back and forth between their home provinces and Edo,
(03:41):
they were expected to do so at great luxury and
with a large retinue of mostly unmarried samurai. There was
an ulterior motive to all this. The Tokugawa and Edo
always had an eye on the Damio's families, which basically
functioned as a tacit threat to their safety to keep
the Imo in line. And in addition to all of that,
(04:04):
they had to spend so much money on these multiple
residences and the travel back and forth that the daimio
could never afford to raise an army to challenge the
Tokugawa's power. So it was sort of a way to
keep everybody in line. And as a side note, this
plan was not entirely successful. In one a group of
ronan or masterless samurai tried to orchestrate a coup against
(04:28):
the Tokugawa. Even though the Daimio were employing quite a
lot of samurai, there were many others who were effectively
out of work. Once the Warring States period was over. However,
these requirements that were placed on the Daimio affected life
for other people in Japan as well. Number One, people
were traveling a lot. Even though Japan wasn't having much
(04:49):
contact with the rest of the world, travel within its
own borders really became its own industry. Five major highways
connected Eddo to the rest of Japan and and these
were lined with places to rest, eat, arranged transportation, buy things,
and make religious observances. The most famous of these was
(05:10):
the Tokaido Road also called the Eastern Sea Road, and
this connected Edo to Kyoto before going on to Osaka.
And although the Daimio traveled these roads at great expense,
ordinary people were also using them. Society under the Tokugawa
became divided into four classes. There were warriors, farmers, artisans,
and merchants. And even though the merchants were technically at
(05:32):
the bottom of the pile since they just sold the
work of other people rather than creating work of their own,
a lot of the merchants became quite rich. Japan became
home to a thriving middle class thanks to all of
these different industries and the increased commerce that was coming
with people traveling everywhere and maintaining multiple residences in Edo.
(05:54):
Visiting Daimio and their large retinues of samurai tipped the
gender balance within the city, spawning another industry, one of
pleasure and entertainment to cater to their interests. This whole
world of fashion, luxury, and amusement became known as the
floating world or okio. The newly wealthy merchants and artisans
had access to the floating world as well, but also
(06:16):
spawned a whole school of art called you ki o
A or Pictures of a Floating World, and these were
basically pictures, paintings and wood black prints of things like
pleasure districts, courtisign's, geisha tea houses, kabuki actors, that sort
of thing, and they were hugely popular among the growing
middle class. It was in this school of art that
(06:37):
Hokuside trained as an artist, and we're going to talk
about how that training came about after a brief word
from a sponsor. So to return to Hokusai specifically, we
know a lot more about his professional life than about
his personal life. There's a fair amount of contradiction when
it comes to the details of his biography. Thanks to
its age and the fact that a lot of knowledge
(06:58):
of it that survives today. It's kind of glean from
a wide range of sources, like introductions he wrote to
his own books and notes from other artists that were
compiled well after his death. He was born Kawamura Tokitao.
He had an uncle named Nakajima isay who was a
mirror polisher. This was actually a prestigious position because mirrors
(07:21):
at the time were mainly made from bronze rather than
silvered glass. Mirror polishing required a special and exact set
of skills, and Hocusized uncle had no heir to train
to take over this position, so hocusis uncle adopted him,
and later on reflections, refractions, lenses, and optical effects would
become a huge part of hocusized work. Hocus I started
(07:46):
writing and drawing at the age of six, and these
are two skills that are really connected quite closely in
Japanese culture thanks to the use of kanji in written language.
Later on, hokus I would also say that anyone who
could write could also draw, and he would create the
paintings that were basically built up from a series of
written words. It's unclear whether hokus I just didn't want
(08:07):
to be a mirror polisher, or whether he didn't get
along with his uncle, or whether he correctly concluded that
bronze mirrors were going to go out of fashion, but regardless,
as a teen he did not pursue his uncle's line
of work. He worked instead for a publisher and a
lending library, and he worked as a block carver, making
blocks for woodblock prints, even though he demonstrated a talent
(08:30):
for art at a very young age, and his uncle's
position meant he could get access to the showgun's official
painters hocus, as formal education in art didn't actually start
until he was nineteen, he joined the studio of Katsukawa
Centual a uk O a artist in seventeen seventy nine.
Katsukawa some shows specialty was woodblock prints of kabuki actors.
(08:54):
While working in Katsukawa's studio, hokus I signed his Prince
Shun rule, which is a combination of a character from
his teacher's name plus an additional character, and this was
traditionally how art students would sign their work with like
a character from their teacher's name plus another character of
their own choosing. Hokus I worked with the Katsukawa School
(09:14):
until seventeen, and these years are known as hokus as
Chunro period. During this period, he also illustrated about fifty books,
and he made woodblock prints of a lot of subjects
that were common in the u k o A School.
Although little of his painting work survives from this period,
it's clear that he studied painting at the Katsukawa School
as well. Hokus I also started experimenting with Western style
(09:38):
vanishing point perspectives in his work during this time, and
that's a theme that would resurface later on. I will
find some visual resources to look at and link them
from our show notes about Western style banishing point perspectives
services the way that perspective has traditionally worked in in
various Asian art. Because it's hard to explain with word,
(10:00):
some show died in seventeen ninety two, and two years later,
for reasons that aren't completely clear, hokus I left the
school and stopped using the name shun Row. He found
another position now that Tawaria family hired him to train
their son, whose father, an artist, had died. Hokus I
was allowed to use the name Suli, which was the
(10:22):
name of the deceased father, until his son was ready
to assume his role as heir and leader of the
family's school. The Tawaria family apparently had quite a bit
of wealth and status, so while he was with them,
hokus I had access to the best paints, inks, and
other art materials, and for about four years he produced
(10:42):
a large number of privately commissioned prints known as surimono,
as well as a number of paintings. Working with privately
commissioned prince gave Hokusi some artistic freedoms he didn't have before.
He didn't need to worry about sticking with less expensive
printing inks because the print runs themselves were much smaller
and everything was being paid for by his patrons. A
(11:04):
lot of these works were commissioned by poetry clubs as
accompaniment for playful works of poetry. Because of this work
in private commissions, Hokusai developed friendships with many prominent poets
and other well known figures, and he seems to have
been quite financially prosperous during his story period as well.
It was in the spring of when the Tauriyah Air
(11:26):
assumed control of the family school that Hokosa gave up
on the soul Re name and began working under the
name Hokusai Tokimasa. He would continue to change his name
from time to time after this point, which is a
pretty common practice among artists in the Edo period, but
the name Hokusai is the one that he really became
recognized for. He became so well known under that name
(11:48):
that even as he used other names, he would often
add Saki no Hokusai or the former Hokusai to his works.
It's like the artists formerly known as prince Um. After
leaving the Tawaraya family, he also experimented with a lot
of forms of art besides the standard prints, paintings, and
book illustrations that had made up a large portion of
(12:09):
his work before. He made a board game depicting a
journey from Edo to several pilgrimage sites and back again.
He also created puzzles and a deck of playing cards
based on the tail of Genji. He produced books of
his own, including manuals on how to draw, and he
published sketch books known as manga. He also made lots
and lots of dioramas. These were intricate illustrations that were
(12:31):
printed on one flat sheet or maybe two. You really
needed a lot of them, and they were meant to
be carefully cut out and then assembled, with the cut
pieces standing up vertically, which would create a three dimensional scene.
Many of these were extremely complex and detailed. One of
the prints in the m f AS exhibition is one
of these, uncut and working from a copy of it.
(12:52):
Curators tried to create an assembled version to kind of
accompany it so you could see the flat one as
it was printed and the assembled one. It's took them
multiple tries to get it to do. We mentioned before
that we don't know a great deal about Hokusai's personal life,
but what we do know is that he experienced a
series of tragedy starting around eighteen twenty. His oldest daughter
(13:14):
had married one of his students, and they divorced in
eight six. Hokosa became very very ill, and a year
later his wife died. His grandson, son of the daughter
who had divorced, did something. The details of what exactly
it was are unclear, but whatever it was led Hokusai
into some really huge financial problems. His third daughter, on
(13:36):
the other hand, was named katsushika Oi, and she became
a wonderful artist on her own, and it's possible that
she helped her father with some of his work. I
actually originally wanted to do the episode on her because
she seems to have been quite a character who loved
sake quite a lot, and she would sometimes substitute one
of the characters in her name for one meaning drunk
instead when she signed her artwork. But unfortunately, yeah, we
(13:59):
know even less about her and have way less of
a body of work to drop round to talk about
uh katsushika Oi than we do about her father. And
it's possible that all these tragedies and the lack of
money that followed were what spurred hokus I into making
his most famous work of art, thirty six Views of
Mount Fuji. As its name suggests, there are thirty six
(14:20):
prints each featuring Mount Fuji in some way, and the
Great Wave is one of those. The series fit in
well with a trend that was rushing through Japan at
that point, which was sets of full sized landscape prints
that worked together as a series. Another of these series
that you may have heard of is Hero. She gaves
fifty three stations of the Tokaido Road. Hokusai himself also
(14:44):
did a series on the stations of the Tokaido Road,
but hero she Gays became more famous than than hocus
Size did. Thirty six Views of Mount Fuji was also
inspired by Prussian blue ink, which was newly available in
Japan and known as Berlin Blue there. It led to
a huge demand for artwork that used the color blue,
(15:05):
and while the public clamored for azerier or prints done
entirely in shades of blue, hocus I started using the
blue paint for the outlines on his landscapes, which had
traditionally been black, and he also used them for prints
of birds and flowers. Hocus I also used lots of
blue in his work in general during this craze for blue,
and some of the prints in the thirty six Views
(15:25):
of Mount Fuji in their first edition printing, are almost
entirely blue. As people became less enamored with the color blue.
The same blocks would then be used to print new
editions of these works, but with more colors in them
that they weren't quite so overwhelmingly blue. After the success
of the thirty six Views of Mount Fuji, hocus I
(15:46):
created just an enormous number of landscape prints, but around
eighteen thirty four eighteen thirty five, he ran into some
trouble with his publisher, and the details, as is often
the case with his story, are unclear, although it seems
as though a publisher that he'd been working with on
several multi volume books of Prince suddenly went bankrupt, and
consequently later books that were supposed to come out went unpublished.
(16:11):
With this problem with his publisher, hoku Size commercial output
really dropped tremendously. Japan was also hit with an enormous
economic depression from eighteen thirty three eighteen thirty seven, and
that dried up demand for hokus Size work, and his
studio and its contents were destroyed in a fire in
eighteen thirty nine. In spite of all this and of
(16:36):
the changes in the market for artwork, hokus I continued
to be tremendously creative right through the end of his life.
He experimented with paintings and festival floats, and he designed
a sculpture. He died in eighteen forty nine, at the
age of ninety by the Japanese method of counting and
eighty nine by the Western method. Uh. He said he'd
be a truly skilled painter if he lived to be
(16:58):
a hundred. And at that point he had put out
just an enormous body of work, a lot of it
just extremely playful. He experimented with new ways of approaching artwork,
he made all of these creative strides. But he was like, Yeah,
if I could just live to be a hundred, then
I'd be a really skilled painter. Just ten more years
(17:21):
to get me there. So he drew and painted so
many things, but so much of his work was in
the form of wood black prints, And we're going to
talk a little bit more about how these prints were
made and also about how hokus I later influenced Western art.
After another brief word from a sponsor. So often when
(17:43):
we talk about visual artists on the show, we're talking
about people who made each piece of art as one thing.
So painters and sculptors and potters and textile artists, they
make a work of art, and while you can see
pictures of that work of art or maybe make prints
of it, there's only one original. Like you go to
a museum and you see the Mona Lisa, there's one
(18:03):
of it. That's not the case for one of hokusis
primary media, the wood block print. Hokus size wood block
prints include all the typical subjects of the ukio A school,
as well as waterfalls, birds and flowers, dragons, ghosts and monsters, fish, lanterns.
It goes on and on in a huge range of subjects.
(18:26):
Printmaking isn't unique to Japanese art, but in the Edo
period in particular, wood black prints were a very popular
form of art in Japan. First, the artist would create
the picture. Then a block cutter would put that picture
face down onto the wooden block, secure it there, and
very very carefully cut out the block along the lines
of the artwork. A black and white work could use
(18:48):
just one block, but for a color work, the block
carver would take an impression of that original carving to
make a different block for each layer of color. To
make the actual print, print printmakers inked the block lay
paper over it, and they rubbed the back to transfer
the ink onto the paper. This made print making a collaborative,
(19:09):
collective form of art, and says Hocusi himself had worked
as a block carver, he had perspectives that came from
all parts of this process. There was no press involved
that a lot of people think of when making prints.
With these blocks, printmakers could make lots and lots of
copies of the same work of art, which is why
you can find copies of the Great Wave and other
(19:31):
Edo period prints that came from those original blocks in
museums all over the world rather than just one museum.
And it also meant that a lot of people living
at the time were able to afford to buy his
work and have artwork on their walls. Hocusis work was
actually at one point even printed on papers for rice snacks,
almost like collectible cereal boxes like the the snack manufacturer
(19:54):
was was hoping that people would want to buy their
snacks more so they could have more hocus I art
from the wrappers. I love it. I wish we could
get works of art with our snakes. Uh. Commodore Matthew
Perry arrived in Japan on July eighteenth of eighteen fifty three,
just a few years after hokusis death, and acting on
behalf of the U. S Government, he demanded that Japan
(20:15):
open trade to the West. Although Perry's fleet was small,
Japan had no navy with which to defend itself, and
so it was forced to negotiate. Japan and the United
States signed a trading agreement in eighteen fifty four. Further
treaties followed, most of them unequal and benefiting the other
trading partners more than Japan. Naturally, this affected Japan as
(20:38):
a nation dramatically. For example, the Tokugawa Shogunate fell and
was replaced by an emperor. But our focus here is
really going to stay on the artwork. While hokusized work
had begun to fall out of imperial favor, this newly
opened trade with the West sparked a craze for Japanese
art and culture fans. Kimonos, screens, and porcelain were in
(21:01):
huge demand in the West. Diplomats, tourists, and officials who
visited Japan also came home with the artwork that they
bought while living there. A big part of the m
f as Japanese artwork collection is actually a donation from
Dr William Statist Bigelow, who lived in Japan from eighteen
eighty two to eighteen eighty nine and then donated the
collection of art that he acquired while there to the
(21:23):
museum in nineteen eleven. For those who didn't acquire their
Japanese art and artifacts by visiting Japan. All this enthusiasm
for Japanese culture had the unfortunate effect of giving Westerners
a rather warped and stereotypical view of Japan. However, would
black prints and other Japanese art wound up being hugely
(21:44):
influential to artists in the West as well, and this
are this influence became known as japan is m. Felix Brequamant,
who was a French Impressionist painter, found a set of
Hoku sized manga in Paris in eighteen fifty six. He
started sharing hocusize work with his artist friends, and soon
other Impressionist artists were really seeking out and learning from
(22:06):
hocus size art as well as the other as well
as the work of other artists from the uk O
A school. The Impressionist painters started to imitate the use
of color, lines and perspectives along with hocus eyes, often
very playful treatment of visual subjects. Claude Money acquired about
two hundred and fifty Japanese prints, twenty three of them
(22:28):
by Hokusai, and then, like Hokusai, he made a practice
of painting the same thing in many angles and from
many settings, you can see this clear Japanese influence, for
example in Ari DeLux, Devan Japonet and Vincent van gos
La Cartisen and a series of etchings by Mary Cassatt. Yeah,
(22:49):
if you, if you sort of line up lots of
uh hocus i prints and other work from the uk
A school next to lots of Impressionist and post Impressionist work. Um,
it's pretty easy in a lot of cases, even for
a late person who's not like deeply uh and meshed
in the world of art and art history, to see, um,
(23:10):
to see the progression from this Japanese art style into
Western art. It's pretty fascinating. I love it. I love it.
I do too this well. And so I did not
know how enormous this exhibition was when I went in there. Uh.
I thought it was about half the size that it was.
And then I came around a corner and there was
(23:31):
basically that entire size of what I had just seen,
doubled again or stuff. Uh. And a lot of it
is really incredible. Um, some of it. You know, there's
a whole, a whole Japanese artwork section of the museum
that you can see at any time, even when this
exhibition is not part of it anymore. UM. But I
do really like that, uh, that this artwork was printed
(23:55):
on mass and popularly consumed. UM. And so you know,
lots of folks just bought prints as a matter of course,
And you have all these prints that are still in
pristine condition that date back to the eighteen fifties and
before in museums all over the world. I think that's
pretty interesting. It's fabulous. Do he has it has less
(24:17):
of the concern about where that art should rightfully be
since the same prints are also available in many museums
in Japan. And it's a question that comes up sometimes
when we're talking about art and what is in museums
around the world and where it came from. Yeah, do
you also have some interesting listener mail to share with us?
I do. It is about our recent two part episode
(24:41):
on Frankie Manning. I have been pleasantly surprised by our
email about Frankie Manning. Uh. Based on past experience, I
had expected our conversation about cultural appropriation, which you could
say applies to this episode two. Uh. I expect that
that to make people really mad based on some previous
(25:01):
experience on the podcast but most of the people who
have written and have been extremely sweet. Um. I some
of the email we've gotten has been a little misguided,
but it's mostly very nice. So I this is a
case where like sometimes we've read really angry email that
people have sent us to explain why why. That's not
(25:22):
the point of view that we were talking about. But
like people who have written have just been so sweet
that I don't really want to embarrass anyone who sent
us sweet email. UM. Instead, I'm going to read this
one from Stephen. Stephen says, Hello, Tracy and Holly. You
do a great show. I've been listening to the podcast
for years now and it really got me interested in
the other house stuff works, podcasts and beyond. This has
(25:43):
truly given me great listening for long car drives and
working around the house. Keep up the good work. You
guys did a great job covering Frank Frankie Manning. So
about your question regarding whether it is appropriate or not
to have Lindy Hop dancing at your wedding, I started
dancing back when the Revival was at his height. In
I've enjoyed six counts swing at eight count Lindy Hop
(26:04):
and eventually Blues dancing in quotation marks that's another story.
Though I've listened to and taken lessons from Frankie Manning.
Based on my experience, you were correct when you mentioned
that Frankie was more than happy to teach anyone who
wanted to learn. He devoted most of the rest of
his life to teaching after Aaron and Steve Mitchell Ridge
reached out to him. Whenever I saw him teach a class,
(26:25):
he was having the time of his life. I have
also attended lectures slash sermons given by another wonderful person
from that area, Don Hampton, as I understand it, though
I cannot confirm it from research. She was fourteen years
old and on that trip to Rio with Frankie in
the dance troupe. In fact, at the outbreak of the war,
she was the first person they sent back home since
(26:46):
she was so young. She is of that era to
knew Frankie and a number of the original dancers intimately,
so when she talks about dancing, she is a person
of authority who was around and it was all beginning.
Below is a link to a video of John Hampton
talk can get Frankie Manning's birthday party in New York City.
This echoes a talk I heard her give at Swing Out,
New Hampshire in two thousand five. She discussed her becoming
(27:09):
aware of the swing revival that was occurring in the nineties,
and that a friend brought her to the dance club
where people were swing dancing. She was absolutely tickled that
people had started up dancing again, and one of her
comments was and most of them were white. Her words,
she didn't shouldn't mind that the dance wasn't as fully
attended by African Americans. She was just happy someone was
(27:30):
continuing the tradition, even if they were of a different
different ethnicity. She's one of the sweetest people you could
ever meet, and it has always been a joyed to
hear her talk about dancing and it's positive impact on
our culture and how it can bridge human differences. And
then he gives us a link. I'm gonna stick that
link in the share notes. The sound isn't great, but
you'll get a great feel for what she's like as
a person. Pay particular attention to her talk at the
(27:52):
seven minute mark. I've heard Frankie talk a number of
times and would be happy to share for the stories
you have about his life and dancing if you want
to hear them. Sorry about the length of this email,
don't apologize. It's great. I'm sure you get plenty of mail,
which we definitely do, and then he says, I hope
you have a good time at your wedding. Um, I
wanted to read this one. We've gotten several great emails,
(28:14):
and I wanted to read this one because it's sort
of another perspective from somebody who was dancing UH at
the time I have. We've gotten several that sort of
echo the thing that I said, which is that when
I was learning swing dancing, zero of this information about
where Lindy Hop came from was really included in uh
in the class, like sometimes Frankie Manning would be mentioned,
(28:36):
but not a lot about his history or where he
came from or how this dance developed. Um. We did
even get an email from somebody who said this like
her experience was similar to that, and she had just
assumed that Frankie was white because everyone else who was
taking dance with her was also white. So it seems
like a logical conclusion. So I think there are Uh.
The trend in our email is that we have had
(28:59):
lots of folks who started Lyndy Hop dancing while Frankie
Manning was still alive and had the opportunity to learn
directly from him, um and who all seemed to have
a very uh nuanced and thoughtful approach to the idea
of cultural appropriation in money hup. And then a lot
of people who came along after uh Frankie Manning had
passed away and and he wasn't so personally present in
(29:21):
Lindy Hop anymore, who had similar experiences to what I had,
which is that that just was never mentioned and it
was not something we thought about or knew about it
all until much later. So all of that ties together
and a big ongoing conversation that basically boils down to
just think about what you're doing, and be thoughtful and
listen to other people. Uh and and and don't take
(29:42):
for granted that something is okay to just do without
thinking about it. If you would like to write to
us about this or any other podcast, we are at
History Podcast at how Stuffworks dot com. We're also on
Facebook at facebook dot com, slash missed in History and
on Twitter at miss in History. Our tumbler is missed
in History dot tembler dot com and or on Pinterest
at pents dot com, slash missed in History. If you
(30:04):
would like to learn more about what we talked about today,
you can come to our parent company's website, which is
how stuff Works dot com. Put the word fractals in
the search part or the word cocus I and you
will find how Fractals Work, which talks about how hocus
I used fractal like images in the Great Wave. You
can also come to our website where you will find
the show notes that we've been talking about, an archive
(30:25):
of every single episode ever, lots of other cool stuff,
so you can do all that and a whole lot
more at how stuff works dot com or missed in
History dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is how Stuff Work staff
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