Japanese Wall Art

Katsushika Hokusai was seventy when he made the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, and he said he would not draw anything worth looking at until he was ninety. The series gave the world the Great Wave and the Red Fuji, and it gave Japan a way of seeing its own landscape: the mountain always there, small on the horizon behind a bridge, a tea house, a cooper's barrel, a gust of wind. Twenty-four of the views here, on stretched canvas in three sizes or as cloth triptychs on wooden hanging rails, and this page is about which view goes on which wall.

The Thirty-six Views, and what Hokusai was doing

Published around 1831, the series used the new Prussian blue pigment that had just reached Japan, which is why the water in the Great Wave is that colour. Each print shows Fuji from somewhere in Edo or the provinces, and the mountain is rarely the subject: it is the fixed point behind daily life, behind rice fields at Senju, a watermill at Onden, roofers on a shop in Suruga-cho, pilgrims crossing the sandbar at Enoshima. The Great Wave off Kanagawa is the most reproduced image in the history of art; the Red Fuji, Fine Wind, Clear Morning, is the mountain itself, filling the frame in the red of early sun. The noren carries the same wave in a doorway; the fans carry it in the hand.

Twenty-four views: the famous three and the quiet twenty-one

The Great Wave, the Red Fuji and the Rainstorm Beneath the Summit, the mountain dark with lightning at its foot, are the three everyone knows. The other twenty-one are the ones a wall is glad to have: Surugadai with a pine leaning over a street of walkers; the cushion pine at Aoyama with picnickers beneath; Senju with a groom leading a horse past a sluice; the Inume Pass with packhorses on a green ridge; the cooper at Fujimigahara with Fuji framed through his barrel; the gust at Ejiri scattering hats; the Mitsui shop with roofers and a kite; sunset from Ryogoku Bridge with a crowded ferry; the Sazai Hall balcony; Lower Meguro's yellow hills; the watermill at Onden; a snowy morning at Koishikawa; Enoshima at low tide; a cargo boat off Kazusa; fishing boats in Tago Bay; the tea house at Yoshida; Mannen Bridge at Fukagawa; two torii in the shallows at Noboto; the crowd on Nihonbashi. Three of them, the Rainstorm, Shichirigahama at sunset and the Great Wave, come as triptychs printed across three tall cloth panels on wooden rails.

Which view on which wall

Hang the Great Wave where the afternoon light hits it and where a guest sees it first. Hang the Red Fuji where you see it first in the morning. The quiet views, Koishikawa in snow, the tea house at Yoshida, the cooper in his barrel, are the ones for the room you sit in, because they reward being looked at twice. A pair of the Edo street views side by side, Nihonbashi and Suruga-cho, makes a wall about a city. The triptychs go over a bed or a long sofa, the three panels hung a hand's width apart so the wave breaks across the gaps.

Care

Canvas: dust with a dry cloth, keep out of direct sun, do not wet. Cloth triptychs: hang from the rails' cord, dust, and roll them round the rail for storage. These are reproductions of Hokusai's woodblock designs, printed on canvas or cloth at a size a wall can take; the originals are in museums, and every page says so.

Japanese wall art: the questions we are asked

Is this a real Hokusai print?

A reproduction of his design, printed on stretched canvas or cloth. The original woodblock prints are in museums and sell for the price of a house.

What sizes are the canvases?

Three, listed in centimetres on each page, from a size for above a desk to a size for above a sofa.

How do the triptychs hang?

Each of the three cloth panels has a wooden rail top and bottom and a cord; hang them from three hooks a hand's width apart.

Why is the water blue?

Prussian blue, a pigment that reached Japan just before Hokusai made the series. Before it, Japanese prints had no blue that lasted.