Great military leaders come and go, entire nations disappear from the face of the earth, new cities appear. And creative people absorb all the changes in the world around them and transform their knowledge into unique works of art. Thus, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the ukiyo-e painting movement appeared in Japan, which can be translated as “the fast-flowing world.” A striking representative of ukiyo-e was Katsushika Hokusai – an extraordinary and unique artist who devoted his entire life to drawing, but recognized himself as a true painter only at the age of 50.

Hokusai became famous not only for his ability to masterfully draw, but also for his love of changing pseudonyms. He had more than thirty of them, and each of them symbolizes a specific creative era in the artist’s life.

The exact date of birth of Tokitaro (his real name) is unknown, but it is assumed that he was born on October 30, 1760, into a poor family. The future artist’s adoptive father worked for the shogun, making and painting mirrors, and Tokitaro began drawing at the age of six. However, he did not become the legal heir: in 1770, the boy left his father’s workshop, got a job as a messenger in a bookstore and took the name Tetsudo. There he learned to read and write.

Then there was work in an engraving workshop and attempts to prove himself in wood carving. Although Tokitaro was only 14 years old, he already wanted to carve compositions based on his own sketches. Strict prohibitions on creative experiments prompted the young artist to leave the workshop. So in 1778, he entered the studio of Katsukawa Shunsho, who worked in the ukiyo-e genre, as an apprentice.

It was under the sensitive guidance of Katsukawa that Tokitaro’s talent manifested itself, and he was even allowed to sign his paintings with his own name, which was extremely rare for ordinary students. These were amazing yakusha-e prints depicting popular kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, beautiful women, and landscapes. In those years, Tokitaro called himself Shunro.

Tokitaro took the pseudonym “Katsushika Hokusai” between 1796 and 1799. It was a good time – the artist made many paintings and prints with humorous inscriptions, which the intelligentsia really liked. Then there was the “shunga” period with a series of erotic paintings.

Having changed more than thirty pseudonyms, in old age Tokitaro came under the name Gakyorojin or the Old Man Mad with Love for Painting. The peak of his work was a series of landscapes depicting Fujiyama. The 36 Views of Fuji also includes the most famous work, Red Fujiyama (also known as Victorious Wind, Clear Morning), sold at Christie’s in March 2019 for $507,000.

Surprisingly, it was the expanded series with images of the eternal Fujiyama that completed Hokusai’s creative path. Having completed the publication of 100 Views of Fuji, Tokitaro returned to a modest lifestyle.

Hokusai died at the age of 88 and left behind a rich legacy – more than 30 thousand drawings, sketches, paintings and engravings, about 500 books with illustrations, hundreds of sketches about the life of the Japanese. And, of course, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, valued by a collector at $540,000. He was not afraid of old age and death, but until the last days of his life he wanted to study, explore the world around him, and create.