RS longa, vita brevis,” though a time-worn aphorism, seems the best comment upon these words of Hokusai, which preface the “Fugaku Hiak’kei” (Hundred Views of Fuji). Judging from what he had accomplished, before his death in 1849, at the age of eighty-nine, and the continual increase in his powers, it is easy to believe that had his life been extended to the limit he craved, the prophecy would have been fulfilled.

M. Louis Gonse says of Hokusai, “He is the last and most brilliant figure of a progress of more than ten centuries—the exuberant and exquisite product of a time of profound peace and incomparable refinement.”

From the standpoint of Buddhism, Hokusai was the crowning glory, the supreme efflorescence of countless previous incarnations. In his career he epitomized the theory of evolution, the embryonic stages being exemplified by his progress through the schools. Trained in the atelier of Shunsho, the most skillful exponent of Ukiyo-ye art, he rapidly absorbed the methods of his master; but even the Popular School was trammelled by convention, and Hokusai’s genius, rejecting academic fetters, winged its flight through all the realms of oriental art.

He drank at the fountain-head of China, then absorbed the traditions of the “two great streams of Kano and Tosa, which flowed without mixing to the middle of the eighteenth century.” Kano, springing from Chinese models, was transformed by the genius of Masanobu and his followers, and became the most illustrious school of painting in Japan. It was the official school of the Shoguns, in opposition to “Tosa”—that elegant and exquisite appanage of the Mikados, which represented aristocratic taste.

The Tosa school is characterized by extreme delicacy of execution and fine use of the brush, as in Persian miniature painting. The splendour of the screens of Tosa has never been surpassed, with their precious harmonies in colour and delicate designs (so often imitated in lacquer), against glorious backgrounds in rich gold-leaf.

He studied the technique of Okio, founder of the school of realism, which, maturing at Kyoto, led up to “Ukiyo-ye,” the popular art of the masses of Yedo. Ukiyo-ye, literally “The Floating World,” despised by the ascetic disciples of Buddha and Confucius for picturing the gay world of fashion and folly, was the name of the school which liberated Japanese art from the shackles of centuries of tradition.

Ukiyo-ye is the supreme expression, the concentrated essence of the schools, a river of art whose fount was India, Persia and China. For centuries it was forced into narrow channels by the haughty and exclusive aristocracy; but ever widening, its branches at last united and swept into their joyous current the common people of Japan, who, intuitively art lovers, had ever thirsted for the living stream. Now they beheld themselves reflected, in all the naturalness of daily life, yet with a spiritual rendering, “appealing,” said Jarves, “to those intuitions with which the soul is freighted when it first comes to earth, whose force is ever manifested by a longing for an ideal not of the earth, and whose presence can only be explained as an augury of a superior life to be, or else the dim reminiscence of one gone; and the recognition of this ideal is the touchstone of art—art which then becomes the solution of immortality.”

The originators of Ukiyo-ye, which included in its scope painting proper, book illustration and single-sheet pictorial prints, were Iwasa Matahei and Moronobu, followed in long succession by Shunsui, the precursor of Hokusai’s master, Shunsho; and united with it were the engravers of the Torii school, culminating in Kiyonaga (with whose grace and beauty of line Hokusai could never compete), the refined offshoot of the Kitao, and the elegant scion of Kano—Yeishi.

Hokusai’s individuality and independence long galled his master, and a final rupture was caused by the pupil’s enthusiasm for the bold and sweeping, black-and-white, calligraphic strokes of Kano. Then began a hard struggle for the youthful artist, who had no money and no influence. His father was a maker of metal mirrors, Hokusai’s real name being Nakajima Tetsu Jiro, but his pseudonyms were legion. In the atelier of Shunsho, he was called Shunro,—taking with the other disciples of this school of Katsukawa, the first syllable of his master’s name.

Cast adrift upon the streets of Yedo, he sold red pepper, and hawked almanacs, at the same time constantly studying, and seizing the best ideas from all the schools. Blent with an intuitive instinct for art, the Japanese nature is essentially histrionic, and throughout the whole career of Hokusai there is an element which is genuinely dramatic. C. J. Holmes, in his beautiful work on Hokusai, gives many romantic incidents in the artist’s life, and was it not by a theatrical tour de force that he first won popular favour?

He chose no doubt a national holiday, perhaps the festival of “Cherry Viewing,” when Uyeno Park is thronged with sightseers of every station in life. Here in the heart of the great city of Tokyo is a hallowed spot—majestic, grand and peaceful, where in mystic solemnity the sacred cedars enshrine that wondrous necropolis of illustrious dead,—for at Uyeno lie buried six of the famous Shoguns.

In the courtyard of one of the temples, Hokusai erected a rough scaffolding, upon which was spread a sheet of paper, eighteen yards long and eleven in width. Here in the sacred heart of Japan, with tubs of water and tubs of ink, the master and predestined genius of his country manifested his power. He swept his huge brush this way and that, the crowd constantly increasing in density, many scaling the temple roof to see the marvellous feat,—a colossal figure, springing into life at the touch of the creator. All who know his work can in imagination picture the grand sweeping curves and graduated shadings that the magic broom evolved; and the artistic people gazed spell-bound, while many a murmured “Naruhodo!” (Wonderful) and sibilant inhalation of the breath marked their recognition of the master’s power.

Displaying less of the artist than the genius at legerdemain were Hokusai’s street tricks—almost reprehensible did we not know the dire straits to which genius is often reduced. An eager expectant crowd dogged his footsteps and watched with delighted curiosity, while he sketched landscapes, upside down, with an egg or a bottle, or a wine measure, anything that came to his hand,—changing with bewildering effect from huge figures of Chinese heroes and demigods to microscopic drawings on grains of rice, and pictures made out of chance blots of ink.

His fame was noised abroad, and at last reached the ears of the Shogun, and now an unprecedented honour was conferred upon the humble apostle of the artisan, for he was summoned before the august presence to give an exhibition of his skill. The Japanese are ever imitative, and Hokusai may have borne in mind the legend of his prototype Sesshiu, an artist-priest of the fifteenth century, who sketched before the Emperor of China a marvellous dragon, with splashes from a broom plunged in ink.

Still more spectacular and theatrical was Hokusai’s debut, for, spreading a sheet of paper before the feet of the monarch, he covered it with a blue wash,—then seizing a live cock, he daubed its feet with a red pigment, and let it run over the wet colour, when the Shogun and his astonished courtiers beheld a flowing stream of liquid blue, upon which appeared to float filmy segregated petals of red maple leaves. A mere trick!—unworthy of genius, we might say, but Hokusai had gauged his countrymen, and knew that his jeu d’esprit would arouse and impress these aristocratic connoisseurs, jaded with ceremonial observances, more than any display of technical knowledge,—for the Japanese, as a nation, are naively childish in their love of novelty and amusement, and of the unusual and bizarre.

Is it not possible that this trickery of the master may have unconsciously supplied the motive for Hiroshige’s famous print of a Yedo suburb, chosen by Professor Fenollosa, in his beautiful work on Ukiyo-ye,—where he so poetically says, “the orange fire of maples deepens the blue of marshy pools”?

Space does not permit any detailed description of the compositions of Hokusai, and there is no complete catalogue of his works, the one nearest to accuracy being M. Edmond de Goncourt’s Catalogue raisonné. His fecundity was marvellous. He illustrated books of all kinds, poetry, comic albums, accounts of travels,—in fact his works are an encyclopedia of Japanese life. His paintings are scattered, and countless numbers lost, many being merely ephemeral drawings, thrown off for the passing pleasure of the populace. The original designs for the prints were transferred to the blocks, and lost, though the master rigidly superintended the reproduction of his works, and his wood-cutters were trained to follow the graceful sweeping curves with perfect accuracy, many of his compositions being ruled across for exact reduction.

Ukiyo-ye art is bound up with print development, and the climax of xylography had been reached in the time of Hokusai. Japanese book illustration, and single-sheet printing, revolutionized the world’s art. The great connoisseurs of colour tell us that nowhere else is there anything like it,—so rich and so full, that a print comes to have every quality of a complete painting.

Hokusai had served a four years’ apprenticeship to the school of engraving, and his practiced eye was ever ready to detect any inaccuracy in his workmen. “I warn the engraver,” he said, “not to add an eyeball underneath when I do not draw one. As to the nose, these two are mine,”—here he draws a nose in front and in profile,—“I will not have the nose of Utagawa.” The greatest difference exists in the beauty and colouring of the impressions, and the amateur, in his search for Ukiyo-ye gems, should not trust his unaided judgment.

M. Louis Gonse said of the surimono, “To me they are the most seductive morsels of Japanese art.” They are small, oblong prints, composed as programmes for festive occasions with a text of verse enriched by exquisite illustration. The surimono of Hokusai showed the influence of Tosa, the decoration being very elaborate, and delicate as a Persian miniature. In places, the surface of the print is goffered for ornament in relief, and the colouring is enforced by inlaying in gold, silver, bronze and tin.

Some of the best examples of Hokusai’s art are the “Waterfalls,” the “Bridges,” “Thirty-six Views of Fuji,” the “Gwafu,” the “Hundred Views of Fuji” (of which the finest edition was brought out in London with a commentary by Mr. F. V. Dickins), and the fifteen volumes of the “Mang-wa,”—a term hardly translatable, but signifying fugitive sketches, or drawing as it comes, spontaneously. The preface best gives us the intention of the master.

“Under the roof of Boksenn, in Nagoya, he dreamed and drew some three hundred compositions. The things of Heaven and of Buddha, the life of men and women, even birds and beasts, plants and trees, he has included them all, and under his brush every phase and form of existence has arisen. The master has tried to give life to everything he has painted, and the joy and happiness so faithfully expressed in his work are a plain proof of his victory.”

Hokusai has been called the king of the artisans, and it was for them especially that he composed the drawings of Mang-wa. His influence is expressed in all their works: in the structure of the roofs of temples, in houses and their interiors; upon the things of every-day life, as upon flowers and landscapes, upon lacquer, inros and netsukis, bronzes and ivory.

Gustave Geffroy truly gauged the genius of Hokusai in speaking of his “flights beyond the horizon.” In the master we recognize the creator. He feels the mystery of the birth of mountains, as in that weird composition of Fuji, where the great cone is seen rising above circle upon circle of serpentine coils, forming the mystic tomoyé—symbol of creation and eternity. He feels the pulsation of the universe, and the life of ocean, and in a frenzy of creative power, beneath his hand the curved crests of foaming waves break into life, flashing into countless sea-birds born of the froth of ocean. He is the painter of chimera, the prophet of cataclysm; he “gives the world a shake and invents chaos.” How vivid is Holmes’ description of the wave in the seventh Mang-wa!

“Man becomes a mere insect, crouching in his frail catamaran, as the giant billow topples and shakes far above him. The convention of black lines with which he represents falling rain is as effectual as his conventions for water are fanciful. The storm of Rembrandt, of Rubens, or of Turner, is often terrible but never really wet; Constable gets the effect of wetness, but his storms are not terrible. Hokusai knows how a gale lashes water into foam, and bows the tree before it; how the gusts blow the people hither and thither, how sheets of drenching rain half veil a landscape, how the great white cone of his beloved Fuji gleams through a steady downpour! His lightning is rather odd in comparison with the realistic studies of the great artists of Europe, but what European ever tried an effect so stupendous as that recorded in ‘Fugaku Hiak’kei,’ where the snowy top of Fuji is seen at evening, crimson with the last fiery rays of sunset, while all the flanks of the mountain are hidden by a dark storm-cloud, through which the lightning flashes!”

Poetry and art are ever allied, and the vibrations of genius encircle the globe. Byron and Ruskin and Hokusai were contemporaries. Possibly at the very moment when the poet was immortalizing himself by composing his “Storm in the Alps,” the grand “old man, mad about drawing,” was sketching the peerless mountain:—

Lord Byron’s vivid pen also best describes the squally storms of both Hiroshige and Hokusai,—where

Was not Hokusai truly “a portion of the tempest”? as he represents himself, drawing Fuji, in winter, working in a frenzy of haste,—for the ground is covered with snow—two brushes in his hand, and wonder of wonders! one held between his toes. This picture, also from “The Hundred Views of Fuji,” prefaces Marcus B. Huish’s work on Japanese art.

The closing scene in the drama of Hokusai’s life is full of pathos. Though his whole career had been shadowed by poverty, and shrouded in obscurity, his art still held him earth-bound. Upon his death-bed he said, “If Heaven would only grant me ten more years!”

Then, as he realized that the end approached, he murmured, “If Heaven had but granted me five more years I could have been a real painter.”

So ended the life of the master of Ukiyo-ye. His body lies beneath the pines of Asakusa, but would we not gladly believe that his “soul turned Will-o’-the-wisp, may ever come and go at ease, over the summer fields,”—for this was the last expression of his passionate desire.