In the preface to the “Hundred Views of Fuji” he thus summarises his life: “From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the forms of things. By the time I was fifty I had published an infinity of designs; but all I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes, and insects. In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, be it but a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy-five by me, once Hokusai, to-day Gwakio Rojin, the old man mad about drawing.”

And, indeed, this was no idle boast, for he lived to a great age, and steadily gained power. When finally stricken down the old man’s lively spirit is still unsubdued, and he writes playfully to a friend: “King Yemma [the Japanese Pluto], being very old, is retiring from business, so he has built a pretty country house, and asks me to go and paint a kakemono for him. I am thus obliged to leave, and when I go shall carry my drawings with me. I am going to take a room at the corner of the street, and shall be happy to see you whenever you pass that way.”

To the end his mind was absorbed by his art. On his death-bed he was heard to murmur: “If Heaven could only grant me ten more years.” Then a moment after: “If Heaven had only granted me five more years I should have become a real painter.” He died on the 10th of May 1849, in his ninetieth year.

On his tomb is inscribed this little verse, composed, according to the national custom, during his last hours:

All his life beset with poverty, unhappy in his domestic life, his dauntless spirit sustained him, and his incessant industry never flagged. He lived for the most part with one daughter, an artist also, in a bare room, with little or no furniture beyond his painting materials. When the room became unbearably dirty—and they were not squeamish—they changed to another house. Always poor, dressed like a pauper, ascetic in his mode of life, he had an utter contempt for money. When he received payment for his work the money lay uncounted at his side, and when importuned by a creditor he threw him one of the unopened packets and went back to his work.

In 1817 he published the first volume of the “Mangwa,” a collection of rough sketches, which, in its fifteen volumes, forms a veritable encyclopædia of Japanese life and industries, and is sufficient alone to establish him as one of the great draughtsmen of the world. These sketches were printed from woodblocks in a scheme of black, grey, and light red, and included studies of every kind—street scenes, architecture, birds, beasts, flowers, and insects. The “Hundred Views of Fuji,” similar in style, added still further to his reputation.

But even more striking and distinctive is the great series of colour prints illustrating the landscape of his country—the waterfalls, the bridges, and the “Thirty-Six Views of Fuji,” which are something quite new in Japanese art, not conventional landscapes of the old Chinese style, abstract and ideal scenes, but pictures of certain places, each with its individuality strongly stamped upon it. They are, however, equally far from the Western realistic standpoint, each picture being an audacious decorative arrangement both as regards line and colour. Most daring of all are the waterfalls, superb in their boldness of conception and rich, full colour, but equally fascinating are the quieter harmonies of the “Thirty-Six Views of Fuji.” To study such pictures is to be lifted out of the commonplace view of things and to look at nature through the temperament and with the eyes of a poet.

But, while so highly esteemed by European connoisseurs, Hokusai is by no means so highly thought of in Japan. And this is not entirely due to the fact that he was a man of the people, a painter of the vulgar and the commonplace. Though it is hardly possible for us to overrate the magnitude of his genius, still, the more we learn of the great painters of the older schools the more we see the reason of the Japanese verdict, for even we would hesitate to place his work alongside that of Cho Densu, of Sesshiu, and of the great Kano masters. The fact is that no man, however great, can afford to do as Hokusai did—to set aside altogether the accumulated benefits of centuries of experience and work absolutely fresh from the beginning. The greatness of his achievement shows the power of his personality, but the greatest results of all are built on the foundations of others. And in spite of its amazing originality and its force we must recognise that in Hokusai’s style there is a lack of the dignified reticence and grace—the culture, in fact—of the best work of the classic schools.