Estampe hokusai biography wife

The great wave meaning

Hokusai is widely recognized as one of Japan's greatest artists, having modernized traditional print styles through his innovations in subject and composition. His work celebrated Japan as a unified nation, depicting a diversity of landscapes and activities linked by shared symbols and stories. He was among the first artists to be shaped by and to shape globalization, drawing from international influences and, later, being embraced by European artists who borrowed his decorative motifs, his practice of working in series, and his vision of contemporary society.

To this day, a plethora of artists continue to reckon with his legacy. But beyond this masterpiece, numerous details in Hokusai's prints are well worthy of our attention. In this woodcut, a woman is shown reclining, her head tilted back toward the left side of the frame and her black hair tied back, as two octopi envelop her body. The larger of these, on the right, is shown performing cunnilingus, holding the woman's body in place with tentacles wrapped around her legs, torso and arms, while the smaller octopus, close to her cheek, stimulates her left nipple and mouth.

There appear to be rocks on either side of the group and the space around the illustra-tion is filled with tightly distributed text detailing a story in which an octopus informs a woman that he will be taking her to an undersea palace. This image is a particularly impressive example of the erotic genre known as 'shunga,' which translates literally to the euphemistic 'pictures of spring,' which was particularly popular in the nineteenth century.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was and continues to be popular primarily due to Hokusai's skill in capturing female pleasure, with the open position of the woman's body, her reclining head, closed eyes and open mouth evoking her sense of abandon and inspiring viewers' own flights of fantasy. In addition to providing titillation to viewers, such images were seen as offering protection to the owner.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was published in a volume of shunga published by Hokusai in ; he continued work in this genre until , by which point he had published three volumes.