Welcome to the Hokusai Aquarium!

Introduction

Sea bream, rockfish, and flatfish. Rays, halfbeaks, bonito, squid, octopus, and abalone. It’s like being in an aquarium! All the pictures of fish and other sea creatures on exhibit were created by Hokusai during the Edo Period.
Japan is now known as one of the world’s aquarium superpowers, home to many museums and other facilities whose displays of ocean creatures transport us to the mysterious world beneath the waves. Today the Hokusai-kan Museum joins them, transforming into a paradise for fish and inviting you to visit the undersea world.

As an island nation, Japan has always had a close relationship to the ocean and to the creatures that live in it. Since ancient times, people living along the coast have encountered fish, shellfish, and other marine life as part of their daily lives. During the Edo Period, a culture of fish developed as a thriving trade in seafood spread throughout Edo and its environs by way of fish markets in Nihonbashi and elsewhere. This culture of fish greatly influenced the development of popular Edo cuisine such as sushi and tempura. It also spread to the world of ukiyo-e as leading artists in the genre such as Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Kuniyoshi all produced numerous popular works on the themes of fish and the sea.
Hokusai’s copybooks and design collections include many illustrations and patterns incorporating fish, shellfish, and other marine life. For example, instructional copybooks like Random Drawings by Hokusai and Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, both published in 1812, and On the Use of Coloring, published in 1848, include many pictures of all sorts of creatures of the sea. The detailed patterning of scaly fish and the complex bodily structures of shrimp and crabs perhaps made this an optimal theme for practicing painting. Although designed as copybooks, the realistic depictions and humorous content of these works enabled them to also serve as picture books that were simply enjoyable to look through, sparking people’s curiosity and stirring their interest.
In this exhibition, we present works by Hokusai on the theme of fish, shellfish, and other marine life, drawing primarily from his copybooks and design collections. Join us, then, in entering the mysterious world of the sea as depicted by Hokusai.