In 1811, Japanese artist Hokusai Katsushika (葛飾 北斎; c. 31 October 1760 – 10 May 1849) changed his name to Taito and began work on his Hokusai Manga (curious drawings) and various etehon, or art manuals. His first volume of Manga was published in 1814 and was an immediate success.
He produced twelve volumes in his lifetime, with three more published posthumously. The volumes are block-printed in black, grey and pink, and contain depictions of multitude of things, including people, natural features, constructions, landscapes and work tools.
Each page collects a set of different illustrations tied to a specific theme or a series of variations on the same figure, intended to explain different kinds of movements.
“From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.”
– Hokusai Katsushika
14 out of 15 Hokusai’s Manga are hosted under a Public Domain License on Archive.org
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