葛飾 北斎

choi

Japanese printmaking | Riding the Crest; Hokusai is known for one image. That narrow view should be revised. Economist, June 6, 2015.
www.economist.com/news/books-and ... evised-riding-crest

Note:
(a) This is an exhibition review:

Hokusai. Boston: Museum of Fine Art, Apr 5, 2015-Aug 9, 2015.
www.mfa.org/exhibitions/hokusai

(b) "complexity of Hokusai’s oeuvre"
(i) oeuvre (n; French œuvre, literally, work, from Latin The English noun opera is opera)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oeuvre

* The English noun opera was borrowed from Italian noun feminine opera, which was in turned borrowed from Latin noun feminine opera meaning work.
(ii) Hokusai
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai
(1760? -1849; Katsushika Hokusai  葛飾 北斎; It is believed his father was the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise; Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime)

The ja.wikipedia.org page for him is richer: born in 武蔵国葛飾郡 (present-day Tokyo); 貧しい百姓の子; 姓は川村氏、幼名は時太郎 Tokitarō; 明和元年（1764年） 幼くして、幕府御用達鏡磨師であった中島伊勢の養子となったが、のち、実子に家督を譲り、家を出る [translation: In 1764, given to NAKAJIMA Ise for adoption, but later having been passed over for inheritance, left home]; 寛政7年（1795年） 「北斎宗理」の号を用いる)

(c) his works mentioned in the review: “ ‘Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji’ (which includes both ‘The Great Wave’ and another well-known work, ‘Red Mt Fuji’ ”

(i) “Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)”

『冨嶽三十六景』「神奈川沖浪裏」
(ii) 『冨嶽三十六景 凱風快晴』 （通称：赤富士）
葛飾北斎
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%91%9B%E9%A3%BE%E5%8C%97%E6%96%8E

choi

(g) "When Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh first saw Hokusai’s prints, with their vivid colours and startling, off-kilter points of view, it sparked a revolution in their own art. * * * One irony highlighted by this show is that whereas Hokusai’s prints were prized in Europe for their 'exotic' Japonisme, he himself was unusually receptive to Western influences. He often adopts a version of vanishing-point perspective, learned from studying the few European artworks that found their way into Japan’s closed society through the port of Nagasaki."
(i) off-kilter (adj):
"1: not in perfect balance :  a bit askew
2:  ECCENTRIC, UNCONVENTIONAL <off–kilter characters> <an off–kilter approach>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/off-kilter
(ii) Japonism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonism
(from the French Japonisme, first used in 1872)   
(iii) vanishing point
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_point

View the illustrations at the bottom.

(h) "His 'Newly Published Perspective Picture: One Hundred Ghost Stories in a Haunted House' reveals how Hokusai exploited the telescoping view to bizarre ends, giving his ghouls a plausible space within which to enact their implausible drama."

葛飾北斎, 新板浮繪 化物屋鋪 百物語の圖. publisher: NISHIMURAYA Yohachi (Eijudô) 西村屋 与八 (永寿堂), “about 1790.”
www.mfa.org/collections/object/n ... gatari-no-zu-252272

* 西村屋 与八 was the (human) owner of 永寿堂.

choi

(d) Japanese English dictionary
* ura 裏 【うら】 (n): "(3) lining; inside"
* gaifū 凱風 【がいふう】 (n): "southerly wind"
* kaisei 快晴 【かいせい】 (n): "clear weather; cloudless weather"
* Daruma だるま 《達磨》 (n): "daruma"  (The English word "Daruma" is Japanese pronunciation.)        
* betsuin 別院 【べついん】 (n): "branch temple"
        
(e) “Hokusai eschewed high-flown rhetoric and pompous symbolism”

high-flown (adj)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/high-flown

(f) "On one occasion he whipped up over the course of a few hours a 66-foot-high (20-metre) portrait in ink of Daruma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, a crowd-pleasing stunt"
(i) "On October 5, 1817 [aged 57] he painted at the Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin in Nagoya the 'Big Daruma' 大達磨 on paper, measuring 18x10.8 metres, impressing many onlookers. Although the original was destroyed in 1945, promotional handbills from that time survived and are preserved at the Nagoya City Museum 名古屋市博物館."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai
(ii) 北斎「大達磨絵」揮毫の地. 本願寺名古屋別院, undated.
www.tokai-hongwanji.net/hn/hn_2_1.html

* 本願寺 (established as a temple in 1321 at Kyoto; 浄土真宗)   
(iii) The painting (black in WHITE background) is the second one from the left, in the second row of the second cluster of paintings (total 12, consisting of 3 by 4 paintings), in

Bodhidharma; der erste Patriarch des Zen. June 4, 2014.
www.univie.ac.at/rel_jap/an/Geschichte:Zen/Bodhidharma