The Great Wave of Kanagawa

The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Print at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (JP1847)
Artist	Katsushika Hokusai
Year	ca. 1829–1833
Type	color woodblock
Dimensions	25.7 cm × 37.8 cm (10.1 in × 14.9 in)

The Great Wave off Kanagawa (, Kanagawa-oki nami ura, "Under a wave off Kanagawa"), also known as The Great Wave or simply The Wave, is a woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai. It was published sometime between 1829 and 1833 in the late Edo period as the first print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. It is Hokusai's most famous work, and one of the most recognizable works of Japanese art in the world.

The image depicts an enormous wave threatening boats off the coast of the town of Kanagawa (the present-day city of Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture). While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is more likely to be a large rogue wave. As in all the prints in the series, it depicts the area around Mount Fuji under particular conditions, and the mountain itself appears in the background.

Impressions of the print are in many Western collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, and in Claude Monet's home in Giverny, France, among many other collections.

Hokusai began painting when he was six years old. At age twelve, his father sent him to work at a booksellers. At sixteen, he was apprenticed as an engraver and spent three years learning the trade. At the same time he began to produce his own illustrations. At eighteen he was accepted as an apprentice to Katsukawa Shunshō, one of the foremost ukiyo-e artists of the time.