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Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji


Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei?) is a series of landscape prints by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai (1760–1849). The series depicts Mount Fuji from different locations and in various seasons and weather conditions.

The series was produced from c. 1830 to 1832, when Hokusai was in his seventies and at the height of his career, and published by Nishimura Yohachi. Among the prints are three of Hokusai's most famous: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, South Wind, Clear Sky, and Rainstorm Beneath the Summit. The series has been described as the artist's "indisputable colour-print masterpiece".

Mount Fuji is a popular subject for Japanese art due to its cultural and religious significance. This belief can be traced to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, where a goddess deposits the elixir of life on the peak. As Henry Smith explains, "Thus from an early time, Mt. Fuji was seen as the source of the secret of immortality, a tradition that was at the heart of Hokusai's own obsession with the mountain."

The most famous single image from the series is widely known in English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa-oki nami-ura?), although a more literal translation might be, "Off Kanagawa, the back (or underside) of a wave." It depicts three boats being threatened by a large wave while Mount Fuji rises in the background. While generally assumed to be a tsunami, the wave was probably intended to simply be a large ocean wave.


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