Katsushika Hokusai (1769-1849) could turn lead into gold. This was the premise of the Sainsbury Institute’s Third Thursday Lecture given by Dr Ellis Tinios titled ‘Hokusai the Alchemist’ on 20 February 2025. Instead of discussing the widely praised and studied inventiveness and variety of Hokusai’s work (his genius), Tinios turned our attention to the way Hokusai borrowed from visual sources and transformed these ordinary designs into dynamic images (his alchemy). With a focus on book illustrations published in the latter half of Hokusai’s career, Tinios presented five books to demonstrate this alchemy in action.
Tinios began with a comparison between the format of the Ryakugashiki books (1795-1813) by Kitao Masayoshi (1764-1824) and Hokusai manga (1814-78). Both books are visual encyclopaedia, featuring many small illustrations on the page. Masayoshi accused Hokusai of plagiarising this format, claiming ‘Hokusai never creates anything original, he only copies.’ Tinios challenged this by presenting the popular Chinese publication, the Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden (1679-1701), which illustrated a myriad of subjects in a similar format and was widely circulated in Japan before Masayoshi’s publications. Furthermore, through comparisons of pages from the Ryakugashiki and Hokusai manga, Tinios concluded that Hokusai’s work was more detailed than Masayoshi’s to be considered a direct copy and considered how Hokusai’s detailed illustrations would have proved more challenging to the block cutters than Masayoshi’s thicker lines. To Tinios, it is this dynamism and attention to details that distinguished Hokusai from other artists (including Masayoshi) and made his work so popular.
The second case of alchemy Tinios presented included examples from Hokusai’s popular colour print series Fugaku Sanjūrokkei (ca. 1830-32) and his illustrated book, Fugaku hyakkei (1834-49). These took direct inspiration from Hyaku fuji (1771) by Kawamura Minsetsu (active ca. 1690-1780). By examining a selection of illustrations, Tinios demonstrated how Hokusai took elements and transformed them into fresh designs by playing with perspective and compositions. In the scene of Mt Fuji through a circular window, Hokusai paid homage to Hyaku fuji by depicting the birds mentioned in the poem on Minsetsu’s page, though in his version he removed the poem; Hokusai didn’t need the text to be poetic.
Next, Tinios presented us with two examples of Hokusai using illustrated sources to learn about things he would not have seen. The first was a whaling scene depicted in Hokusai gafu (ca. 1824-49), which took source images from the Nihon sankai meisan zue (1754). Closer examination demonstrated again the similarities between the source material and Hokusai’s works, but revealed how Hokusai added more details and dynamism into his illustrations, most notably through his depictions of people.
The second example explored what Tinios coined a ‘virtual China’. From the 1830s to the last decade of his career, Hokusai produced 42 moralistic novels on China. Hokusai’s knowledge of China was entirely second hand and relied on imported illustrated books and images distilled from those sources by earlier Japanese artists. While further research is needed to identify images in Chinese publications that Hokusai drew from, Tinios presented several probable sources for Hokusai’s Ehon Shinpen Suikogaden (1829) and Ehon Tōshisen (1880). Tinios argued that for his imagined China, Hokusai absorbed details from sources such as the clothing, landscapes, armour and weapons, and resituated them into more complex compositions than the illustrations he drew from. Hokusai’s book of Tang Dynasty (618-907) poems, the Ehon Tōshisen, took inspiration from Tachibana Sekiho’s (active late 18th century) Tōshisen. In Hokusai’s interpretation of Du Fu’s poem, he playfully rotated the scene Sekiho drew, to show us the birds from the poet’s perspective.
Lastly, Tinios explored Hokusai’s final publication, the Ehon saishikitsū (1848). This book was published in a smaller format that combined text and image on the page. This reduced the paper required for print, cut publication costs and increased profits. In this sense, Hokusai the alchemist turned his printed pages into literal gold for the publishers.
Tinios’ insightful lecture demonstrated how Hokusai was not afraid to borrow from other artists. Whether it was adopting a page format, picking out specific compositions, or absorbing information on unfamiliar subjects, Hokusai transmuted his source material from stiff illustrations to dynamic images in a way that went beyond copying or imitation and made Hokusai a great artist. As the saying goes: ‘good artists copy; great artists steal.’
For a discussion of a similar topic, please view the lecture given by Dr Tinios for the 125th International ARC Seminar, organised by Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University on 8th November 2023.
Amy Raphael
Assistant Curator of East Asia, Victoria and Albert Museum