Mount Fuji, a natural monument that dominates the Kanto plain, is a recurring image in Japanese literature and painting. It is revered in the earliest anthology of Japanese poetry, the Manyoshu, compiled in the eighth century: “Ever since heaven and earth were parted/It has towered, lofty, noble, and divine.”

Hokusai’s series of woodblock prints Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is perhaps the best-known visual record of the mountain, and no view is more striking than Mount Fuji Above Lightning (number nine in Goncourt’s series). The mountain, simple and grand, rises above the turmoil of the lightning that cracks far beneath its peak. Snowclad, witness to passing swirls of cloud, the mountain is most surely “lofty, noble, and divine.”

Hokusai lived almost ninety years, and his output was staggering. It is estimated that he produced between thirty- and thirty-five thousand designs for woodblock prints, illustrated books, drawings, and paintings. In his final years he gave himself the name “Old Man Mad with Painting.”

Landscape prints were first issued as travel mementos. Beginning in the seventeenth century, nobles with their entourages traveled to Edo from their provincial domains each year to pay fealty to the shogun. They then took the Tokaido Road from Edo to Kyoto to visit the emperor, collecting woodblock prints of famous sights along the way.

Another great stimulus to the publication of landscapes, by then consumed by a large public, was a government edict of 1842 that forbade the production of actor and courtesan prints. However, both Hokusai and his younger contemporary Hiroshige had produced some of their greatest works in the landscape genre more than a decade earlier.


(For Grades K-2)

What do you see in this picture?

What colors do you see in this woodblock?

Which types of lines do you see in this woodblock?

Where do you think this woodblock was made? Why?



(For Grades 6-8)

How does this work differ from other landscapes you've seen? How is it similar?

Japanese woodblock prints influenced many later periods and movements in art history. Can you see any connections between the style of this print and the modern art you've seen?

How is a print different than a painting?

Is this image balanced? Describe the individual elements that make it balanced or unbalanced.