Katsushika Hokusai is Japanese artist
Shogun Ienari is Japanese leader 400 years ago
Tatsuta river is one of the most famous river in Japan
In 1999, American magazine life created a special millennium list of human achievement.The list contained the names of the hundred people who over the last thousand years have had the greatest influence on human life and culture.Galileo is there,Beethoven Shakespeare.Also Leonardo da Vinci,Martin Luther,Thomas Edison.there are explorers such as Columbus and Magellan,alongside political leaders like Mao and Lenin. Among these famous names,only one is Japanese the painter Hokusai. Katsushika Hokusai was born in Tokyo in October on November,1760.He died at the age of 88,in 1840,also Tokyo. we have settled on the name "Katsushika Hokusai"for him,but during his long life he was known by at least thirty different names.Often he would change his name to indicate a change of style or influence,perhaps passing on his previous name to one of his student."Katsushika"refers to the district of Tokyo where he was born,and"Hokusai"probably means something like "North Studio"
Hokusai loved artistic surprises.According to one story,when he was invited by the Shogun Ienari to an artistic competition,he asked for paper and simply painted a broad blue curve across it .Then he took a chicken,dipped its feet in red paint,and chased it along the blue curve.the picture was now finished. And the title? "Maple Leaves Floating down the Tatsuta River"
His most famous work is the series of prints Thirty six views of Mount Fuji. these were created during the 1820s when he decided to call himself "Iitsu" and they show him at the height of his artistic powers.Confusingly,there are actually forty six prints in the series; the first thirty six were so popular that Hokusai added ten more. Hokusai lived during the "national isolation" period,when Japan tried to protect itself from foreign influences . As a result strange way Hokusai's work was discovered by artists in Europe.At that time ,Japan exported ceramics, and these fragile bowls,plates and vases naturally had to be protected for their long sea voyage. Exporters used paper as a packing material,and among the pieces of paper used were woodblock prints including some from Hokusai Manga, a collection of Hokusai's drawings. the French painter Felix Bracquemond, looking at this throwaway paper with an artist's eye recognized Hokusai's genius.
