Art-Hokusai-Great Wave off Kanegawa TB2

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Photos in the travel bug logs are appreciated.  I will be re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

I have already released series of art-themed travel bugs based on works I have seen in person.  I will continue the series mostly including work I simply admire.  There will also be famous works or works by famous artists that I otherwise do not particularly care for, but they are….well, famous.  My disdain extends to most Modern Art and a good amount from the Pop Art movement. 

In the well of 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 1830 and 1833 in the late Edo period as the first print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.  This work has popped up several times in my lifetime and I have always admired it.  I knew nothing about it until I started searching for it on the web.

The Great Wave is Hokusai's most famous work, and one of the best recognized works of Japanese art in the world.  It depicts an enormous wave threatening boats off the coast of the prefecture of Kanagawa.  While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is, as the picture's title suggests, 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.

Hokusai's date of birth is not certainly known, but is often said to be the 23rd day of the 9th month of the 10th year of the Hōreki era.  He was born to an artisan family in the Katsushika district of Edo, Japan.  His childhood name was Tokitarō.  It is believed his father was the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise, who produced mirrors for the shogun.  His father never made Hokusai an heir, so it is possible that his mother was a concubine.  Hokusai began painting around the age of six, possibly learning the art from his father, whose work on mirrors also included the painting of designs around the mirrors.

Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime. Although the use of multiple names was a common practice of Japanese artists of the time, the numbers of names he used far exceeds that of any other major Japanese artist. Hokusai's name changes are so frequent, and so often related to changes in his artistic production and style, that they are used for breaking his life up into periods.