THE original measures just 10 x 15 inches. It is a colour woodcut and was made exactly 180 years ago. Most likely you know it, or else you may have seen its reproduced image. It is one of a series of block prints known as “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”.
Its full title is The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,sometimes abbreviated to The Great Waveor, simply The Wave. Kanagawa is a Japanese prefecture. The creator of the work is Katsushika Hokusai. His works were to influence a generation of emerging non-conformist painters; they were collected by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
The Wavewas adopted by the composer, Claude Debussy, as the cover picture for the 1905 first edition of his symphonic work La Mer. It has become one of the most reproduced pieces of artwork in the world.
We have a tendency to hold on to prophecy in the much the same way that we value talismans, relics and amulets. Saint Colmcille, Malachy, Nostradamus, we either imbue their divinations with a power far greater than they deserve or else, allow our agnosticism to dismiss their predictions. However, when we explore Hokusai’s woodcut, particularly in the light of recent catastrophic events in the Pacific, we are required to abandon some of our scepticism and marvel at the frightening reality of his depiction, created almost 200 years ago.
What draws the viewer to The Waveis the way in which it captures the power of nature relative to the insignificance of man. The picture depicts three small fishing boats caught up in a series of broken turbulent surges. The occupants of the boats are depicted as mere dots.
There is supreme tension in the painting. It depicts just one wide-eyed, heart-stopping moment in time.
The viewer’s pulse races when we contemplate the main subject, the large crescent wave about to break upon the tiny insignificance of the fishermen. In a mere technical sense, this is a seascape with Mt Fuji in the background. However, so overwhelming is the wave, it dwarfs the sacred mountain. Nimbus clouds threaten a storm and there is a covering of snow on the mountain peak. Its conical shape echoes the mountainous billows with their surf-topped crests that dominate the foreground.
The wave will break all over the boats. It is poised right there above them, above their heads. We want to shut our eyes to avert our mind from the inevitable disaster, but so compelling is the image we are unable to do this.
In the moment captured in the painting, the giant wave forms a semi-circle. It is the yin to the yang of the open space through it will crash. The foam on the tips of wave is forming itself into claws that threaten the tiny figures, struggling so completely at its mercy. The sacred mountain looks on from afar, powerless to help. This is a deification of the sea. It is a rendering that depicts the wave as something far more potent than Mt Fuji. This is a portrayal of nature’s fury as the sea leaps skyward in one monstrous defiant challenge to gravity.
Hokusai was born in 1760 in a district east of, what is now, Tokyo. He died aged 89 in 1849. Before his death, it is recorded that he said the following: “At the age of five years I had the habit of sketching things. At the age of 50 I produced a number of pictures, but for all that, none of them had any merit until the age of seventy. At 73 I finally learned something about the true nature of things, birds, animals, insects, fish, the grasses and the trees. So at the age of 80 years I have made some progress. At 90 I will have penetrated the deepest significance of things, and at a hundred I will make real wonders and at a hundred and ten, every point, every line, will have a life of its own.”
He was in his 70s when he created The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. This was also the age in which he believed he had arrived at a true understanding of the natural world. The dwarfed fishermen are manoeuvring their three tiny boats in the trough of the swell. Although this is an almighty storm, the sun shines. Somewhere in the prophetic painting there is bravery and hope. Man is willing to offer courage and stamina in the face of the deluge.
Hokusai never lets us know the outcome of the fishermen’s encounter with “The Great Wave”. This is not just a wave of the open sea; this is a tsunami. When we look on, awestruck by its most graphically depicted fury, our hearts pray that somehow those fragile and courageous souls will somehow pull through.