This new edition edited by Kyoko Wada presents the artist through his teaching and drawing manuals
Hokusai’s Method lures you in with the promise of learning to paint directly from the long-dead master himself. Here, Hokusai is presented not as the author of The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831) and other icons of art history, but as a teacher who published numerous edehon (drawing manuals), 15 of which form the core of this publication. The thick volume opens with an extract from the afterword of one of Hokusai’s last manuals, All About Painting in Colour… Part I (1848). Transposed into the introduction of Hokusai’s Method, it forms a list of promises that remain largely unfulfilled: ‘this newly published book contains instructions for painting… it also explains how to depict… you will learn how to portray… the book is in a small format to make it affordable’.
A more fitting introduction is perhaps the title page. A selection of the artist’s illustrations, among which the Thames & Hudson logo is cheekily camouflaged, are rearranged with the allure of a sheet of temporary tattoos. As in the rest of the book, you are invited to flip through the pictures and pick one out to draw for yourself. Though the 15 edehon have been organised to provide a course that moves from ‘beginner’ to ‘advanced’, none of the artist’s explanatory texts that have been reproduced are translated. Instead, each manual is prefaced with a brief introduction by the editor, and the drawings are left to speak for themselves.
Consequently, Hokusai’s ‘method’ dangles just out of our (non-Japanese speakers at whom the volume is targeted) reach. But not all is lost in translation. The image-based techniques are more successfully conveyed, notably, in the instruction manuals made for children: make a circle, then another circle, connect it with a line, and you’ll have a fish, a bat, dancing figures. These endearing shows of pedagogy illustrate the book’s central thesis of Hokusai-as-teacher. Indeed, the editor’s texts provide useful contextual nuggets that reveal that the artist had over 200 disciples and was enormously influential during his lifetime. However, these insights are so lean that they are nearly invisible among the more than 400 pages of drawings. If the book is frustratingly sparing with its knowledge, it justifies its £35 price point by presenting as an art object that will delight collectors of nice things.
Hokusai’s Method, edited by Kyoko Wada, translated by Lis-Britt Dalkarl. Thames & Hudson, £35 (hardcover)
From the Spring 2025 issue of ArtReview Asia – get your copy.
