This comparatively simple print is dominated by the cone of Mount Fuji, which reaches its apex toward the right side of the composition. Due to this, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife and the other prints for which he is best known were made fairly late in his career. He became more ambitious after his brush with death at age fifty, in 1810, moving away from the kabuki prints that allowed him steady work and breaking new ground in printmaking. Hokusai's work improved as he aged, taking in diverse influences from both Japanese and European art. It is likely that contemporary Japanese viewers would have been reminded of a popular story about a pearl diver who descends to an undersea palace, pursued by sea creatures, to save a stolen pearl belonging to her lover. While European critics have often mistakenly labelled the scene a rape, the text makes clear that this is a scene of mutual pleasure. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was published in a volume of shunga published by Hokusai in 1814 he continued work in this genre until 1821, by which point he had published three volumes. In addition to providing titillation to viewers, such images were seen as offering protection to the owner. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was and continues to be popular primarily due to Hokusai's skill in capturing female pleasure, with the open position of the woman's body, her reclining head, closed eyes and open mouth evoking her sense of abandon and inspiring viewers' own flights of fantasy. This image is a particularly impressive example of the erotic genre known as 'shunga,' which translates literally to the euphemistic 'pictures of spring,' which was particularly popular in the nineteenth century. There appear to be rocks on either side of the group and the space around the illustra-tion is filled with tightly distributed text detailing a story in which an octopus informs a woman that he will be taking her to an undersea palace. The larger of these, on the right, is shown performing cunnilingus, holding the woman's body in place with tentacles wrapped around her legs, torso and arms, while the smaller octopus, close to her cheek, stimulates her left nipple and mouth. In this woodcut, a woman is shown reclining, her head tilted back toward the left side of the frame and her black hair tied back, as two octopi envelop her body. His ability to return to the same subject whilst creating a diversity of images shows his compositional and creative prowess. This repetition created a unity between the different scenes of Japanese life represented by the artist. ![]() Mount Fuji was a central symbol in Hokusai's work and he found a wide range of ways in which to depict the mountain. ![]() His designs for prints encouraged audiences to bear witness to elusive moments of change in nature, capturing birds, flowers, and moving water, combining an attention to the fleeting with an awareness of the timeless. Hokusai moved the Ukiyo-e genre, images of ephemeral pleasures, from traditionally being focused on people to highlighting landscapes and the changing seasons.While twenty-first century viewers are used to seeing prints arranged in this way, the technique was unprecedented in Hokusai's day and it was due to his influence that it became a widespread tactic in Japanese printmaking. He used various framing mechanisms to emphasize these focal points and create depth in his images. ![]() Hokusai introduced European perspective to Japanese printmaking, often taking a significant focal point and arranging his prints around this.
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