11 ms·

Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

143 points by colinprince 1y ago

imp0cat 1y ago
Thanks for the RSS feed. I added it to my reader (Flipboard) just in case I happen to be somewhere near an exhibition.
- msephton 1y ago
  (site creator here) My pleasure! Summer is the most popular time of year, Japan or USA most likely but many around the world means it's quite a varied schedule. Tickets to the France exhibition (the print is on loan from Japan) sold out in a day.
  - imp0cat 1y ago
    Appreciated. So the chances are pretty slim. :( But still I am gonna keep hoping.
aosaigh 1y ago
How do temporary exhibitions for famous artworks work? Do the museums pay the original owners to have it exhibited for a period of time? How does it get transported? It must be incredibly expensive to ship priceless artworks
- bcraven 1y ago
  The full loans process is outlined on the British Museum YT: https://youtu.be/XuW2wSKOgtU https://youtu.be/XuW2wSKOgtU
akkartik 1y ago
The 'but why?' link is fascinating: https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-conservation-hokusai-prints https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-...
- vasco 1y ago
  > This means that if these prints are displayed for three months at 50 lux, they should be stored in the dark for at least a year before they are displayed again > While these measures will not stop fading from occurring altogether, they will ensure that these world-famous prints fade so slowly that they will be seen by countless generations of visitors to the Museum in the future. This trade-off is interesting, are we maximizing for number of people watching works? Or are we purely maximizing time? Because its not obvious to me that more people will see a work if it lasts 1000 more years but spends 80% of that time in storage, vs lasting 100 more years spending 0% of the time in storage. Also lets say you go to the museum today and are lucky that it happens to be on display. But your friend travels to see it, it happens to be in 80% storage time, then the friend goes back home and dies without seeing it so that some future person that doesn't exist yet even can see it later without fading. Why is the future person more important than the current person, in a sense? Storing it assumes a lot, that humanity will survive, that people will be interested in seeing it, that some fire isn't going to destroy their storage, etc. Meanwhile real life people would've seen it already. I don't have an answer, just questions though.
  - qq66 1y ago
    By limiting the hours today, it helps make sure that the people who do see it are the ones most interested in seeing it. Those are the ones who will look up the schedule, schedule their trip around it, etc... while if it's just permanently up, many of the viewers will be random passersby (and the number of viewers per hour of illumination will probably be lower)
    - vasco 1y ago
      Ok that is adding an interesting variable of perceived interest and then it's not about # of people anymore, but rather time plus # of _interested_ people. I guess that has to be the reasoning because it does make sense if that's the optimization goal. Though I'd imagine mostly its going to be a random sample of people that happen to be there that day. I imagine there's likely under 1% of museum visitors actually chasing single works and planning trips like that. So most people that would see it are still just random "museum people" (which under the "interest" metric is still better than purely random people).
tjpnz 1y ago
There's a Hokusai museum in Tokyo where it's on permanent display. You can also catch a sumo match nearby. https://hokusai-museum.jp/?lang=en https://hokusai-museum.jp/?lang=en
- maratc 1y ago
  And another one in Haifa: https://www.tmja.org.il/eng/Collection/Ukiyo-e_Woodblock_Prints/2350 https://www.tmja.org.il/eng/Collection/Ukiyo-e_Woodblock_Pri...
  - msephton 1y ago
    As far as I'm aware this has never been on view. You can probably request to see it privately. (I'm the creator of the site in the OP)
    - maratc 1y ago
      I think it's on view permanently, except when the museum is closed (as it is now). I can’t say anything with regards to when it was made though.
      - msephton 1y ago
        Generally, these are so susceptible to fading that they are not displayed for more than a short period of time. My records go back to 2015 so it could have been on view at least a couple of times over that period. I last emailed them early-2023 and it was not on view that year, and was told it would not be in 2024. Which brings us to 2025 and we know how that's going. That said, this imprint at Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art is marked as an original.
        deleted 1y ago
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        maratc 1y ago
        A friend of mine reports having seen it in April this year, when there was a corporate sponsorship event so some (most?) of the city’s museums waived the entrance fee. He reports having seen no crowds or queues whatsoever.
sharkjacobs 1y ago
What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens. Obviously "serviceable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, a replica might simply not be very good, might not capture some vital characteristic of the thing which makes it a great work. But otherwise, it's basically that the knowledge of how important and significant this work is puts the viewer in a more receptive frame of mind, right? To be clear, that's not nothing. I of course know firsthand how much that affects the impact of a painting, museums and galleries care a lot about how they display their collection. But is that it?
- dyauspitr 1y ago
  Like many things in life, only the original has gravitas. It’s not so much about the technical ability or the properties of the painting, it’s the aura around it that people want to be in.
- nsxwolf 1y ago
  That's mostly it. You see it and say "Wow! That's the original!"
- creakingstairs 1y ago
  I agree with you that replicas can be great. Last year, I went to Otsuka museum of art[1] where they have life-size replicas of famous paintings (including the Sistine chapel), and it was great. Before going, I was weirdly hung up about going to somewhere to see "replicas" instead of the real thing. But once I got there, I loved every second of it. All the artworks were replicated with careful detail in life size, so I felt like I wasn't missing much. In fact, I felt like I was enjoying it more! There were no crowds. I could get as close to the artworks as I wanted to. The lighting was great, since they didn't have to worry about damaging the paints. It was more engaging for the kids as they could free touch some of the replicated potteries etc. It is a bit out of the way, but I'd highly recommend anyone going to Japan to check out that museum and maybe the onaruto bridge [2] on the way [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art [2] https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see-and-do/traverse-uzunomichi-walkway-onaruto-bridge/ https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see...
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ChrisArchitect 1y ago
A Show HN: in 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221
NaOH 1y ago
Previously: [Show HN:] Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (114 comments)
- dang 1y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223424 - June 2025 (1 comment) Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (113 comments) Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700834 - April 2023 (1 comment) Where can I see Hokusai's 'Great Wave Off Kanagawa' at a museum today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555378 - April 2023 (1 comment) Also: Things to know about the Great Wave - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474449 - Sept 2024 (90 comments) Hokusai's 'Great Wave' features on new Japanese banknotes (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40688921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40688921 - June 2024 (50 comments) 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 - May 2023 (72 comments) The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26994024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26994024 - April 2021 (63 comments) Iconic Print, “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” Recreated with 50k Lego Bricks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482654 - Dec 2020 (12 comments) The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618 - Jan 2020 (27 comments) A Great Wave of Hokusai - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757078 - Dec 2019 (2 comments) What Hokusai’s Great Wave tells us about museums, copyright, online collections - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547824 - July 2019 (24 comments) --- Also, Hokusai apart from the Wave: Hokusai Moyo Gafu: an album of dyeing patterns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992 - June 2025 (14 comments) Hokusai's five ghoulish prints for the series Hyaku Monogatari (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989260 - Oct 2024 (17 comments) Hokusai's rare Mt. Fuji collection sold for $3.6M. at N.Y. auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762679 - March 2024 (7 comments) Hokusai’s Illustrated Warrior Vanguard of Japan and China (1836) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36808566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36808566 - July 2023 (3 comments) Late Hokusai: Thought, technique, society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34403383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34403383 - Jan 2023 (12 comments) Hokusai and ‘The Great Picture Book of Everything’: The Latest Research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711386 - June 2022 (2 comments) British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24542001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24542001 - Sept 2020 (31 comments) A picture of change for a world in constant motion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090950 - Aug 2020 (3 comments) Hokusai: Old man, crazy to paint (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557558 - Nov 2019 (5 comments) Hokusai’s Ghost Stories (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657668 - Dec 2018 (1 comment) The Magician of Manga - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057213 - Nov 2016 (10 comments)
seafoamteal 1y ago
I only recently learned about this piece after reading Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It's on the cover and it plays a somewhat important role in the story.
esperent 1y ago
The Great Wave is a deservedly famous piece of art, but if it's the only thing of Hokusai that you know, do yourself a favor and look up some of his other work. Waterfall penance is my favorite. https://www.tremontauctions.com/auction-lot/hokusai-katsushika.-waterfall-penance-.-original_39B43F6979 https://www.tremontauctions.com/auction-lot/hokusai-katsushi... He also made some weird art involving an octopus and a woman, which is insightful both for understanding the other side of a famous artist, and also some of the weirder things in modern Japanese manga. Edit: after I made this comment I was reminded of a comic I saw on reddit, where the artist was bemoaning their dream of getting paid to draw beautiful art, versus the reality where the only people willing to actually pay for art all want furry porn. So maybe not much has changed really, and maybe it says less about Japanese culture, and more about the general human condition.
- bcraven 1y ago
  I suggest you look up the documentary _Hokusai: Old Man Crazy to Paint_ .[0] It discusses how Hokusai changed his artistic style every ~10 years for his own pleasure. [0] https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Hokusai:_Old_Man_Crazy_to_Paint https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Hokusai:_Old_Man_Crazy_...
- 7373737373 1y ago
  https://www.wikiart.org/en/katsushika-hokusai/all-works#!#filterName:all-paintings-chronologically,resultType:masonry https://www.wikiart.org/en/katsushika-hokusai/all-works#!#fi...
- dekhn 1y ago
  "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" is an amazing piece of art (generally considered NSFW). The entire "Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji" series is phenomenal, really a testament to the japanese philosophy of sublime minimalism. But nothing really hits me like The Great Wave, with its dramatic foreground composition (look at those guys clinging to the boats!) and the tranquil majesty of Fuji in the distance.
lutusp 1y ago
This alludes to a longstanding debate with no meaningful resolution. I can see and appreciate Michelangelo's "David", in one of its two best-known Italian renderings (not counting the one in Las Vegas), even though the sculpture's human model, and the artist, are long dead. I think Banksy has the right idea, even though people do what they can to undermine his works -- by, among other things, chain-sawing them out of the walls the artist chose to make his point, then offering them for sale. A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one?
- bcraven 1y ago
  There's also a full-size plaster cast of David in 'The Castle Courts' at the V&A in London that's been there since 1857! https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-david https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-da...
- npteljes 1y ago
  >A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one? This is because of how humans appreciate where the spirit of a work is. In case of a book, most of the essence is in the words, not in the paper or the ink - although, people do appreciate the print itself too to a great deal. But because the words carry the most meaning, the work gets copied, translated, even modernized, and agreed to not lose much of its meaning. After the mass printing era, there is no such thing as "a single master book" when referring to a work. There can be drafts, a manuscript, generations of copies referred to as different editions, etc. It's a mass production affair with a blueprint and products, whereas in case of a painting, there is a single, final version original usually, and subsequent reproductions are copies and modifications of that. The other thing is that a copy of a painting is not a travesty at all. Many appreciate and decorate with replicas, prints, view them online, use them as wallpaper on their device, etc. I don't think people think of any of this as a travesty. The issue here is to present a copy as the original, in which case the replica becomes a fake. This is a lie, and a betrayal, and these evoke strong feelings in humans.
  - empath75 1y ago
OPBoot 1y ago
Or you can support current artists in the same genre such as David Bull at Mokuhankan, who is working hard to keep the art of traditional Japanese woodblock printing alive. Yes - you can also buy a copy of the Great Wave, and it's beautiful. https://mokuhankan.com/index.html https://mokuhankan.com/index.html
- rjh29 1y ago
  Well, you -could- buy a copy, it now seems like there's a very very long waiting list.
- msephton 1y ago
  I bought my repro from Japan, by one of the many other people doing reprints.
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darkstar_16 1y ago
Or you could buy the Lego version :)
burnt-resistor 1y ago
The cover for Applications of Digital Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics I'm (mis)remembering it was on a math textbook of some kind, perhaps a 90's era high school AP calculus BC text.
poulpy123 1y ago
I was wondering how it can be displayed in 2 museums simultaneously and it's because there is around 100 prints of it
msephton 1y ago
I'm the creator of the site and it's great to see it on HN again. Since it was featured in 2023 the site has become even more automated and also searches press releases for related news which I share from time to time on social media. There's currently a digital exhibition on arrival at Tokyo Narita airport, things like that. The current exhibition in Nantes, France, (whose print is on loan from Japan) sold out very quickly. Before I could even organise my travel! So the fascination with The Great Wave lives on.
- dale_glass 1y ago
  Thanks for making the site, but this link: https://greatwavetoday.com/all-institutions.csv.txt https://greatwavetoday.com/all-institutions.csv.txt isn't working.
  - msephton 1y ago
    Just fixed, somebody reported it on github. Thanks both!
- funkydata 1y ago
  So, actually, on the museum's ticketing site they say that the internet tickets are sold out, but if you actually get there, there's a limited amount of tickets that are sold each day (because not everyone uses the internet) : "Merci de noter que des places pour la visite le jour même sont en vente chaque jour directement à l'accueil de l'exposition, dans la limite des places disponibles.".
  - msephton 1y ago
    Ah, thanks! Sadly, I have now booked my holiday travel excluding France so I will have to miss this one.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Reminds me a bit of the old "Is Abe Vigoda Dead?" Web site: http://isabevigodadead.com http://isabevigodadead.com
amarcheschi 1y ago
The thing I found funny about it is that it's so tiny I almost passed it by without recognizing it at first. It sets high expectations by being called great
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  Yeah, same thing happened to me when I saw it in Boston. Because of the way it's been copied, I always thought it was a giant painting. (I'm not a huge art fan, I just happened to be in the museum one day with my family.)
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m3kw9 1y ago
Right on that website I can see it.
mNovak 1y ago
If you're interested in these prints, David Bull [1] is a really great resource on YT, in terms of exploring how these were made and lots of history on specific pieces. He does a whole series on the Great Wave. It was interesting to learn that it's essentially impossible to know if a given impression is "original" as it was widely copied in Hokusai's own lifetime. He compares copies from various museum collections, and finds many of them come from different block-sets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@seseragistudio https://www.youtube.com/@seseragistudio
fusslo 1y ago
I grew up in Connecticut. I always thought we had to travel to Boston, Philadelphia, or NYC to see great art. Then, after I moved halfway across the country I learned about The Hill-Stead museum, the Wadsworth, Florence Griswold museum, New Britain Museum of art, Yale, and even Uconn Now, I'm kinda melancholy about missing out on these experiences
xnx 1y ago
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/3gF011oIXv3kcQ https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/3gF011oIXv3kcQ

143 points by colinprince 1y ago

imp0cat 1y ago

Thanks for the RSS feed. I added it to my reader (Flipboard) just in case I happen to be somewhere near an exhibition.

msephton 1y ago
(site creator here) My pleasure! Summer is the most popular time of year, Japan or USA most likely but many around the world means it's quite a varied schedule. Tickets to the France exhibition (the print is on loan from Japan) sold out in a day.
- imp0cat 1y ago
  Appreciated. So the chances are pretty slim. :( But still I am gonna keep hoping.

aosaigh 1y ago

How do temporary exhibitions for famous artworks work? Do the museums pay the original owners to have it exhibited for a period of time? How does it get transported? It must be incredibly expensive to ship priceless artworks

bcraven 1y ago
The full loans process is outlined on the British Museum YT: https://youtu.be/XuW2wSKOgtU https://youtu.be/XuW2wSKOgtU

akkartik 1y ago

The 'but why?' link is fascinating: https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-conservation-hokusai-prints https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-...

vasco 1y ago
> This means that if these prints are displayed for three months at 50 lux, they should be stored in the dark for at least a year before they are displayed again > While these measures will not stop fading from occurring altogether, they will ensure that these world-famous prints fade so slowly that they will be seen by countless generations of visitors to the Museum in the future. This trade-off is interesting, are we maximizing for number of people watching works? Or are we purely maximizing time? Because its not obvious to me that more people will see a work if it lasts 1000 more years but spends 80% of that time in storage, vs lasting 100 more years spending 0% of the time in storage. Also lets say you go to the museum today and are lucky that it happens to be on display. But your friend travels to see it, it happens to be in 80% storage time, then the friend goes back home and dies without seeing it so that some future person that doesn't exist yet even can see it later without fading. Why is the future person more important than the current person, in a sense? Storing it assumes a lot, that humanity will survive, that people will be interested in seeing it, that some fire isn't going to destroy their storage, etc. Meanwhile real life people would've seen it already. I don't have an answer, just questions though.
- qq66 1y ago
  By limiting the hours today, it helps make sure that the people who do see it are the ones most interested in seeing it. Those are the ones who will look up the schedule, schedule their trip around it, etc... while if it's just permanently up, many of the viewers will be random passersby (and the number of viewers per hour of illumination will probably be lower)
  - vasco 1y ago
    Ok that is adding an interesting variable of perceived interest and then it's not about # of people anymore, but rather time plus # of _interested_ people. I guess that has to be the reasoning because it does make sense if that's the optimization goal. Though I'd imagine mostly its going to be a random sample of people that happen to be there that day. I imagine there's likely under 1% of museum visitors actually chasing single works and planning trips like that. So most people that would see it are still just random "museum people" (which under the "interest" metric is still better than purely random people).

tjpnz 1y ago

There's a Hokusai museum in Tokyo where it's on permanent display. You can also catch a sumo match nearby. https://hokusai-museum.jp/?lang=en https://hokusai-museum.jp/?lang=en

maratc 1y ago
And another one in Haifa: https://www.tmja.org.il/eng/Collection/Ukiyo-e_Woodblock_Prints/2350 https://www.tmja.org.il/eng/Collection/Ukiyo-e_Woodblock_Pri...
- msephton 1y ago
  As far as I'm aware this has never been on view. You can probably request to see it privately. (I'm the creator of the site in the OP)
  - maratc 1y ago
    I think it's on view permanently, except when the museum is closed (as it is now). I can’t say anything with regards to when it was made though.
    - msephton 1y ago
      Generally, these are so susceptible to fading that they are not displayed for more than a short period of time. My records go back to 2015 so it could have been on view at least a couple of times over that period. I last emailed them early-2023 and it was not on view that year, and was told it would not be in 2024. Which brings us to 2025 and we know how that's going. That said, this imprint at Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art is marked as an original.
      - deleted 1y ago
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      - maratc 1y ago
        A friend of mine reports having seen it in April this year, when there was a corporate sponsorship event so some (most?) of the city’s museums waived the entrance fee. He reports having seen no crowds or queues whatsoever.

sharkjacobs 1y ago

What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens. Obviously "serviceable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, a replica might simply not be very good, might not capture some vital characteristic of the thing which makes it a great work. But otherwise, it's basically that the knowledge of how important and significant this work is puts the viewer in a more receptive frame of mind, right? To be clear, that's not nothing. I of course know firsthand how much that affects the impact of a painting, museums and galleries care a lot about how they display their collection. But is that it?

dyauspitr 1y ago
Like many things in life, only the original has gravitas. It’s not so much about the technical ability or the properties of the painting, it’s the aura around it that people want to be in.
nsxwolf 1y ago
That's mostly it. You see it and say "Wow! That's the original!"
creakingstairs 1y ago
I agree with you that replicas can be great. Last year, I went to Otsuka museum of art[1] where they have life-size replicas of famous paintings (including the Sistine chapel), and it was great. Before going, I was weirdly hung up about going to somewhere to see "replicas" instead of the real thing. But once I got there, I loved every second of it. All the artworks were replicated with careful detail in life size, so I felt like I wasn't missing much. In fact, I felt like I was enjoying it more! There were no crowds. I could get as close to the artworks as I wanted to. The lighting was great, since they didn't have to worry about damaging the paints. It was more engaging for the kids as they could free touch some of the replicated potteries etc. It is a bit out of the way, but I'd highly recommend anyone going to Japan to check out that museum and maybe the onaruto bridge [2] on the way [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art [2] https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see-and-do/traverse-uzunomichi-walkway-onaruto-bridge/ https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see...

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ChrisArchitect 1y ago

A Show HN: in 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221

NaOH 1y ago

Previously: [Show HN:] Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (114 comments)

dang 1y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223424 - June 2025 (1 comment) Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (113 comments) Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700834 - April 2023 (1 comment) Where can I see Hokusai's 'Great Wave Off Kanagawa' at a museum today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555378 - April 2023 (1 comment) Also: Things to know about the Great Wave - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474449 - Sept 2024 (90 comments) Hokusai's 'Great Wave' features on new Japanese banknotes (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40688921 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40688921 - June 2024 (50 comments) 1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 - May 2023 (72 comments) The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26994024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26994024 - April 2021 (63 comments) Iconic Print, “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” Recreated with 50k Lego Bricks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482654 - Dec 2020 (12 comments) The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618 - Jan 2020 (27 comments) A Great Wave of Hokusai - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757078 - Dec 2019 (2 comments) What Hokusai’s Great Wave tells us about museums, copyright, online collections - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547824 - July 2019 (24 comments) --- Also, Hokusai apart from the Wave: Hokusai Moyo Gafu: an album of dyeing patterns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992 - June 2025 (14 comments) Hokusai's five ghoulish prints for the series Hyaku Monogatari (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989260 - Oct 2024 (17 comments) Hokusai's rare Mt. Fuji collection sold for $3.6M. at N.Y. auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762679 - March 2024 (7 comments) Hokusai’s Illustrated Warrior Vanguard of Japan and China (1836) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36808566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36808566 - July 2023 (3 comments) Late Hokusai: Thought, technique, society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34403383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34403383 - Jan 2023 (12 comments) Hokusai and ‘The Great Picture Book of Everything’: The Latest Research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711386 - June 2022 (2 comments) British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24542001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24542001 - Sept 2020 (31 comments) A picture of change for a world in constant motion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090950 - Aug 2020 (3 comments) Hokusai: Old man, crazy to paint (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557558 - Nov 2019 (5 comments) Hokusai’s Ghost Stories (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657668 - Dec 2018 (1 comment) The Magician of Manga - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057213 - Nov 2016 (10 comments)

seafoamteal 1y ago

I only recently learned about this piece after reading Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It's on the cover and it plays a somewhat important role in the story.

esperent 1y ago

The Great Wave is a deservedly famous piece of art, but if it's the only thing of Hokusai that you know, do yourself a favor and look up some of his other work. Waterfall penance is my favorite. https://www.tremontauctions.com/auction-lot/hokusai-katsushika.-waterfall-penance-.-original_39B43F6979 https://www.tremontauctions.com/auction-lot/hokusai-katsushi... He also made some weird art involving an octopus and a woman, which is insightful both for understanding the other side of a famous artist, and also some of the weirder things in modern Japanese manga. Edit: after I made this comment I was reminded of a comic I saw on reddit, where the artist was bemoaning their dream of getting paid to draw beautiful art, versus the reality where the only people willing to actually pay for art all want furry porn. So maybe not much has changed really, and maybe it says less about Japanese culture, and more about the general human condition.

bcraven 1y ago
I suggest you look up the documentary _Hokusai: Old Man Crazy to Paint_ .[0] It discusses how Hokusai changed his artistic style every ~10 years for his own pleasure. [0] https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Hokusai:_Old_Man_Crazy_to_Paint https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Hokusai:_Old_Man_Crazy_...
7373737373 1y ago
https://www.wikiart.org/en/katsushika-hokusai/all-works#!#filterName:all-paintings-chronologically,resultType:masonry https://www.wikiart.org/en/katsushika-hokusai/all-works#!#fi...
dekhn 1y ago
"The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" is an amazing piece of art (generally considered NSFW). The entire "Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji" series is phenomenal, really a testament to the japanese philosophy of sublime minimalism. But nothing really hits me like The Great Wave, with its dramatic foreground composition (look at those guys clinging to the boats!) and the tranquil majesty of Fuji in the distance.

lutusp 1y ago

This alludes to a longstanding debate with no meaningful resolution. I can see and appreciate Michelangelo's "David", in one of its two best-known Italian renderings (not counting the one in Las Vegas), even though the sculpture's human model, and the artist, are long dead. I think Banksy has the right idea, even though people do what they can to undermine his works -- by, among other things, chain-sawing them out of the walls the artist chose to make his point, then offering them for sale. A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one?

bcraven 1y ago
There's also a full-size plaster cast of David in 'The Castle Courts' at the V&A in London that's been there since 1857! https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-david https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-da...
npteljes 1y ago
>A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one? This is because of how humans appreciate where the spirit of a work is. In case of a book, most of the essence is in the words, not in the paper or the ink - although, people do appreciate the print itself too to a great deal. But because the words carry the most meaning, the work gets copied, translated, even modernized, and agreed to not lose much of its meaning. After the mass printing era, there is no such thing as "a single master book" when referring to a work. There can be drafts, a manuscript, generations of copies referred to as different editions, etc. It's a mass production affair with a blueprint and products, whereas in case of a painting, there is a single, final version original usually, and subsequent reproductions are copies and modifications of that. The other thing is that a copy of a painting is not a travesty at all. Many appreciate and decorate with replicas, prints, view them online, use them as wallpaper on their device, etc. I don't think people think of any of this as a travesty. The issue here is to present a copy as the original, in which case the replica becomes a fake. This is a lie, and a betrayal, and these evoke strong feelings in humans.
- empath75 1y ago

OPBoot 1y ago

Or you can support current artists in the same genre such as David Bull at Mokuhankan, who is working hard to keep the art of traditional Japanese woodblock printing alive. Yes - you can also buy a copy of the Great Wave, and it's beautiful. https://mokuhankan.com/index.html https://mokuhankan.com/index.html

rjh29 1y ago
Well, you -could- buy a copy, it now seems like there's a very very long waiting list.
msephton 1y ago
I bought my repro from Japan, by one of the many other people doing reprints.

deleted 1y ago

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darkstar_16 1y ago

Or you could buy the Lego version :)

burnt-resistor 1y ago

The cover for Applications of Digital Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics I'm (mis)remembering it was on a math textbook of some kind, perhaps a 90's era high school AP calculus BC text.

poulpy123 1y ago

I was wondering how it can be displayed in 2 museums simultaneously and it's because there is around 100 prints of it

msephton 1y ago

I'm the creator of the site and it's great to see it on HN again. Since it was featured in 2023 the site has become even more automated and also searches press releases for related news which I share from time to time on social media. There's currently a digital exhibition on arrival at Tokyo Narita airport, things like that. The current exhibition in Nantes, France, (whose print is on loan from Japan) sold out very quickly. Before I could even organise my travel! So the fascination with The Great Wave lives on.

dale_glass 1y ago
Thanks for making the site, but this link: https://greatwavetoday.com/all-institutions.csv.txt https://greatwavetoday.com/all-institutions.csv.txt isn't working.
- msephton 1y ago
  Just fixed, somebody reported it on github. Thanks both!
funkydata 1y ago
So, actually, on the museum's ticketing site they say that the internet tickets are sold out, but if you actually get there, there's a limited amount of tickets that are sold each day (because not everyone uses the internet) : "Merci de noter que des places pour la visite le jour même sont en vente chaque jour directement à l'accueil de l'exposition, dans la limite des places disponibles.".
- msephton 1y ago
  Ah, thanks! Sadly, I have now booked my holiday travel excluding France so I will have to miss this one.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Reminds me a bit of the old "Is Abe Vigoda Dead?" Web site: http://isabevigodadead.com http://isabevigodadead.com

amarcheschi 1y ago

The thing I found funny about it is that it's so tiny I almost passed it by without recognizing it at first. It sets high expectations by being called great

gwbas1c 1y ago
Yeah, same thing happened to me when I saw it in Boston. Because of the way it's been copied, I always thought it was a giant painting. (I'm not a huge art fan, I just happened to be in the museum one day with my family.)

deleted 1y ago

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m3kw9 1y ago

Right on that website I can see it.

mNovak 1y ago

If you're interested in these prints, David Bull [1] is a really great resource on YT, in terms of exploring how these were made and lots of history on specific pieces. He does a whole series on the Great Wave. It was interesting to learn that it's essentially impossible to know if a given impression is "original" as it was widely copied in Hokusai's own lifetime. He compares copies from various museum collections, and finds many of them come from different block-sets. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@seseragistudio https://www.youtube.com/@seseragistudio

fusslo 1y ago

I grew up in Connecticut. I always thought we had to travel to Boston, Philadelphia, or NYC to see great art. Then, after I moved halfway across the country I learned about The Hill-Stead museum, the Wadsworth, Florence Griswold museum, New Britain Museum of art, Yale, and even Uconn Now, I'm kinda melancholy about missing out on these experiences

xnx 1y ago

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/3gF011oIXv3kcQ https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/3gF011oIXv3kcQ