Hokusai

From haunting ghosts to alluring women, or the landscapes of Mount Fuji and the Tōkaidō road: the woodblock prints, paintings, and book illustrations of Hokusai reveal a masterfully versatile career. Packed with new photography and artworks from over 100 institutions worldwide, this is the most complete profile yet of Japan’s preeminent artist.

“A visual celebration of Edo-period Japan.”

“This monograph is sublime.”

“Anyone who opens this magnificent illustrated book and begins to leaf through its pages will be irresistibly drawn into a world so different from our own that not only can you not get enough of it, but you will also want to get lost in it enthusiastically... A superb book full of pictorial inventiveness.”

“You don't just leaf through this book, you linger in it, captivated by the genius of Hokusai, one of the greatest artists not only in Japan. This magnificent volume – an editorial tour de force from TASCHEN – is the perfect place to start getting to know Hokusai. In the face of such an incredibly rich oeuvre, one can only bow down in awe and gratitude.”

“He is one of the world's most influential artists of all time. TASCHEN is now dedicating a magnificent volume to Hokusai. Many of the artworks have been newly photographed. We leaf through and marvel. We open up, leaf through some more. The book weighs almost seven kilograms. It is a work of art in itself.”

“Reproductions of the highest print quality.”

“The most thoroughly researched monograph on Hokusai ever to be published.”

“A magnificent book from TASCHEN brings together a huge part of his work. The goal of the editor, Andreas Marks, to question the common image of Hokusai and to replace it with a more differentiated one, is visible on every page of this tremendous monograph.”

“A monumental monograph.”

“This voluminous book is arguably the most comprehensive study of Hokusai’s work to date. It packs an impressive volume of works from the deep well of the Japanese artist and printmaker’s long career, far beyond his omnipresent depictions of Mount Fuji.”

“[A] sumptuous, beautifully produced art book unfolds Hokusai’s 19th-century Edo, the floating world where everything — mountains, moons and masked actors, courtesans, crustaceans, cherry blossom — is stylised into patterns of line and colour, yet flutters off the page, restless and vital.”

“At 100 years I will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at 110, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine are not false.”

Andreas Marks studied East Asian art history at the University of Bonn and obtained his PhD in Japanology from Leiden University with a thesis on 19th-century actor prints. From 2008 to 2013 he was director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art in Hanford, California, and since 2013 has been the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. In 2024, he was awarded the commendation of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his contributions to the promotion of Japanese culture.