Hokusai at the NGV

I got an email from my alma mater saying there was a reunion for the former Japanese students at the Hokusai exhibit that's currently at the National Gallery of Victoria. redbeanpork said he wanted to see it, and the tickets were free, so why not? The form that they had allowed anyone to register - non-former Japanese students, non-arts students, and even non-University of Melbourne students. Of course, redbeanpork, Pharmacist and I took them up on their generous offer.

It was a bit awkward at the start. One of the professors came up to talk to us, and I didn't remember him at all (though it might just be because I only did the beginner's subjects). He then went on to question redbeanpork and Pharmacist, the former hadn't even studied at Melbourne uni, and the later was an arts student, but didn't do Japanese at uni. We thought we were busted, but fortunately, some other people he knew started talking to him, so he moved on. We took that time to sneak into the exhibit while everyone else was mingling, and had the whole place to ourselves!

As pictured on the photo for the day, Hokusai's most famous print is probably The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa-oki nami ura), from his series Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei). I don't know if they

I don't know if it's just my crappy photography, but the exhibit had two copies of this print on display: one from the NGV's own collection, and one from Japan Ukiyo-e Museum in Matsumoto (JUM). The display said that the NGV copy (first image) is an earlier version than the JUM copy (second image), but the second one seems so blurry that I think it's just my bad photography.

I only know this picture because it was on the first JR pass that we got in 2011, which was a funky metallic version.

We also saw the 2013 JR pass picture, which is actually called South Wind, Clear Sky / Red Fuji (凱風快晴 Gaifū kaisei).

I don't think the 2017 JR pass featured an image from the collection. It does still feature Fiji-san though.

The prints were created by a technique called woodblock printing, which sounds really laborious. An image is drawn, and then the paper is glued to a wood block, ink-side down, to transfer the ink to the block. The block is then carved so that the drawn part is raised, and paint is applied to the block. A piece of paper is pressed down to transfer the ink to the page. The block can be re-used multiple times to make many prints. The real magic is watching the an image with multiple colours come together - see this YouTube video (just under 9 minutes, but I recommend watching it on 2x speed).

My favourite image was Sketch of Tago near Ejiri on the Tōkaidō (東海道江尻田子の浦略図
Tōkaidō Ejiri tago-no-uraryakuzu).

I just like how something so mundane (fishing and salt harvesting) can be made to look so majestic. And the gradient in the sky is so pretty.

Now that I have some idea of what is involved in producing one of these, it really boggles the mind how he managed to achieve such detail in his images.

The clean lines, the tiny spots of colour. If I had to carve a wooden block for every single colour, I'd probably just make something that looked incredibly pixelated.

This exhibit is on until the 15th of October, 2017.