Hokusai: Thirty-Six Views of the Same Mountain. Hang On, Forty-Six...

This is not an engineering post, but it is about something I think many people will appreciate.

For years, I wondered how anyone could produce thirty-six views of the same mountain, and what the point was. Hokusai managed forty-six, because the original thirty-six were so popular that he produced another ten.

One of the highlights of 2025 for me was seeing the complete Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji at the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo. I had seen many of the individual prints before, but seeing the full series was a rare opportunity and pretty amazing. The prints are extremely delicate and light-sensitive, so complete displays are rare. The museum had not shown the full series together for around eight years, which made the exhibition feel very special. The crowds queuing to see it certainly seemed to think so.

I had thought of Under the Wave off Kanagawa, or just The Great Wave, as just a famous image on its own. You can see it everywhere. I even have a Casio G-Shock with it on. In the exhibition, it became just one view of Fuji-san among many, and I found several of the other prints more interesting.

Under the Wave off Kanagawa

Sometimes Fuji-san dominates the image, as in South Wind, Clear Sky. Sometimes it is barely noticeable, as in Lake Suwa in Shinano Province, and you have to look very carefully to see it. It appears beyond bridges and waterwheels, through the centre of a barrel, and as a tiny shape on the horizon. Fuji-san remains the common subject, but the viewpoint, weather, colour and activity around it change completely.

Lake Suwa in Shinano Province

The three best-known prints were displayed together: Under the Wave off Kanagawa, South Wind, Clear Sky and Rainstorm beneath the Summit. After seeing them in books and online for so many years, I was genuinely stunned to see the three together. Although The Great Wave is the most famous, I left the museum with a postcard of Rainstorm beneath the Summit. It stands out in the series for its dark, menacing mood, and it has sat on my desk ever since.

Rainstorm beneath the Summit

Another favourite is Waterwheel at Onden. People are working beside the waterwheel in the foreground, while Fuji-san appears faintly in the distance. Nothing exciting is happening, yet it is one of the prints I really like. Maybe it is the peaceful, rural village atmosphere emanating from the scene. I really don’t know.

Waterwheel at Onden

Hokusai’s use of colour and composition is quite stunning, as is the way he found so many different ways to place Fuji-san within scenes from every facet of everyday life. None of this fully explains why I like the series as much as I do. Perhaps it is simply that he found forty-six different ways to look at the same thing. Maybe that is the point.