Ejiri in Suruga Province

On this day in 1760 Katsushika Hokusai, a Japanese artist and the most famous ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period, was born.

Today, we won't show you his classic The Great Wave (because everybody else will) but one of his lesser known (but so adorable) works. Here Hokusai returns to the theme of the insubstantiality of the human world in the face of powerful natural forces by depicting a group of travelers buffeted by strong winds as their belongings fly off into the distance. Many squares of paper also whirl away from a woman’s backpack. They rise into the air and scatter all over the field. The woman’s wind-tossed cloth covers her face, and the tall, leggy tree in the foreground loses its leaves to the wind like falling sparks. Other travelers face the wind, crouching low to avoid it and clinging to their hats. Ejiri-juku, a station on the Tōkaidō Road, was located on the west side of the port of Shimizu. The town was famous for the beautiful pine forest of Miho (Miho no Matsubara) on the foothills of Fuji.

See you tomorrow!

P.S. Hokusai's The Great Wave comes from a series of 36 prints depicting the views of Mount Fuji; here you can see the most beautiful of them!