Answer the following questions as you watch the video Biography of Hokusai (BBC Documentary) (44 minutes)=

1) What do you know about the artist Katsushika Hokusai? (Some important information is also mentioned at the end of the video, so come back to this question)

2) What can we say about the wave depicted in the picture? Is it a fruit of the artist’s fantasy? Where did the image come from?

3) What do we learn about typical Japanese art from the video? What genres/types of subject matter were typical for Japanese visual art in Hokusai times?

4) What elements of Hokusai’s prints are borrowed from the West?

5) What do we know about the significance of Mount Fuji for Japanese culture?

6) Most of Hokusai’s other images are quite peaceful. Why did he decide to depict a wave?

7) Comment on the composition of the print. (Who/what is depicted? What about the boats? Where are they heading? )

What about another sub-wave that is part of the big wave; what is its outline, what other element in the picture does it imitate?)

8) How was the image used in the political context of Japan’s aggression in WWII and in the post-war years?

9) What is the influence of the image on contemporary popular culture? How is it used in contemporary culture? How does it relate to our contemporary-world anxieties?