Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), or The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)

Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave)

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849)

Year

ca. 1830–32

Medium

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Seen at

The Met, New York

The most reproduced image in Japanese art. The wave's foam fingers reach toward Mount Fuji, which sits small and stable in the distance — a play of impermanence against permanence. Part of the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, published in the early 1830s, and instantly influential on European modernism once the prints reached Paris.