Is The Great Wave off Kanagawa a Tsunami? What Hokusai's Famous Print Really Shows

Hokusai's Great Wave is often called a tsunami, but it is more likely a huge rogue wave towering over three fishing boats, with Mount Fuji behind.

Probably not. The wave in Hokusai's print is often described as a tsunami or simply a giant wave, but it is more likely a rogue wave. Hokusai was not illustrating a disaster that struck the coast; he shows three fast boats out at sea, with the crest curling above them, while Mount Fuji sits small and calm in the distance. Once you know what is in the picture, the famous image becomes much more of a story than a poster.

The real title: "Under the Wave off Kanagawa"

In Japanese the print is called Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura, which literally means "Under the Wave off Kanagawa". The title already tells you where to look: not at the wave from a safe distance, but from underneath it, where the boats are.

It is a woodblock print in the ukiyo-e tradition, made in the horizontal ōban format, roughly 25 by 37 centimetres.

Who made it, and when

The artist, Katsushika Hokusai, was born around 31 October 1760 in the Katsushika district of Edo, today's Tokyo. At 18 he joined the studio of the ukiyo-e master Katsukawa Shunshō, and over his life he used at least thirty different names, more than any other major Japanese artist. The signature on the Great Wave itself shows this habit: it reads, in effect, "from the brush of Hokusai, who changed his name to Iitsu".

Hokusai reached the final design in late 1831, when he was about seventy. It was published by Nishimuraya Yohachi, whose firm was called Eijudō.

One of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

The Great Wave is the first print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The series was so popular that ten more prints were added later. So "thirty-six" really means forty-six, a nice puzzle for language learners.

In the Great Wave, Fuji is drawn deliberately small, so that it contrasts with the enormous wave in the foreground. The wave, the boats and the ridge line of the mountain have even been analysed as parts of a single logarithmic spiral.

Three boats and their rowers

Look closely at the boats. They are oshiokuri-bune, fast boats used to carry live fish to the markets of Edo. Each has eight rowers, with two more men at the front as relief crew. Counting all three boats, 30 men are represented, although only 22 can actually be seen.

These boats were 12 to 15 metres long. If you use them as a ruler, the wave is roughly 10 to 12 metres high. That is huge, but it fits a rogue wave in open water better than a tsunami crashing onto a shore. The men are not on a beach facing a flood; they are at work at sea, trying to ride it out.

Reading the picture from right to left

The print is best viewed from right to left, the traditional reading direction in Japan. Read that way, your eye moves past the boats, up the face of the wave, and into the claw-like foam at the crest, which seems about to fall.

The new blue

A big part of the print's impact is its colour. Hokusai used Prussian blue, a pigment that resisted fading, during what has been called the "blue revolution" of the 1830s. The pigment had been imported from Holland since 1820 and was in wide use in Japan from 1829, and the publisher advertised the innovation in January 1831.

How many copies exist?

Because it is a woodblock print, there was never one "original". About 1,000 impressions were made at first, and perhaps 8,000 in total as the blocks were used again and again. Only around a hundred are thought to have survived into the 21st century, and as of 2022, 113 first-edition impressions were known.

You can find them in many collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Tokyo National Museum. In 2023 one impression sold for a record US$2.8 million.

From Debussy to your phone

When Japan opened to trade after the 1868 Meiji Restoration, Japanese prints became fashionable in Europe, and the Great Wave was among the images that influenced Western artists. Claude Debussy kept a copy in his studio and asked for it to be used on the cover of the original 1905 score of La Mer. Vincent van Gogh praised the drawing in a letter of September 1888, and the sculptor Camille Claudel made La Vague (1897), replacing the boats with three dancing women.

Today the image is everywhere. The 🌊 water wave emoji on Apple devices strongly resembles it, and since 2024 the print has appeared on Japan's redesigned 1,000-yen note. Hokusai, who once wrote that at one hundred and ten each dot and line would have a life of its own, died in 1849 aged 88, still hoping for more time to become a real painter.

Learn with the Great Wave: English expressions

Expression	Meaning	Example
a rogue wave	an unexpectedly huge single wave	The ship was hit by a rogue wave.
to ride it out	to survive a difficult period without giving up	We just have to ride out this busy month.
to make waves	to cause excitement or trouble	Her new design really made waves.
in the foreground / background	near to / far from the viewer in a picture	The boats are in the foreground; Fuji is in the background.
a wave of	a sudden increase of something	A wave of Japanese art reached Paris.

Try this: Describe the Great Wave to a friend who has never seen it, in four sentences. Use in the foreground, in the background, above and below, and end with one sentence using to ride it out.