Before anime, before the serialized graphic novels we now call manga, there was Hokusai Manga. But this was not a comic in the modern sense. First published in 1814, it was a dazzling collection of sketchbook pages from the mind of Japan’s most restless artist—Katsushika Hokusai. What began as an instructional book for students exploded into a visual universe: craftsmen at work, sumo wrestlers in motion, waves curling mid-crash, ghosts, gags, gods, and everything in between.
It was as if Hokusai wanted to capture the entire world—not with words, but with ink. And over the course of fifteen volumes and more than 4,000 images, he very nearly did.
What Exactly Is Hokusai Manga?
The word “manga” today calls to mind dynamic panel art, bold narratives, and serialized storytelling. But in 19th-century Japan, the term 漫画 simply meant “whimsical pictures” or “impromptu sketches.” Hokusai Manga fits that definition perfectly.
The first volume appeared in 1814, published by Eirakuya Tōshirō in Nagoya, and was an instant success. It featured over 300 woodblock-printed images arranged across short spreads—most without explanatory text. The sketches were spontaneous yet exacting, brimming with curiosity and movement.
Originally intended as a drawing manual for his students, it quickly became a cultural artifact in its own right. People of all backgrounds bought it—not just artists. It became a bestseller in Edo-period publishing, and later volumes followed until 1878, nearly 30 years after Hokusai’s death.
Inside the Pages: Life, Nature, and the Supernatural
Hokusai drew everything. One page might show carp swimming upstream; the next, farmers harvesting rice. He drew beggars, boatmen, monks, samurai, courtesans, animals, insects, landscapes, waves, and weather.
Some sketches burst with humor: blind men crashing into lanterns or cats behaving like humans. Others feel solemn—like his renderings of Buddhist deities or solitary travelers on misty roads. It’s as if the manga captured the entire emotional register of life in Edo Japan.
And then there’s the linework. These weren’t rough drafts. Even in quick sketches, Hokusai’s brush was disciplined and fluid. His sense of form and balance elevated the mundane to the poetic.
“From the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the forms of things,” Hokusai once wrote. That lifelong obsession fills every page of his manga.
He signed this work as Hokusai aratame Katsushika Taito (“Hokusai changed to Katsushika Taito”). For further exploration of Hokusai’s transformative journey and artistic evolution, refer to our previous article: Hokusai Was Not One Artist, But Many: A Life in Ukiyo-e Transformation.
How It Was Made: The Woodblock Process
Though they appear spontaneous, the pages were printed using the traditional ukiyo-e woodblock technique. That means each sketch was carved in reverse into wood, typically cherry wood, and printed using black ink on washi paper. Later editions added some subtle hand coloring.
Each block had to be painstakingly cut by hand—a process that often took longer than the drawing itself. The challenge was to preserve the immediacy of Hokusai’s brush while working in the slow, deliberate medium of carved wood.
A Bestselling Sensation
The first volume’s runaway success surprised even the publisher. Editions quickly sold out and had to be reprinted. This prompted the release of additional volumes—15 in total, though a few more were prepared and left unpublished.
Unlike Hokusai’s grand landscapes or refined bijin-ga (images of beautiful women), the manga was democratic. Anyone could afford it. Anyone could enjoy it. It was affordable, entertaining, and instructive, all at once.
Artists copied from it. Children played with it. Scholars studied it. Hokusai had created a kind of pictorial encyclopedia for the everyday.
A Book That Crossed Oceans
By the late 19th century, Japanese prints—including Hokusai Manga—began flooding into Europe as part of a growing fascination with Japanese aesthetics known as Japonisme.
Artists like Manet, Degas, Monet, and van Gogh collected these books. Hokusai Manga opened new ways of thinking about space, line, and composition.
Its influence was especially felt in the Impressionist and Art Nouveau movements. The flattened perspectives, the emphasis on gesture, the way motion was captured in stillness—all these techniques shaped European modern art.
Some scholars even consider Hokusai Manga the first art book from Japan to influence Western artists on a large scale.
But Is It Really ‘Manga’?
That’s the trickiest question. Modern manga—as in serialized Japanese comics with characters and plots—developed much later, in the 20th century. Osamu Tezuka, often called the “godfather of manga,” was born more than 100 years after Hokusai.
Still, many view Hokusai Manga as a spiritual ancestor to the medium. It shares manga’s energy, playfulness, and fascination with daily life. Some of its stylistic techniques—like motion lines and exaggerated expressions—echo through today’s manga and anime.
While Hokusai Manga laid the groundwork for manga’s visual style, modern manga has grown into a complex storytelling medium—with structured panels, flowing dialogue, and cinematic pacing that go far beyond Hokusai’s free-form sketches.
Hokusai Manga is not a manga in the narrative sense, but it captured the visual storytelling spirit that defines the genre today.
The Legacy Lives On
Hokusai Manga has never gone out of print. New editions and facsimiles are published regularly. Digital archives from institutions like the British Museum, the National Diet Library, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art make many volumes freely viewable online.
You can view Volumes 1 – 11 of Hokusai Manga at The Met Museum website.
More Than Just a Sketchbook
What makes Hokusai Manga so enduring is not just its artistic quality but its vision. It’s a record of what one man found beautiful, strange, funny, and worth capturing in the world. A monk once asked Hokusai if he considered himself a Buddhist. Hokusai replied, “Yes—when I paint.”
In these sketches, he painted a world of joy and struggle, comedy and dignity, flesh and spirit. They weren’t just practice—they were a philosophy of seeing.
Featured image at top of the book by Seigensha Art Publishing Japan, who also sell a modern printed version of Hokusai Manga.
Read more:
- How Prussian Blue Changed the Face of Ukiyo-e
- The 5 Most Known Ukiyo-e Artists of the Edo Period
- Katsushika Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji: A Final Masterpiece in Ink and Spirit
- Why Did Hokusai Move Over 100 Times During His Life?
- Folktales of Mount Fuji: Myths, Art, and the Spirit of a Sacred Mountain
At The Art of Zen we carry a selection of our own hand-crafted original Japanese art prints in the ukiyo-e and Japandi style. Some of our best selling work is Mount Fuji wall art and Japandi wall art.
Add some zen to your space with brilliant original art from the Art of Zen shop.
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