Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), explained

01After so many years of drawing, he still hadn't seen enough

The Great Wave off Kanagawa belongs to Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and appeared around 1830–1832. Hokusai already had decades of experience making prints and illustrations. In his later years, he took another look at Mount Fuji from many different places.

Knowing something well doesn't necessarily make it boring. Sometimes the opposite happens: only after looking many times do you notice relationships you missed before. Here, he lets the wave rush into view first. Only when our gaze slips beneath it do we discover Fuji. The tall mountain we know suddenly becomes a small thing we have to search for.

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02These people still had fish to get to market

The three long boats are fast craft used to transport fresh fish, linking the people aboard to coastal shipping and urban markets. Knowing this gives the scene the weight of everyday life: here is work we can understand, and the sea that comes with doing it.

Look again at those bent backs. The faces are too small to tell one person from another, but the movements are unmistakable. With a great wave bearing down, there's little room for a graceful pose. We don't know how this voyage ends, of course, but we can already sense how slight the boats and people are. From afar, the blue is wonderful to look at. From a place in one of those boats, it would feel immensely heavy.

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03Why are we tense before the wave has even fallen?

Hokusai knew how to choose a moment. The foam reaches forward, the boats haven't yet disappeared, and the thing we fear most hasn't happened. Our eyes naturally move toward the next second: what happens when that enormous wall of water comes down?

Follow the wave's outer edge. It rises gradually, then suddenly breaks into many small white points at the crest. Below, the lines of the boats are long and thin, as if those curving shapes might trap them at any moment. The picture doesn't rely on great areas of darkness to suggest danger. The sky even leaves a broad expanse of pale color. Because we can see so clearly, that feeling of suspense is hard to shake.

04How did Mount Fuji become smaller than the foam?

Notice the pointed white wave nearby, then look at Mount Fuji's snowy summit in the distance. Their outlines are a little alike, one large and one small, echoing each other across the sea. Our eyes compare the two. Even knowing how tall the mountain is, we feel more threatened by the wave in front of us.

You can cover Fuji briefly with a finger. The great wave is still powerful, but we've lost a reference that helps us feel the distance. Uncover it, and the whole sea suddenly has depth again. The mountain occupies very little space, yet it does a great deal: it makes the wave larger and the boats smaller, and gives our gaze somewhere to rest for a moment.

05The same wave looks a little different on every sheet

This is a woodblock print, so many impressions of the image could be made. The one shown here is impression JP1847 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection. Its sky has a warm tone, there is pale red along the sides of the boats, and the blue lines of the water alternate between darker and lighter shades.

We tend to think of a famous artwork as an image with one fixed appearance. Prints remind us that paper, printing, and preservation can all make a difference. That's part of the pleasure of looking closely at this particular image: the warm-colored hulls emerge from the blue, making the crews easier to find. Try looking at the sea alone, then bringing the boats into view. A spectacular arrangement of shapes becomes a situation that people are living through.

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06The wave later found its way into music

In 1905, a detail from this wave image appeared on the cover of the first edition of the score of Debussy's La Mer. Moving from a Japanese print to a French musical score, the wave found another way to be seen. The water on paper is silent, yet it could suggest the sea's power to another art form.

By now, thinking again of the tiny people in the boats gives the wave's beauty an added weight. Its beautiful shape may draw us in first, but what keeps us looking is the life beneath it. Hokusai gave danger a shape and left the people a little space that has not yet been swallowed. The picture always stops before the wave falls, so we can still wait with them for the next moment.

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