HOKUSAI KATSUHIKA, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji n. 77, 1836-1847

Splendid proof with good contrasts, attributable to the print run of Eirakuya Tōshirō (mid-19th century) from the original woods of the Egawa workshop. Printed on Japanese paper, in excellent condition, with original untrimmed margins beyond the marginal line.

Annotated Bibliography
H.D. Smith II, Hokusai: One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, New York: George Braziller, 1988
M. Forrer, Hokusai, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1991
M. Forrer, Hokusai, New York: Rizzoli, 1988
M. Forrer, Hokusai: Prints and Drawings, Munich: Prestel, 1991
G.C. Calza, Hokusai: The Old Madman of Painting, Milan 1999-2000, London 2003
G.C. Calza, Hokusai: The One Hundred Views of Fuji, Milan: Editoriale Nuova, 1982
J. Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration, London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1980
J. Hillier, L. Smith, Japanese Prints: 300 Years of Albums and Books, London: British Museum Publications, 1980
R.S. Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan, New York: George Braziller, 2006
T. Clark (ed.), Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, London: British Museum Press, 2017
M. Forrer, W.R. van Gulik, Hokusai and His School: Paintings, Drawings and Illustrated Books, Leiden: Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, 1991
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78803

Commentary
The table represents a complex and imaginative exercise in visual imagination inspired by renga, the Japanese chain poems: each poet composes a verse linking it to the final part of the previous one, without knowing its beginning, creating a continuous sequence of images and meanings. Hokusai transforms this literary principle into a pictorial sequence articulated in multiple visual "verses".
In the first verse, in the foreground, we see three men (an elderly man, an adult, and a young man) on the base of what could be the entrance to a temple. Their shaved heads and clothing suggest they are traveling renga poets, likely participants in a poetic gathering. The young man has fallen with his legs in the air, while the two older men laugh at his fall. From the earth emerging between the stones of the wall, the comic action connects to the second verse: one of the legs of the character on the ground seems to kick upwards a kemari ball, the aristocratic game of keeping the ball in the air, introduced in the Heian court and popular during the Edo period. In the third verse, the kicked ball appears atop Fuji, following the slope of the mountain; the ambiguous movement (does it rise or fall?) creates a poetic tension that links the comic element to the sacred setting. Finally, in the fourth verse, the ball transforms into a full moon rising from the sacred mountain, closing the chain with a poetic and elegant image. The initial comic element thus transforms into a refined symbol, in what Hokusai defined as an "elegant delight," merging humor, play, and poetry into a single visual spectacle.