The Great Wave

I love the idea of travelling without moving. This week we started using art as a mode of transport — travelling back in time to Edo (Tokyo) in 1639. Years of civil war came to a close with the rise of the Tokugawa shoguns. While European ships are setting sail to the rest of the world, one tiny country closes its borders to the world. Japan in the Edo period is cut off, confined and almost entirely isolated in this era of colonisation and globalisation. For the next 200 years, Japan was shut off from the world — leaving and entering the country was punishable by death. In these conditions emerged a unique and quintessential Japanese art movement of printmaking.

It was a hot day, and I had a bad throat, but my class was really immersed in the storytelling. I told them about the emergence of the new floating world, the “ukiyo-e” along with a newly wealthy merchant class that prospered in these years of stability. New money meant money to spend, and so rose the kabuki theatre and geisha districts. I showed my class the woodcut block prints that proliferated in that period. None of them had ever seen The Great Wave before — and when I told them its one of the most printed images in the world, they were really interested to take a good look at it. I explained to them why the image made such an impact at the time — the low horizon line and perspective that resembled European styles, the representation of destabilisation that Japan was experiencing.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Fugaku sanjurokkei (Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji)

Then I introduced them to the artist Katsushika Hokusai — I told them about how he rose to fame because he had used the ukiyo workshops that produced prints of actors and prostitutes and to start making landscapes and prints of ordinary Japanese people. Then I showed them his 36 views of Mount Fuji — and we talked about how he looked at one thing from so many different points of view.

I wanted to give them the experience of printmaking — and so I had them carve designs into sheets of foil. (We’re not allowed to bring sharp tools into the prison, otherwise we could have done so many things here!) I asked them to create their own 36 views of Mumbai.