This week’s dream: discovering Hokusai in the Japanese Alps
The subject of a new exhibition at the British Museum, Katsushika Hokusai is the most famous of all Japanese artists. Monet and van Gogh were ardent admirers of his work, and the best known of the delicate woodblock prints for which he is principally renowned – The Great Wave (1831) – is now “one of the world’s most recognisable artworks”, says Danielle Demetriou in The Sunday Telegraph. Hokusai was born in what is now Tokyo, in 1760, and in his home neighbourhood you will find the Sumida Hokusai Museum. But there is little trace left here of the district he knew – so fans should also visit Obuse, the pretty little town where he worked in his final decade. Unlike the capital, it retains its old atmosphere, and it also has a fine museum dedicated to his work.
Nestled in the Japanese Alps, Obuse is known for its wooden houses, its chestnuts and its flower gardens, which are worthy of haiku poetry. Hokusai first visited at the age of 82, at the behest of a prominent local merchant, and returned several times before his death, seven years later. At the heart of the town lies a “beautifully maintained” old estate, Obusedo, the wooden entrance gate of which Hokusai portrayed in one of his prints. Within stands a hotel with a minimalist contemporary interior, and the Hokusai Museum itself, where the exhibits include two large wooden festival floats with “richly painted” panels. A short walk away along a “winding chestnut path” lies the Takai Kozan Memorial Museum, where you can see the rooms in which Hokusai’s patron, the merchant, hosted his cultural salons. And an “idyllic” 30-minute walk further on is the mountainside temple of Ganshoin. On its cypress-wood ceiling is painted a “swirling” phoenix in “dramatic gem-reds and greens” – Hokusai’s final work. Inside Japan (0117-370 9730, www.insidejapantours.com) has a seven-night Hokusai Japan trip from about £2,590pp, excluding flights.