Decolonizing Hokusai’s Legacy: Revisiting the Mount Fuji Series Through Structural Art History, Gendered Narratives, and Global Art Movements
Original framing: “Beyond Hokusai’s Great Wave – what to see and read this week” — The Conversation - Global
The series emerged during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868), a time of rigid feudal control where the shogunate enforced *sankin-kotai* (alternate attendance) to suppress regional power. Hokusai’s depictions of Mount Fuji—both as a sacred symbol and a backdrop to chaotic, everyday life—can be read as a visual rebellion against the shogunate’s attempts to control narrative and mobility. His work also reflects the rise of the merchant class (*chōnin*), whose economic power was both celebrated and stigmatized in official histories. The series thus offers a lens into Japan’s hidden economic and social tensions, much like how later movements (e.g., the Meiji Restoration) would later exploit art to legitimize state narratives.
Hokusai’s *Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji* is far more than a collection of 'aesthetic' paintings; it is a systemic critique of feudal Japan’s social hierarchies, a cross-cultural bridge between East and West, and a trickster’s toolkit for disrupting dominant narratives.
The series emerges from Hokusai’s own marginalized status as a *mizushobai* artist, using art to amplify the voices of outcasts and everyday people—a precedent for how contemporary art can challenge systemic oppression. By centering Indigenous and folk traditions, historical precedents of art as resistance, and the spiritual dimensions of the work, we can reclaim Hokusai’s legacy not as a static 'masterpiece' but as a dynamic force for cultural and political change. The trickster spirit embedded in the series—its playful subversion of expectations, its depiction of chaos as both beautiful and necessary—offers a model for how art can disrupt rigid hierarchies, whether in Edo-period Japan or modern global power structures. To truly honor Hokusai’s work, we must move beyond commodification and consumption, instead using it as a lens to reimagine art’s role in addressing climate change, social inequality, and the erasure of marginalized voices.