Shinagawa Gotenyama
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
Katsushika Hokusai
Artwork Description
Shinagawa Gotenyama depicts Gotenyama Hill in Shinagawa, once the site of the Shogunate’s Shinagawa residence and later transformed into one of Edo’s most celebrated cherry blossom viewing spots.
During spring, the hill filled with visitors who gathered to enjoy hanami. In Hokusai’s composition, mats are spread across the slope, people recline and converse, fans open in mid-gesture, dancers raise their arms, and parents carry children on their backs. The foreground vibrates with human festivity.
Behind this seasonal exuberance, Mount Fuji rises calmly in the distance.
The structure of the image relies on contrast. The clustered density of figures forms an irregular, animated mass across the hillside. Fuji, by contrast, is geometrically stable and spatially distant. Blossoms bloom briefly; the mountain endures.
Hokusai does not isolate celebration from landscape. Instead, he integrates joy into geography. The scene becomes less a documentary of flower viewing and more a study in temporal layering—ephemeral blossoms against perennial snow.
Within the series, this print articulates one of Hokusai’s central themes: the coexistence of transience and permanence. Human delight unfolds in cycles; Fuji remains constant.
About Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai was one of the most influential ukiyo-e artists of the Edo period. Active as painter and printmaker, he transformed ukiyo-e into a structural exploration of landscape and society.
In Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, he juxtaposes motion and stillness, labor and leisure, urgency and calm—always anchoring the composition with Fuji as a stabilizing axis.
Reproduction
This work is a 20th century lithographic reproduction of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
It is not an original Edo period woodblock print, but a later limited edition lithograph.
Hand printed and numbered 180/300 in pencil on the lower margin.
Details
Medium: Lithograph
Edition: 180/300
Size: 410 mm × 600 mm
All artworks are sold as shown in the photographs.
