13/10/2025
At the Hokusai Exhibition at Creative Museum Tokyo in Yaesu, I stopped before a wooden box — inside, a complete set of Hokusai Manga from the eighteenth century. In that moment, I felt an almost aching desire to hold them in my hands, to feel the echo of time beneath their pages.
The exhibition tells of Hokusai not only as a master of his era, but as the origin of Japan’s modern imagination — the first spark that would one day ignite manga and anime. His books, humble in scale yet vast in spirit, whisper of a mind that saw the world anew with every stroke.
What struck me most was not only Hokusai’s genius, but the unseen brilliance of the carvers who brought his lines to life. On paper smaller than half an ōban print, they engraved detail upon detail with a devotion that feels almost sacred. Each incision breathes with the same vitality that once flowed through the master’s brush — a quiet miracle of art and craft, surviving across the centuries.
p.s. This exhibition will run until November 30, 2025.
