Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

by colinprince • 1 year ago

143 102 1 year ago

imp0cat2• 1 year ago

Thanks for the RSS feed. I added it to my reader (Flipboard) just in case I happen to be somewhere near an exhibition.

msephton10• 1 year ago

(site creator here) My pleasure! Summer is the most popular time of year, Japan or USA most likely but many around the world means it's quite a varied schedule. Tickets to the France exhibition (the print is on loan from Japan) sold out in a day.

imp0cat2• 1 year ago

Appreciated. So the chances are pretty slim. :( But still I am gonna keep hoping.

aosaigh• 1 year ago

How do temporary exhibitions for famous artworks work? Do the museums pay the original owners to have it exhibited for a period of time? How does it get transported? It must be incredibly expensive to ship priceless artworks

bcraven3• 1 year ago

The full loans process is outlined on the British Museum YT:

https://youtu.be/XuW2wSKOgtU

akkartik• 1 year ago

The 'but why?' link is fascinating: https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-...

vasco2• 1 year ago

This means that if these prints are displayed for three months at 50 lux, they should be stored in the dark for at least a year before they are displayed again
While these measures will not stop fading from occurring altogether, they will ensure that these world-famous prints fade so slowly that they will be seen by countless generations of visitors to the Museum in the future.

This trade-off is interesting, are we maximizing for number of people watching works? Or are we purely maximizing time? Because its not obvious to me that more people will see a work if it lasts 1000 more years but spends 80% of that time in storage, vs lasting 100 more years spending 0% of the time in storage.

Also lets say you go to the museum today and are lucky that it happens to be on display. But your friend travels to see it, it happens to be in 80% storage time, then the friend goes back home and dies without seeing it so that some future person that doesn't exist yet even can see it later without fading. Why is the future person more important than the current person, in a sense?

Storing it assumes a lot, that humanity will survive, that people will be interested in seeing it, that some fire isn't going to destroy their storage, etc. Meanwhile real life people would've seen it already. I don't have an answer, just questions though.

qq66• 1 year ago

By limiting the hours today, it helps make sure that the people who do see it are the ones most interested in seeing it. Those are the ones who will look up the schedule, schedule their trip around it, etc... while if it's just permanently up, many of the viewers will be random passersby (and the number of viewers per hour of illumination will probably be lower)

pyrale• 1 year ago

You mean, that hypothetical friend who wants to see this particular piece of art in situ so much but didn’t bother to plan their trip accordingly?

teekert• 1 year ago

Scanners are also getting better. Perhaps this way it will make it all the way to the atomic cloning era. Just like we might all just make it until the “upload your consciousness” era, or the “we beat aging” era.

politelemon• 1 year ago

Same here, no answers. I'd also question why we should feel entitled to see it, or have that privilege at all. The curators might, at a certain point in time, hold a great appreciation for it versus me Joe public, and then it would make sense to simply not show it anymore as the trade-off isn't worth it.

pm215• 1 year ago

I think another aspect here is that museums don't have infinite display space. So if famous items X, Y and Z are on permanent display that's less space available for other, less famous but perhaps equally interesting, items that are stuck in storage. Rotating the famous items into storage doesn't mean the museum has blank walls for a year.

Arguably there's more educational value and more chance of a visitor serendipitously encountering something that speaks to them if the museum has a big set of prints rotated through, rather than a more static one. After all, even if you haven't ever seen an original of the Great Wave you almost certainly already know the image and it's likely already made most of the impact on you that it ever will...

msephton10• 1 year ago

The British Museum have at least two impressions. Boston have five, showing a cycle of three the last time "it" was on view. So viewings can be more frequent than the 4 year gap, or they can keep the gap and have a longer exhibition. Either way, more people get to see it.

amelius• 1 year ago

Can we just turn off the lights, move visitors into the room, then turn on the lights for a few seconds?

dylan6042• 1 year ago

As these are prints themselves, are we gaining anything by seeing these prints vs other prints? It's not like viewing an original Monet or anything where the thing being viewed was the work created by the artist's hands. While these prints might have been made by the artist, they are still not the originals.

When visiting DC, do we really think the Constitution under all of that glass is the actual Constitution? POTUS seems to think he has the actual, so there's conflict right there. For a document as beloved as the Constitution, why would you ever risk the original?

sunrunner• 1 year ago

Such a shame that Hokusai didn't get a chance to read Sarah Renae Clark's excellent investigation [1] into lightfastness (coincidentally linked yesterday).

[1] https://sarahrenaeclark.com/lightfast-testing-pencils/

tjpnz• 1 year ago

There's a Hokusai museum in Tokyo where it's on permanent display. You can also catch a sumo match nearby.

https://hokusai-museum.jp/?lang=en

maratc3• 1 year ago

And another one in Haifa: https://www.tmja.org.il/eng/Collection/Ukiyo-e_Woodblock_Pri...

msephton10• 1 year ago

As far as I'm aware this has never been on view. You can probably request to see it privately. (I'm the creator of the site in the OP)

aoki• 1 year ago

The Sumida Hokusai Museum is almost entirely a display of replicas. They are very upfront about being a “learning” museum - they do hold the original prints but display them in rotation. We were there last year and there was exactly one original print on display (in a back corner of the special exhibit room); it was one of the “36 views” but not one of the uber-famous ones.

resheku• 1 year ago

While most the time they display replica, sometimes they do show the original, like for example right now. Sadly no live sumo in Ryogoku, the next tournament starts this Sunday in Nagoya.

sharkjacobs• 1 year ago

What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens.

Obviously "serviceable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, a replica might simply not be very good, might not capture some vital characteristic of the thing which makes it a great work.

But otherwise, it's basically that the knowledge of how important and significant this work is puts the viewer in a more receptive frame of mind, right?

To be clear, that's not nothing. I of course know firsthand how much that affects the impact of a painting, museums and galleries care a lot about how they display their collection. But is that it?

nsxwolf• 1 year ago

That's mostly it. You see it and say "Wow! That's the original!"

creakingstairs• 1 year ago

I agree with you that replicas can be great.

Last year, I went to Otsuka museum of art[1] where they have life-size replicas of famous paintings (including the Sistine chapel), and it was great.

Before going, I was weirdly hung up about going to somewhere to see "replicas" instead of the real thing. But once I got there, I loved every second of it. All the artworks were replicated with careful detail in life size, so I felt like I wasn't missing much. In fact, I felt like I was enjoying it more! There were no crowds. I could get as close to the artworks as I wanted to. The lighting was great, since they didn't have to worry about damaging the paints. It was more engaging for the kids as they could free touch some of the replicated potteries etc.

It is a bit out of the way, but I'd highly recommend anyone going to Japan to check out that museum and maybe the onaruto bridge [2] on the way

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art

[2] https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see...

isolli3• 1 year ago

Tangentially related, I remember that when the Sistine chapel was renovated in the 90s, people were shocked to see the vivid colors again. For decades, people had traveled far to see the original in person, when it was in fact but a shadow of itself.

bravesoul2• 1 year ago

That looks incredible and a $400M cost in 1998 it must be grand! Basically half a 1997 Amazon ;)

treetalker• 1 year ago

As you say, some works seem to lose something in any reproduction. La Giaconda (Mona Lisa) is a great example: any reproduction you may have seen in books or online hasn't captured the rainbow of background color in the original, or the sensation of viewing a living person sitting for a portrait when viewed at a few paces in the Louvre.

guappa• 1 year ago

The original one is behind an extremely thick layer of glass that completely distorts the colours.

klausa• 1 year ago

That's fascinating response! Mona Lisa is, to me, _the_ example of an artwork that is actually better viewed online instead of in person.

The painting is way smaller than you expect, it's always crowded with folks who want to take selfies, it's behind so many layers of glass/plastic that distort the colors — it's really, really hard to actually have any chance to appreciate it person.

empath752• 1 year ago

There is a "copy" of the Mona Lisa at the Prado in Madrid that has been restored, and there is never a crowd around it. It might have been made by Leonardo himself or one of his students, but it was probably made at the same time.

ninetyninenine• 1 year ago

Humans thrive on the illusion of that reality is better than the replica even when the replica is for all intents and purposes 100 percent identical.

In fact the replica can even be enhanced. Feed it into an LLM or diffuser and produce something better. But now we call this AI slop even when the slop is superior to most of what humans can ever produce in their lifetimes.

I think the key is not to pretend you’re above it. Don’t be that idiot in the corner asking stupid questions like “why do humans listen to music it’s just patterns of sound waves that have no intrinsic meaning and why do they sing songs and communicate in complicated ways when plain English works”

Are you human? Embrace your humanity and stop pretending you’re some genius savant who’s so above it all that he can’t comprehend human nature. You know why people want to see the real thing for the same reason why a bunch of people want to go to concerts and listen to music that is objectively worse than the recording. If you understand music then you understand art. Don’t pretend you don’t.

sfn42• 1 year ago

I have some wool sweaters, home made by people I care about. I also have some store bought wool sweaters. By almost any measure, the store boughts are better. But I don't care about them.

If the store bought ones get destroyed or worn out I can just get a new one. The hand made ones are irreplaceable. They represent a huge personal time investment by someone who cares enough about me to do that work for me.

Art may be a little different but I reckon it's the same idea.

MangoToupe3• 1 year ago

You know why people want to see the real thing for the same reason why a bunch of people want to go to concerts and listen to music that is objectively worse than the recording.

This seems like such a blatant apples and oranges comparison I'm not sure where to begin:

1. Live music is often better than studio recordings, 2. You can record memories with loved ones there that have no analogue in viewing a static piece of art, and 3. You're supporting a living artist.

People just want to view the mona lisa to because it's an easily purchasable experience widely seen to have value. Or something like that; to be honest, I don't quite grasp the psychology and visiting paris seems like it's not worth the effort.

timr• 1 year ago

What's the advantage of seeing an original piece of art over a serviceable replica? Especially in the case where the "original" is a print, one of dozens.

And when you consider that "original" in woodblock prints is a Ship of Theseus thing -- over the years, prints have been made by different printers (frequently using different colors!), employed by different publishers, using blocks that have been re-carved by different craftspeople -- the "original", in any traditional sense, is only the painting made by Hokusai.

When you start diving into the world of collecting woodblock prints, you realize that "authenticity" is a subtle concept, and prices can differ by thousands of dollars (or far more) based on little more than a publisher's mark and/or the age of the paper. It's an area where encyclopedic knowledge really is required to understand exactly what you're looking at.

For example, you can easily find lots of "authentic" Hokusai prints in the <$1000 range (sometimes much lower), but these are all modern prints, done on re-carved blocks. Some of the cheapest have been done in the past 20 years.

Muromec2• 1 year ago

Hokusai would want you to buy one of those 100 bucks re prints and get it on your wall to see.

sandspar• 1 year ago

For me it's just more fun to see the original. My museum hobby is pointless, basically, so I feel free to set myself little rules. Perhaps it makes sense to think of going to museums as a type of collection hobby. Collectors typically seek authenticity, even if it's a bit silly. A rare Magic the Gathering card is merely cardboard, but ah - it's the special cardboard! Or take birding: I can see a pileated woodpecker on YouTube any time, but to see one in person, what bliss!

kragen• 1 year ago

One of the most famous essays in the history of art criticism concerns precisely this question; this is probably the single intellectual work of the Frankfurt school for which it is remembered today, if we don't count inspiring right-wing conspiracy theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/... (Zohn translation)

https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf (Zohn translation)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220128111229/http://raumgegenz... (French, blocked)

https://web.archive.org/web/20180730163618/https://www.artec... (German)

This is probably a good time to reread it, since AI art is forcing us to revisit many of the same questions from a new perspective.

riffraff• 1 year ago

Countless people see replicas everyday, don't know they're replicas, and are happy about it.

Sometimes the replicas themselves are so old they become a monument on their own right, like some "Egyptian" obelisks in Rome, which are roman copies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_obelisks_in_Rome

jojobas• 1 year ago

You're not winning this, there are people arguing on which of the four original Black Square paintings is better.

msephton10• 1 year ago

It's the whole experience for me. It's a bit like asking why you would go to see a movie at the cinema when you can watch it on your smart phone—it's possible but when the opportunity to see it as its meant to be seen presents itself why wouldn't you? So it's the fact that it is "an original" (though there's no such thing with woodblocks)—in this case unique in many ways compared to any other imprint of The Great Wave. Plus the curation: when I saw one at Bristol they had other Hokusai works such as manga and his other waves and fuji that were kind of precursor to The Great Wave. ps: I made the site in the OP.

W3zzy• 1 year ago

The Japanese also look at this from a different angle. A shrine that has been rebuild every few decades is still an ancient shrine to them. A reprint of an ancient block print is still an original to them.

I get confronted with the preservation of buildings quite often and have to point out now and then that the building they are trying to preserve is nowhere near the original. Through the ages we've modified those building to suit our needs. Why stop now?

It's only a matter of preserving culture with respect do or the past.

dyauspitr• 1 year ago

Like many things in life, only the original has gravitas. It’s not so much about the technical ability or the properties of the painting, it’s the aura around it that people want to be in.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

A Show HN: in 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221

NaOH• 1 year ago

Previously:

[Show HN:] Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (114 comments)

dang• 1 year ago

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223424 - June 2025 (1 comment)

Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (113 comments)

Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700834 - April 2023 (1 comment)

Where can I see Hokusai's 'Great Wave Off Kanagawa' at a museum today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555378 - April 2023 (1 comment)

Also:

Things to know about the Great Wave - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474449 - Sept 2024 (90 comments)

Hokusai's 'Great Wave' features on new Japanese banknotes (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40688921 - June 2024 (50 comments)

1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 - May 2023 (72 comments)

The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26994024 - April 2021 (63 comments)

Iconic Print, “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” Recreated with 50k Lego Bricks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482654 - Dec 2020 (12 comments)

The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618 - Jan 2020 (27 comments)

A Great Wave of Hokusai - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757078 - Dec 2019 (2 comments)

What Hokusai’s Great Wave tells us about museums, copyright, online collections - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547824 - July 2019 (24 comments)

---

Also, Hokusai apart from the Wave:

Hokusai Moyo Gafu: an album of dyeing patterns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992 - June 2025 (14 comments)

Hokusai's five ghoulish prints for the series Hyaku Monogatari (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989260 - Oct 2024 (17 comments)

Hokusai's rare Mt. Fuji collection sold for $3.6M. at N.Y. auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762679 - March 2024 (7 comments)

Hokusai’s Illustrated Warrior Vanguard of Japan and China (1836) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36808566 - July 2023 (3 comments)

Late Hokusai: Thought, technique, society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34403383 - Jan 2023 (12 comments)

Hokusai and ‘The Great Picture Book of Everything’: The Latest Research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711386 - June 2022 (2 comments)

British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24542001 - Sept 2020 (31 comments)

A picture of change for a world in constant motion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090950 - Aug 2020 (3 comments)

Hokusai: Old man, crazy to paint (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557558 - Nov 2019 (5 comments)

Hokusai’s Ghost Stories (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657668 - Dec 2018 (1 comment)

The Magician of Manga - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057213 - Nov 2016 (10 comments)

seafoamteal• 1 year ago

I only recently learned about this piece after reading Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It's on the cover and it plays a somewhat important role in the story.

esperent• 1 year ago

The Great Wave is a deservedly famous piece of art, but if it's the only thing of Hokusai that you know, do yourself a favor and look up some of his other work.

Waterfall penance is my favorite.

https://www.tremontauctions.com/auction-lot/hokusai-katsushi...

He also made some weird art involving an octopus and a woman, which is insightful both for understanding the other side of a famous artist, and also some of the weirder things in modern Japanese manga.

Edit: after I made this comment I was reminded of a comic I saw on reddit, where the artist was bemoaning their dream of getting paid to draw beautiful art, versus the reality where the only people willing to actually pay for art all want furry porn. So maybe not much has changed really, and maybe it says less about Japanese culture, and more about the general human condition.

bcraven3• 1 year ago

I suggest you look up the documentary _Hokusai: Old Man Crazy to Paint_ .[0]

It discusses how Hokusai changed his artistic style every ~10 years for his own pleasure.

[0] https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Hokusai:_Old_Man_Crazy_...

7373737373• 1 year ago

https://www.wikiart.org/en/katsushika-hokusai/all-works#!#fi...

dekhn• 1 year ago

"The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" is an amazing piece of art (generally considered NSFW).

The entire "Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji" series is phenomenal, really a testament to the japanese philosophy of sublime minimalism. But nothing really hits me like The Great Wave, with its dramatic foreground composition (look at those guys clinging to the boats!) and the tranquil majesty of Fuji in the distance.

lutusp• 1 year ago

This alludes to a longstanding debate with no meaningful resolution.

I can see and appreciate Michelangelo's "David", in one of its two best-known Italian renderings (not counting the one in Las Vegas), even though the sculpture's human model, and the artist, are long dead.

I think Banksy has the right idea, even though people do what they can to undermine his works -- by, among other things, chain-sawing them out of the walls the artist chose to make his point, then offering them for sale.

A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one?

bcraven3• 1 year ago

There's also a full-size plaster cast of David in 'The Castle Courts' at the V&A in London that's been there since 1857!

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-da...

npteljes2• 1 year ago

A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one?

This is because of how humans appreciate where the spirit of a work is. In case of a book, most of the essence is in the words, not in the paper or the ink - although, people do appreciate the print itself too to a great deal. But because the words carry the most meaning, the work gets copied, translated, even modernized, and agreed to not lose much of its meaning. After the mass printing era, there is no such thing as "a single master book" when referring to a work. There can be drafts, a manuscript, generations of copies referred to as different editions, etc. It's a mass production affair with a blueprint and products, whereas in case of a painting, there is a single, final version original usually, and subsequent reproductions are copies and modifications of that.

The other thing is that a copy of a painting is not a travesty at all. Many appreciate and decorate with replicas, prints, view them online, use them as wallpaper on their device, etc. I don't think people think of any of this as a travesty. The issue here is to present a copy as the original, in which case the replica becomes a fake. This is a lie, and a betrayal, and these evoke strong feelings in humans.

empath752• 1 year ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C2nt72h0cQ

Orson Welles made a great documentary on this topic.

OPBoot• 1 year ago

Or you can support current artists in the same genre such as David Bull at Mokuhankan, who is working hard to keep the art of traditional Japanese woodblock printing alive.

Yes - you can also buy a copy of the Great Wave, and it's beautiful.

https://mokuhankan.com/index.html

rjh29• 1 year ago

Well, you -could- buy a copy, it now seems like there's a very very long waiting list.

msephton10• 1 year ago

I bought my repro from Japan, by one of the many other people doing reprints.

darkstar_16• 1 year ago

Or you could buy the Lego version :)

burnt-resistor• 1 year ago

The cover for Applications of Digital Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics

I'm (mis)remembering it was on a math textbook of some kind, perhaps a 90's era high school AP calculus BC text.

poulpy123• 1 year ago

I was wondering how it can be displayed in 2 museums simultaneously and it's because there is around 100 prints of it

msephton10• 1 year ago

I'm the creator of the site and it's great to see it on HN again. Since it was featured in 2023 the site has become even more automated and also searches press releases for related news which I share from time to time on social media. There's currently a digital exhibition on arrival at Tokyo Narita airport, things like that.

The current exhibition in Nantes, France, (whose print is on loan from Japan) sold out very quickly. Before I could even organise my travel! So the fascination with The Great Wave lives on.

dale_glass• 1 year ago

Thanks for making the site, but this link:

https://greatwavetoday.com/all-institutions.csv.txt isn't working.

msephton10• 1 year ago

Just fixed, somebody reported it on github. Thanks both!

funkydata• 1 year ago

So, actually, on the museum's ticketing site they say that the internet tickets are sold out, but if you actually get there, there's a limited amount of tickets that are sold each day (because not everyone uses the internet) : "Merci de noter que des places pour la visite le jour même sont en vente chaque jour directement à l'accueil de l'exposition, dans la limite des places disponibles.".

msephton10• 1 year ago

Ah, thanks! Sadly, I have now booked my holiday travel excluding France so I will have to miss this one.

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 year ago

Reminds me a bit of the old "Is Abe Vigoda Dead?" Web site: http://isabevigodadead.com

amarcheschi• 1 year ago

The thing I found funny about it is that it's so tiny I almost passed it by without recognizing it at first. It sets high expectations by being called great

gwbas1c• 1 year ago

Yeah, same thing happened to me when I saw it in Boston. Because of the way it's been copied, I always thought it was a giant painting. (I'm not a huge art fan, I just happened to be in the museum one day with my family.)

m3kw9• 1 year ago

Right on that website I can see it.

mNovak• 1 year ago

If you're interested in these prints, David Bull [1] is a really great resource on YT, in terms of exploring how these were made and lots of history on specific pieces.

He does a whole series on the Great Wave. It was interesting to learn that it's essentially impossible to know if a given impression is "original" as it was widely copied in Hokusai's own lifetime. He compares copies from various museum collections, and finds many of them come from different block-sets.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@seseragistudio

fusslo• 1 year ago

I grew up in Connecticut. I always thought we had to travel to Boston, Philadelphia, or NYC to see great art.

Then, after I moved halfway across the country I learned about The Hill-Stead museum, the Wadsworth, Florence Griswold museum, New Britain Museum of art, Yale, and even Uconn

Now, I'm kinda melancholy about missing out on these experiences

xnx• 1 year ago

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/3gF011oIXv3kcQ

Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

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