倫敦の北斎 - Living, Loving, Thinking, Again

John-Paul Stonard “Hokusai: the Great Wave that swept the world” https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/19/hokusai-japanese-artist-late-blossoming-great-wave-mount-fuji

もうすぐ開幕する、”Beyond the Great Wave”というサブタイトルが副えられた大英博物館の葛飾北斎展*1を巡って。北斎の60歳以降の晩年にフォーカスした展示。やはり中心は70代の『富嶽三十六景』ということになる。
記事の筆者が初めて「富士山」を見たときのことが出てくる；

If the manga made Hokusai’s name, the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (there are in fact 46 prints in the series) ensured his fame. Hokusai’s obsession with Mount Fuji was part of his hankering after artistic immortality – in Buddhist and Daoist tradition, Fuji was thought to hold the secret of immortality, as one popular interpretation of its names suggests: “Fu-shi” (“not death”). I saw the mountain for the first time last year, from the window of the Shinkansen bullet train. You quickly understand how it dominates the landscape, as the train curves around, revealing it over woodlands and cities, behind buildings, over the plains – and why Hokusai returned to it so often, like a pivot for his restless imagination.

富士≒ 不死？
また、記事の最後のパラグラフ；

In his 80s, Hokusai was said to draw a Chinese lion or lion dancer every morning, throwing it out of the window to ward off ill luck. A number of these “daily exorcism” drawings still exist (probably thanks to Ōi*2running out to collect them up), and they are among his most lively and charming works. Hokusai’s only bad luck was to die 10 years short of his century, and never in his own mind to reach the state of artistic immortality, which he estimated would occur at the age of 110 when, as he once wrote, “Each dot, each line, will possess a life of its own.”

Chinese lionは唐獅子？　
See also

Mark Brown “Katsushika Hokusai's later life to feature in British Museum show” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jan/10/katsushika-hokusais-later-life-to-feature-in-british-museum-show
Jonathan Jones*3 “Europe thought it had a monopoly on artistic genius. Hokusai proved it wrong” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/11/europe-monopoly-artistic-genius-hokusai-japanese-prints-drawings

*1:http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/hokusai.aspx

*2:娘の葛飾応為。お栄。See eg. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%91%9B%E9%A3%BE%E5%BF%9C%E7%82%BA 『百日紅』の主人公。

百日紅~Miss HOKUSAI~ [DVD]

出版社/メーカー: バンダイビジュアル
発売日: 2015/11/26
メディア: DVD
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