To mark this year’s Japan Festival, today’s picture is a brilliant woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai featuring that preeminent symbol of Japanese nationhood, Mount Fuji. Hokusai called the work Ejiri in Suruga Province, although it is more commonly known by its popular title, A Sudden Gust of Wind.

The silhouette of Japan’s sacred mountain forms the serene backdrop to a scene of natural turbulence enlivened by human comedy. Ejiri, the location in which the action is set, was a post-station on the Tokaido Highway west of Suruga Bay, close to what is now Shimizu City. Nearby was the well-known beauty spot of Miho no Matsubara, which Hokusai pointedly chose not to depict, preferring instead this prosaic stretch of reedy marshland through which a snake-like path winds. It was an opportunity for him to flaunt his abilities, to prove that he could enliven even the most mundane setting with his compositional originality, his wit and imagination.

All along the serpentine path he has arranged scurrying, hurrying, windblown figures, each contributing a different touch of humour to the scene. Bent double against the gale that has so suddenly and surprisingly swept through their world, they clutch at their scarves and hats and clasp their kimonos about them. In the foreground, at the centre of the picture, a porter struggles with two cloth-wrapped packages tied to the ends of a bamboo cane slung across his shoulder. Distracted by this flapping burden, he reaches up just too late to save his own hat, which has flown high into the air, leaving a circle of padding on his otherwise bare head. To the left of two wind-tossed trees, their autumn leaves flying away like confetti, stands a woman in an equal state of disarray. A stream of papers issues from the breast of...

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