The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa oki nami-ura)

The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏 Kanagawa-oki nami ura, "Under a wave off Kanagawa"), also known as The Great Wave or simply The Wave, is a woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎). It was published sometime between 1829 and 1833  in the late Edo period as the first print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. It is Hokusai's most famous work, and one of the most recognizable works of Japanese art in the world.


The image depicts an enormous wave threatening boats off the coast of the town of Kanagawa (the present-day city of Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture). While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami, the wave is more likely to be a large rogue wave. As in many of the prints in the series, it depicts the area around Mount Fuji under particular conditions, and the mountain itself appears in the background.

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūrokkei) is a series of landscape prints by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai (1760–1849). The series depicts Mount Fuji from different locations and in various seasons and weather conditions. Mount Fuji is a popular subject for Japanese art due to its cultural and religious significance. 

Each of the images was made through a process whereby an image drawn on paper was used to guide the carving of a wood block. This block was then covered with ink and applied to paper to create the image. The complexity of Hokusai's images includes the wide range of colors he used, which required the use of a separate block for each color appearing in the image.

The series was produced from c. 1830 to 1832, when Hokusai was in his seventies and at the height of his career, and published by Nishimura Yohachi.  Besides the original thirty-six, there was an additional 10 more images.