Hokusai. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

Famous first edition: first printing of 6,000 numbered copies

Mount Fuji has long been a centerpiece of the Japanese cultural imagination, and nothing captures this more virtuously than Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760–1849) historic woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. The renowned printmaker documents 19th-century Japan with exceptional artistry and adoration, celebrating its countryside, towns, people, and serene natural beauty. Produced at the height of Hokusai’s artistic ambition, the series is a quintessential work of ukiyo-e that earned the artist global recognition as a leading master of his craft.

Among just a few complete reprints of the series, this XXL edition pays tribute to Hokusai’s striking colors and compositions with unprecedented care and magnitude. Bound in the Japanese tradition with uncut paper, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji presents all 36 original plates plus the 10 additional ones the artist later added. This publication, perfectly accompanying TASCHEN’s One Hundred Views of Edo and The Sixty-Nine Stations Along the Kisokaido, paints a charming picture of pre-industrial Japan and is in itself a stunning monument to the art of woodblock printing.