Moving constantly (over 90 residences), creating profusely (tens of thousands of works), and with each phase of his life reinventing himself and taking a new name (around 30 names in all!), Katsushika Hokusai pioneered and mastered artistic styles of late Edo-period Japan. Beginning with ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” he created woodblock prints of figures under the direction of Katsukawa Shunshō. After Shunshō’s death and an ensuing series of events, he took the name Hokusai and shifted his focus to nature, which he would continue for the rest of his life. In his old age, his most celebrated period, he called himself Gakyō Rōjin, or “Old Man Mad about Painting.”
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