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According to Richard Cork and the makers of the BBC documentary
The Great Wave (2007), this image is not typically Japanese. 25
However, while there is evidence to show that European principles
impacted on Japanese production as much as the Japanesque inspired some
of the greatest Western artists and designers of the period, the influence of
the art of Japan in actually instigating and formulating the major movements
of Aestheticism (of course, Japonisme) and Art Nouveau cannot be overlooked
and far outweighs the balance. That Japan was indeed the flavour of the
times is emphasised in the movement’s transition into the performing arts,
exemplified with the two operas The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan (1885)
and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (1898). These cultural crossings found their
culmination around the fin-de-siècle, continuing into the twentieth century and
existing beyond it to this present day.
Although
Hokusai’s picture became one of the most popular works, for its Japanese
qualities, for nineteenth-century Western Japanophiles and Mediaevalists
alike – in that it demonstrates a mastery of Eastern principles in art, such as
the use of negative space and sense of harmonic balance through
asymmetrical composition and is also a fine example of medieval techniques
in woodblock printing – it actually fuses the Japanese traditions with
Western notions of depth and perspective. To our modern eye it appears to
be very Japanese but even the subject matter was apparently unusual for its
time and medium. In its menacing claw-like waves, there is also something
essentially Gothic about it.
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