Waterfall at Yoshino in Washū 

Curator: Ah, look! We’re in front of Katsushika Hokusai’s “Waterfall at Yoshino in Washū,” a captivating woodblock print. There’s such dynamic energy in something so…flat. Editor: The cool blues contrasting with the fiery red earth create an almost overwhelming tension, a real drama. But for me, the surface seems less flat than stratified – you can feel the pressure of the block printing technique layered in the final image. Curator: Yes! It’s like Hokusai coaxes movement out of stillness, doesn't he? Those powerful waterfalls plunging, the way the figures guide their horse…it’s almost as though they are whispering to us. What could the story be, I wonder? Editor: Well, I notice that it seems more focused on portraying labour. These individuals must have depended on this route for transport of supplies. And look at how efficiently and elegantly Hokusai has conveyed the labour involved in producing it – someone has to select wood, design it, carve it...all of this adds another material and laborious component that is often dismissed as “high” art. Curator: True, and in a way the sheer physical work that produced a relatively easily distributed piece! Still I see this quiet determination—both in the men guiding the horse and in the very precise work. It hints at the profound respect for nature. It's all intertwined in this single moment captured. What do you see in that color palette, beyond the labour of printing? Editor: Right, because the choices are determined as much by practical considerations - what dyes are accessible? what kind of wood can you source easily? As much as these ethereal considerations that perhaps us art people emphasize. It makes me think of the social fabric woven into ukiyo-e—prints affordable to common people, picturing everyday life and familiar landscapes instead of idealised historical events. The “floating world” made tangible. Curator: It's a powerful statement about perspective, yes. From this single scene emerges both quiet humanity and sheer environmental force—almost threatening to those passing by, but they still do, of course, as needed. Editor: And so we see, through these waterfalls and pigments, an image of humanity confronting a powerful and rapidly changing world, both environmentally and in terms of their own labor. A potent legacy made possible by skillful woodcutting.