The multicolored woodblock printing technique used in The Great Wave off Kanagawa is called Nishiki-e. The term literally evokes a “brocade picture,” referring to the rich, woven-looking effect created by many printed colors.
Nishiki-e developed in Japan during the 1760s and was perfected and popularized by Suzuki Harunobu. Instead of coloring one black-and-white print by hand, printers carved separate woodblocks for individual colors and aligned them carefully on the same sheet.
Hokusai’s Great Wave is a later ukiyo-e landscape print, made around 1831. Its production combined multiple blocks with the striking use of imported Prussian blue, a pigment that became especially associated with Hokusai’s landscape imagery.
A common mix-up is treating “Nishiki-e” and “ukiyo-e” as competing answers. Ukiyo-e identifies the broader art tradition and subject culture; Nishiki-e identifies the full-color printing method used for many ukiyo-e works.