Who created The Great Wave off Kanagawa?

Katsushika Hokusai created The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

Hokusai was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist who produced the print during the Edo period, around 1831. Its Japanese title, Kanagawa-oki nami ura, can be translated as “Under the Wave off Kanagawa.” The landscape-format woodblock print shows three boats beneath a towering curling wave, with Mount Fuji in the distance.

The work was published by Nishimuraya Yohachi as the first print in Hokusai’s series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Although the series focuses on the sacred mountain, The Great Wave makes the sea and the precarious human boats the dominant elements. Its dramatic perspective and bold curves helped make it Hokusai’s most famous image.

Hiroshige and Kuniyoshi are common wrong answers because both were major ukiyo-e artists who produced influential landscape or wave imagery. Hokusai, however, is the artist named on the print and the creator of this specific composition. The image later became a major influence on European artists during the period known as Japonism.