Digital × Hokusai in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art

This Digital×Hokusai exhibition focuses on Hokusai works held in the collection of a museum overseas.

After making his fortune in the railway industry in the United States, Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) deepened his interest in Asian art through his friendship with the painter James McNeill Whistler. Pursuing a universal beauty common to both East and West, Freer assembled a magnificent collection, applying his discerning aesthetic sensibility to the careful selection of works of art from Japan and elsewhere in Asia. Notably, his collection of Hokusai paintings is said to be the finest in the world. Following Freer’s death in 1919, his collection was donated to the Smithsonian Institution, and in 1923 the National Museum of Asian Art opened as the first national museum of art and first museum of Asian art in the United States. Under the terms of Freer’s will, however, items from his collection can only be exhibited at the National Museum of Asian Art, which means opportunities to view them are limited.

Now, as part of commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, and with the cooperation of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art, we are pleased to present a carefully curated selection of works from Freer’s collection.

The Hokusai works selected by the National Museum of Asian Art are folding screen paintings. That so few of Hokusai’s folding screens remain in Japan underscores the rarity of those presented here. These paintings—which join Breaking Waves, the culmination of Hokusai’s lifelong quest to depict waves in his work—were digitized in the United States by NTT ArtTechnology together with Ars Techne, which possesses advanced digitization technology.

Viewing folding screen paintings is vastly different from viewing ukiyo-e prints or paintings mounted as hanging scrolls. A pair of six-panel folding screens, for example, covers the viewer’s entire field of vision when fully unfolded, inviting them to enter the immersive world of the work.

Going beyond merely reproducing valuable masterworks, this Digital×Hokusai exhibition harnesses digital technology to further explore and expand the world within each work. We hope you enjoy this opportunity to experience it for yourself.