Hokusai's Whaling off the Gotō Islands: A Hunt at Sea
A whale, a swarm of boats, and a hunt at sea. The story of Hokusai's Whaling off the Gotō Islands, from one of his rarest series, One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean.
A Whale and a Fleet of Tiny Boats
In this print a whale thrashes in rough water while a swarm of small boats closes in around it. Nets are out. The sea is choppy and the cliffs rise behind. It is a hunt, caught at its peak.
This is Katsushika Hokusai's Whaling off the Gotō Islands, one of the boldest ukiyo-e scenes of the sea. The Gotō Islands sit off the west coast of Kyushu, in southern Japan, far from Hokusai's home in Edo.
One of Hokusai's Rarest Series
The print comes from a series called One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean. Hokusai made it around 1832 to 1834, not long after his famous waterfall and Mount Fuji prints.
Despite the grand title, only about ten designs are known, which makes it one of his rarest sets. Each shows people fishing in a different way and a different place: night fishing by torchlight, line fishing, boats working the coast. The whaling scene is the most dramatic of them all.
How the Hunt Worked
By Hokusai's time, whaling off the coast of Kyushu was a large, organized business. It took whole teams of men and many boats working together.
The method shown here is net whaling. Boats would drive a whale toward heavy nets to slow it down, then close in. It was hard, dangerous work, and it fed and employed whole coastal towns. A lookout would often watch from a hut on the cliffs and signal when a whale was sighted far out at sea.
Hokusai almost certainly never saw a hunt like this himself. He worked from reports and his own imagination, which is part of why the scene feels so charged.
The Print We Have
The print we carry is a reproduction of Hokusai's design. It is a real woodblock print, made by hand in the traditional way, not a machine copy. It measures about 264 by 190mm. It is pre-owned and shows some age, with a few spots and marks, which is normal for a print like this. The product page has photos of the exact condition.
You can see more Hokusai prints here. We also wrote about his Rōben waterfall. New to prints? Our guide on original, reprint, or reproduction explains the terms.
Sources
Art Institute of Chicago — Whaling off the Coast of the Goto Islands.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — Whaling off the Gotō Islands.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art — a print from One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean.