MURA · THE COLLECTION · KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI

Shower Below the Summit

Shower Below the Summit (Sanka hakuu) is a colour woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, made around 1830–33. It shows Fuji with a clear summit and a thunderstorm at its base, lightning branching across the dark lower slope. This impression, 25.7 by 37.6 cm, belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Katsushika Hokusai · c. 1830/33 · Color woodblock print; oban · Edo period · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum describes the mountain with clear skies at its summit and a thunderstorm near its base, the elegant sloping sides set against the sharp, jagged lines of lightning, an image of great simplicity and visual force. The composition closely resembles the Red Fuji from the same series, but the atmosphere is different: the mountain is rendered in strong, heavy tones, its contours more textured, the snowy cap rising over a dark base split by the bolt. The three peaks at the summit suggest the view is of the back of Fuji, from the west. The print is sometimes called Black Fuji.

How it was made

The museum calls Hokusai one of the greatest artists in Japanese history and a master of the woodblock print, and says his most famous work is this series, made between 1830 and 1832 when he was over seventy. It actually comprises forty-six views, ten added to the original thirty-six. Mount Fuji, the highest mountain in Japan, had long been worshipped as sacred and was in Hokusai's day a destination for pilgrims. The museum credits his success to a combination of exceptional drawing and bold but sensitive colour. As in the Red Fuji, a thin line of Prussian blue runs along the top of the sky. Soon after publication the blocks were slightly damaged, losing a brown dot below the summit and the end of a character in the signature; the earliest impressions show continuous blue down the sky, wiped lighter across the middle so the whole shapes of the clouds read. In a later printing the publisher changed the sky to a purplish grey with a band of yellow and added pine trees from a new block at the foot of the mountain.

Where it went

This impression was sold by Yamanaka and Company in December 1905 to Clarence Buckingham of Chicago, a trustee of the Art Institute. After his death in 1913 it passed to his sisters Lucy Maud and Kate Sturges Buckingham, and in 1925 Kate gave his collection to the museum in his name. It was shown at the Art Institute in 1995 and lent to Hokusai the Immortal at the Tokyo National Museum in 2005. The museum lists no current gallery for it.

Why it is in Mura

It belongs to Mura's Japanese Masters collection with a majestic mood: Fuji above pale clouds, lightning below.