摺了 · five passes · impression complete
You seated the paper, lifted the lines, laid the blues and pulled the last pass. Four kinds of work were needed before this could exist as one sheet. Two of the people who did it are named on the print. Two are not named anywhere.
the corner guide · 彫師 carver, unnamed
The notch you seated the paper into was cut into every block of the set, in the same position, by the person who also cut the lines. They cut in reverse, through a drawing pasted face down on cherry wood, and a slip does not erase — it ends the block. The line you have always read as “Hokusai's line” is, as a physical thing, the edge left by that blade. For this impression, that name is not securely recorded, so it stays empty in the margin.
the lines · 絵師 Katsushika Hokusai
Hokusai supplied the design: the composition, the geometry of the crest, the decision to sink Mount Fuji into the middle distance until it is smaller than a claw of foam. He signed it 北斎改為一筆 — Hokusai, changed to Iitsu — the name he was working under. His drawing did not survive the process that published it.
the blue · 版元 Eijudō, Nishimuraya Yohachi
Everything you pressed was paid for before anyone earned anything: the blocks, the paper, the pigment, the carver's and printer's wages, and the risk that nobody would want the result. Eijudō brought Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji to market — format, price, print run, and the wager that a landscape series would sell.
the pressure and the second pass · 摺師 printer, unnamed
The printer brushed pigment onto each block, seated the damp sheet into the same two guides before every single pull, and pressed with a baren. Where depth was wanted, the same colour was pulled again. Scientific analysis of impressions from this series supports Prussian blue and indigo, and double printing to build the darkest blues. Gradation is wiped by hand, block by block, pull by pull — which is why no two impressions of this wave are quite the same sheet.
Publishers and designers were named because names sold sheets. Carvers and printers usually were not. The absence you can see in the margin is historical, and it is left visible here rather than filled with an invented person.
紙を湿す
摺る前に、紙に水を含ませる。乾いた紙は色を吸わず、湿りすぎれば伸びて見当が狂う。あなたが最初に置いた一枚は、すでに水を含んだ状態にある紙だった。
見当
角の鉤見当、縁の引付。板木すべてに同じ位置で刻まれ、摺るたびにそこへ紙を入れる。多色摺りの核心は顔料ではなく、この位置合わせにある。一ミリずれれば色が線から出て、輪郭が二重になり、その紙は反故になる。
馬楝と手加減
刷毛で色を置き、馬楝で圧をかける。強く摺れば濃く、抜けば淡い。空のぼかしも、海際のやわらぎも、板ごと・摺りごとの加減であって、版に彫り込まれた指示ではない。だから同じ波の、まったく同じ一枚は存在しない。
藍のこと
この揃物の作品分析では、ベロ藍(プルシャンブルー)と藍の使用、そして濃い藍を得るための二度摺りが支持されている。輸入顔料の新しい青が、風景の揃物という商いを押し出した側面もある。
名の残らぬ手
版元と絵師の名は紙に残る。彫師と摺師の名は、多くの場合どこにも残らない。ここでは補わない。余白のままにしておく。
一枚の紙に、四つの手。
Where this stops. The making sequence you just worked through is an interpretive interaction, grounded in documented ukiyo-e workshop practice and in published analysis of the Met impression. It is not an exact reconstruction of the historical block sequence, pass count, or pigments used for this sheet.
Work surface and evidence image: Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, ca. 1830–32. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, JP2569, Public Domain. · kongCast WM50-S01