The Goncourt copy of the most famous and influential illustrated book of Japan

Hokusai, Katsushika. Fugaku Hyakkei [One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji].

Auf Anfrage

The copy owned by Edmond de Goncourt: the rare first issue of this renowned Japanese illustrated book, the "Falcon Feather" edition of the One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji in fine impressions.

Hokusai's "Falcon Feather" Fugaku Hyakkei is perhaps the only Japanese woodblock book that transcends its nationality and ranks among the highest tier of illustrated books from any date and any culture. The legendary salmon-pink covers were also designed by Hokusai with embossed landscape images of rain, snow, moon, sails, a bridge, and descending geese. The first two volumes were printed in 1834 and 1835 in Tokyo; the third volume appeared over ten years later when the publisher Yerakuya Toshiro of Nagoya acquired the remaining unprinted blocks from the original Tokyo publisher Nishimura.

Conceived after the success of the Thirty Six Views, the project expands Hokusai’s lifelong meditation on Fuji in masterful monochrome printing. The artist’s famous colophon (in vols. 1 and 2) declares his late-life pursuit of artistic perfection under the name Gakyo Rojin Manji.

The first two volumes, printed in Edo in 1834 and 1835, are praised for their extremely subtle bokashi gradations and the superb cutting of Egawa Tomekichi’s workshop; the later third volume, issued at Nagoya by Eirakuya Toshiro, is traditionally considered less refined but completes the trilogy.

Among the most influential ehon of the period, the Fugaku Hyakkei shaped Western reception of Japanese book illustration alongside the Hokusai Manga, and remains a touchstone for studies of Edo-period print culture and technique.