At Sea off Kazusa (Kazusa no kairo)

Catalog note / 解説

Two large sailing ships appear in the foreground. Hokusai must have closely scrutinized the actual scene and the ships, for he has depicted them in minute detail and with extraordinary thoroughness. The sails have caught the wind and are about to head out to the open sea. The curved line of the promontory extends to the left and continues as the curved horizon. It is not certain that Hokusai actually saw the curve in the horizon, but by his time, the theory that the earth is spherical had become common knowledge among the Japanese through Dutch contacts. Hokusai also observed that the color of the ocean changed in the distance from blue to green, and by this shift, he expresses the expansiv…