With a body of work comprising more than 30,000 drawingsand paintings, Hokusai (1760 1849) was the most prolific,varied and indisputably the most creative artist of old Japan.A universal genius in everything that constituted drawingand painting in his time, he practised all genres of ukiyo-e,those images of the floating world', as his contemporariesliked to describe their pleasures and their daily life.This book traces the career of this child from aworking-class district of old Tokyo, then known as Edo,evoking the special atmosphere of this great city and ofJapanese life, when Japan closed to foreigners developedin a vacuum a powerfully original culture. Hokusai becameone of the great masters of the woodcut, this madman ofpainting', as he called himself, being rediscovered by theImpressionists and aesthetes at the end of the 19th century.He remains one of the greatest and thanks to his witty andhumble personality one of the most attractive figures ofworld art.