Talk:The Great Wave off Kanagawa

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[edit] Literal translation

I have seen this work under different names on different Web sites and Wikipedia articles. To avoid confusion and insure accuracy, here is a literal translation--to the best of my ability--of the Japanese name (Kanagawa oki nami ura).

-- JHP 00:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

In this title, "oki" does not mean "large". The Japanese word meaning "large" is 大きい, ōkii. This kanji, 沖 oki, means "offing" or "off the shore of."
The kanji 裏, ura, means "behind." So I would translate the title as "Behind the wave off the shore of Kanagawa." It's in the 36 Views of Mount Fuji series, so presumably it means "[View of Mount Fuji] behind the wave ... ."
Fg2 00:10, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Hey, thanks for the correction. And you corrected me so quickly, too. -- JHP 00:21, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
It's odd there's no common name for this in English, considering it's so famous.--Cúchullain t/c 00:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
By the way, is there a preferred way to hyphenate the name. I've seen Kanagawa-oki nami-ura, Kanagawa okinami-ura, Kanagawa oki nami ura, and Kanagawa oki nami-ura. Also, can ura be translated as under or beneath? The British Museum translates it as Under the wave, off Kanagawa[1] and here someone translated ura as beneath. Those translations seem to refer to the people in the boats. -- JHP 00:35, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Don't know a convention for hyphenating it. The "Chicago Manual of Style" recommends using hyphens sparingly in Japanese, so I'd opt for as few as possible (perhaps none).
The word ura means the opposite of omote, the front or face. I suppose if you regard the skyward face of the wave as the omote, the mountain beneath the wave is in (within the print, not in real life) the ura. That might be their thinking (but of course it's just a guess).
Here are a couple of museums.
  • The Great Wave at Kanagawa (Met[2])
  • Under the Wave at Kanawaga (The Great Wave) (Hill-Stead[3])
Fg2 01:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removed text

The text "As in other Japanese woodblock prints a team of four individuals are involved in the production of any print. These are the publisher, designer, carver and the printer. The publisher brings together the team and is in charge of the overall production of the work. The designer draws the general outline of the work and sends his drawings to the carver who carves the design into a woodblock. Hokusai was the name of the designer of this work. At the final stage, the printer applies the paint to the appropriate parts of the woodblock and prints it into paper. This type of production allowed these works to be mass producible and these prints were popular in 19th century Japan. These works of art are in contrast with the standard Western easel paintings which are created generally to be unique and can be purchased exclusively by the elite." was removed from this article because it is not specific to this work. Some of these ideas might best be expressed in the article on ukiyo-e where they are more generally applicable. Fg2 06:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question: how many are there?

Is it known how many of this print were produced? How many copies are currently known, and where are they? Any knowledge, speculation, or mystery about that would be a good addition to this article. I certainly would like to know. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.51.3.94 (talk) 12:51, 3 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Question: Are there different variants?

I've seen "versions" of this pictures where the boats are "missing". Now I would like to know if they are just "photoshoped" or if the artist created different sketches/pictures before he settled with the final result. For example the Picasso museum in Barcelona features a series of sketches and the final picture, showing the process of "creating" a painting. 83.233.181.91 21:57, 14 November 2007 (UTC)