Hokusai's 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō 1804 Vertical is something completely different from his 1801 and 1802 series and from the 1854 horizontal.
It is different from his famous 36 Views of Mt Fuji, which are sublime artistic expressions distilling a long life's work.
This series shows his development of the themes based on the two first series and a transition to his 1804 horizontal series, which again is a precursor to his sublime 36 Views of Mt Fuji.
As the reader progresses through Hokusai's series it will become evident how Hokusai develops the concept, develops the format, develops the themes and mixes them with true genius.
This series is different from the many other well known 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō in that Hokusai does not focus only on the landscape and the markers that Hiroshige and others showed.
Katsushika Hokusai (c. October 31, 1760 - May 10, 1849) was a Japanese artist, painter and printmaker in Edo (Tokyo) period 1760-1849.
Hokusai established landscape as a new print genre in Japan.
At a young age, Hokusai was adopted by an uncle who held the prestigious position of mirror polisher in the household of the shogun, the commander-in-chief of feudal Japan. It was assumed that the young Hokusai would succeed him in the family business, and he likely received an excellent education in preparation for a job that would place him in direct contact with the upper class. In 19th-century Japan, learning to write also meant learning to draw, since the skills and materials required for either activity were almost identical.
When Hokusai's formal education began at age six, he displayed an early artistic talent that would lead him down a new path. He began to separate himself from his uncle's trade in his early teens-perhaps because of a personal argument, or perhaps because he believed polishable metal mirrors would soon be replaced by the silvered glass mirrors being imported by the Dutch-and worked first as a clerk at a lending library and then later as a woodblock carver. At age 19, Hokusai joined the studio of ukiyo-e artist Katsukawa Shunshō and embarked on what would become a seven-decade-long career in art.
