A Philosopher Watching a Pair of Butterflies, from The Picture Book of Realistic Paintings of Hokusai (Hokusai shashin gafu)

A Philosopher Watching a Pair of Butterflies, from The Picture Book of Realistic Paintings of Hokusai (Hokusai shashin gafu), is a Katsushika Hokusai ukiyo-e print of 1809 in the Art Institute of Chicago. The title Shashin gafu uses the term shashin in its older sense of faithful depiction, a claim Hokusai made repeatedly across his illustrated books to advertise his powers of observation. Here the scholar absorbed in the flight of two butterflies plays on a stock Chinese motif, often associated with the Zhuangzi parable in which the philosopher dreams of becoming a butterfly and on waking cannot tell which existence is real. By drawing the philosopher and the butterflies on the same sheet, Hokusai turns that philosophical puzzle into a quiet visual joke, while still giving the scene the careful weighting of a serious figure study. As an Edo ukiyo-e print embedded in a picture book, the design also shows how Hokusai used printed albums to combine instruction, entertainment and self-promotion. The line work is restrained, allowing the butterflies their share of the composition and reserving fine texture for the philosopher's robe and hair. The Art Institute of Chicago catalogues the sheet within its holdings of Hokusai picture books.