(Compiled by Katano Tōshirō) Hokusai Sketches (Katano Tōshirō henshū Hokusai manga), vol.15

(Compiled by Katano Toshiro) Hokusai Sketches (Katano Toshiro henshu Hokusai manga), volume 15, published in 1878, is the final instalment of the celebrated Hokusai Manga, assembled and issued nearly three decades after Katsushika Hokusai's death by the editor Katano Toshiro. The Manga, begun in 1814, gathers thousands of sketches reproduced as woodblock pages that catalogue figures, animals, gods, plants, landscapes and weather effects. Volume 15 draws together remaining materials from Hokusai's surviving drawings and brings the project to a close. As a publication, the book sits within the wider field of Edo ukiyo-e even though it appears in the Meiji period, retaining the carving and printing traditions of the late shogunal era. Each page bears Hokusai's characteristic linear vitality, even when produced from late workshop blocks. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London preserves a copy of the volume, and its holdings of the complete Manga set make it a leading resource for the study of the project. As a ukiyo-e print compendium of staggering scope, the Manga shaped the European reception of Japanese drawing throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and remains a foundational reference for any account of nineteenth-century graphic art in Japan or abroad. Volume 15 stands as a poignant editorial coda to one of the great Edo achievements.