Illustrations of Honourable Anecdotes of Japan and China (Ehon wakan no homare)

Illustrations of Honourable Anecdotes of Japan and China (Ehon wakan no homare), published in 1850 a year after Katsushika Hokusai's death, is a posthumously issued illustrated book that gathers tales of moral exemplars from the histories and legends of both countries. The volume continues a tradition of bilingual cultural reference that ran throughout Hokusai's career, from his early figure designs to his late instructional manuals. As a publication, the book belongs to the same Edo ukiyo-e world that produced the great single-sheet landscape series, sharing carvers, printers and publishers, even though it appears in book rather than sheet form. Hokusai's compositions present heroes, scholars, virtuous women and devoted sons in carefully resolved arrangements that balance figure and ground. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London preserves a copy of the volume, supporting study of the typographic conventions and binding of mid-nineteenth-century commercial books and offering insight into the way Hokusai's late works continued to be issued by his publishers in the years after his death. As a posthumous publication, the volume also illustrates how the workshops and editorial networks that supported Hokusai during his lifetime sustained his presence in the marketplace into the early Meiji period. The book remains a valuable resource for understanding the moral and pedagogic strands of his prolific output.