Landscape with waterfall, from an untitled series of chuban prints

Landscape with Waterfall, from an untitled series of [chuban](/glossary/chuban) prints, is a Katsushika Hokusai [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) print from about 1826, held in the Art Institute of Chicago. The smaller chuban sheet size, roughly half the standard [oban](/glossary/oban), allowed Hokusai and his publishers to produce more affordable landscape designs aimed at a wide Edo audience. The print frames a waterfall plunging through a wooded gorge, with travelers or pilgrims threading along narrow paths to view the cascade. Waterfalls held a special place in Hokusai's imagination: he treated them as living forces of nature, knotting and braiding streams of water into near-abstract patterns that anticipate his later Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces series. Even at chuban scale, the design carries that compositional ambition, balancing the vertical fall of water against the horizontal layering of rock and foliage. As an Edo ukiyo-e print, the work demonstrates how landscape became a dominant genre in the 1820s and 1830s, supported by improved transportation, popular travel literature, and the new availability of imported Prussian blue pigment. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves Hokusai's careful tonal printing of foam, mist, and shadowed cliff, allowing the natural drama of the waterfall to register in a quietly intimate format suited to handling and close study by individual collectors.