Santai gafu (Album of Drawings in Three Ways), complete in 1 vol.

Santai gafu (Album of Drawings in Three Ways), complete in 1 volume, is an illustrated woodblock-printed book designed by Katsushika Hokusai and published in 1811, now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The album belongs to the body of teaching-oriented sketchbooks Hokusai produced alongside his single-sheet ukiyo-e print designs, and it remains one of his most influential statements on the practice of drawing in Edo ukiyo-e.

The title refers to three styles or modes (santai) in which each pictorial subject is treated: a careful, fully drawn shin manner; a more relaxed and abbreviated gyō manner; and a swift, gestural sō manner approaching pure calligraphic shorthand. Each subject, whether a landscape vignette, a bird, a plant, a figure, or an object of everyday life, is therefore presented three times across successive plates, allowing readers to study how the same motif could be rendered with very different levels of detail and abstraction.

The pedagogical intent of the book aligns it with the longer tradition of Japanese drawing manuals that taught both professional artists and educated amateurs how to handle the brush, but Santai gafu is unusual in the rigor with which it applies its three-way scheme. The plates are printed in monochrome ink with subtle subsidiary color blocks, foregrounding the structural logic of line.

As an Edo ukiyo-e book project, Santai gafu helped establish the model of the artist-teacher that Hokusai would continue to develop across the Hokusai manga and other later sketchbook series. The volume demonstrates Katsushika Hokusai's interest in transmitting his graphic method to other practitioners and remains a key reference for understanding how Edo ukiyo-e drawing was taught.