The Surface of the Water at Misaka in Koshu Province (Koshu Misaka suimen), from the series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)"

The Surface of the Water at Misaka in Koshu Province belongs to Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, designed around 1825. The print depicts a remarkable, slightly absurd visual idea: Mount Fuji reflected on the calm surface of Lake Kawaguchi at Misaka. In Hokusai's design, the reflected mountain on the water differs from the actual mountain above; the upside-down peak still shows snow caps even though the real Fuji above the lake is in summer, suggesting two seasons coexisting in a single composition. This deliberate inversion places the print among Hokusai's most conceptually playful landscape designs. The imported Prussian blue pigment dominates lake and sky alike, integrating the doubled mountain with the surrounding atmosphere and giving the image its strong tonal unity. Small figures and boats along the shore provide scale, while distant forested hills frame the lake. As an ukiyo-e print, the design exemplifies how Katsushika Hokusai built on traditional meisho-e while injecting them with the inventive visual wit that distinguished his late style. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression and documents its place within the Fugaku sanjurokkei, where Hokusai's interest in optical phenomena, doubled images, and seasonal contradiction reveals just how far Edo ukiyo-e could be pushed toward the conceptual and the imaginative.