Productions

Author and director Katsumi Sakakura

Can obsession with art make us forget love?

"The Life of Hokusai" attempts to answer this question by exploring the intimate world of one of the world's most brilliant and tormented artists: Katsushika Hokusai.

Katsumi Sakakura (born in 1963 in Nagoya, Japan) originated the performing art "Geibu", which expresses the unique "movement, rhythm, and spirituality" of Japanese traditional martial arts "Budo" as a composite art. He expresses honed Budo skills as "art", and sends out the spirituality that resides in it as a "message" that solves contemporary problems.

Hokusai saw himself as a bridge between heavenly and earthly powers. The embodiment of a dragon! He had nothing to fear until the sudden death of his wife... Despite this immense love, Hokusai was so absorbed in his art that he neglected the illness of Koto, his wife, who had always supported him with admirable devotion.

...one bad morning, Koto suddenly dropped dead, and from that day on, Hokusai was tormented by the memory of having neglected his beloved.

Katsushika Hokusai, Japan's world-renowned genius painter, is known overseas for his masterpiece, "Kanagawa Oki Namiura", which is called "The Great Wave" and is as famous as da Vinci's Mona Lisa. He is also the only Japanese person to be selected by LIFE magazine as one of the "100 Most Important People of the Last 1000 Years", along with Edison and Einstein. In "The Life of HOKUSAI", we will take a closer look at the inner life of Hokusai, the man who accomplished such a great feat.

Hokusai believed that he was a link between the energies of heaven and earth and that he was the incarnation of a dragon. He had nothing to fear. Except for the sudden death of his wife... He was so absorbed in what he wanted to do every day that he did not even say thank you to his wife, Koto, who had supported him so devotedly. However, the year after Hokusai recovered from his stroke, Koto suddenly died. In the end, she never heard his words of gratitude, "Thank you." He regretted her death. "What does it matter how much recognition I get for my paintings?" ; "How peacefully could I have sent my beloved loved ones away?" Hokusai put all of these thoughts and feelings into his masterpiece, "The Dragon over Fuji". What did Hokusai find there?...

Message from Katsumi Sakakura: "I created this work "The Life of HOKUSAI" in 2020. Due to Covid-19 and the war that followed divided us from our loved ones, and the world has become chaotic with grief. We want to convey to people the question that is often lost in a chaotic world "What is really important to you right now?''.