Two Flatfish and Plum

early 1790s

Death of his first wife

During his years in Shunshō's studio Hokusai married. Almost nothing is known of his first wife except that she died in the early 1790s.

1793

His master's death and expulsion from the Katsukawa school

After Shunshō's death Hokusai began exploring other styles, including European ones, through French and Dutch copper engravings. Soon Shunkō, the master's chief disciple, expelled him from the school, possibly for studying with the rival Kanō school. “What really motivated the development of my artistic style was the embarrassment I suffered at Shunkō's hands,” Hokusai said.

1793–1794

Years of hardship and of finding his style

Starting out on his own, Hokusai went hungry and scraped a living by petty trading. At the same time he studied different schools of painting — the Kanō and the Sōtatsu school of Tawaraya Sōtatsu and Ogata Kōrin — refusing to pander to public taste.

1796

First uses the name Hokusai

The artist began using the name Hokusai, signing his prints and paintings with it from 1798, and in 1800 started calling himself Gakyōjin Hokusai, “Hokusai, mad about painting”. In all he used at least thirty names, more than any other well-known Japanese master.

1798

Becomes an independent artist

Hokusai passed his name on to a pupil and, for the first time, set out as an independent artist tied to no school, taking the name Hokusai Tomisa.

1800

The name Katsushika Hokusai and his first landscape albums

Hokusai adopted the name by which the world knows him: Katsushika, after the district of Edo where he was born, and Hokusai, “north studio”, in honour of the North Star, symbol of a deity of his Nichiren Buddhist faith. That year he published Famous Sights of the Eastern Capital and Eight Views of Edo, and began to take pupils of his own — some fifty over his lifetime.