The record-breaking attendance at the recent Hokusai exhibition at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC (March 4–May 14, 2006) proves that at least one Japanese artist draws crowds as well as Monet. The focus of an exhibition at the Fine Art Society in London in 1890 and countless exhibitions thereafter, more has been published on Hokusai in Western languages than on any other Japanese artist. In the postwar period, Richard Lane, Jack Hillier, and Matthi Forrer contributed the standard volumes on Hokusai in English. Then, beginning in 1990, Gian Carlo Calza, head of the International Hokusai Research Centre, spearheaded three international conferences that with the help of John Carpenter have resulted in three major publications: first, Hokusai Paintings (Venice: University of Venice, 1994); followed by Calza’s own volume with seven contributing essays, Hokusai (London: Phaidon Press, 2003); and now Hokusai and His Age. Lavishly illustrated, with over half of the fifteen essays written specifically for this publication, Hokusai and His Age goes far beyond a conference book. A new, multifarious Hokusai emerges. In the introduction, Carpenter characterizes Hokusai as a “polymath,” and this is reiterated throughout the book. This is a shift from fifty years ago, when Hillier summed up...