Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎?, September 23, 1760 – May 10, 1849) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景, Fugaku Sanjūroku-kei?, c. 1831) which includes the internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created during the 1820s.
Hokusai created the "Thirty-Six Views" both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal obsession with Mount Fuji. It was this series, specifically The Great Wave print and Fuji in Clear Weather, that secured Hokusai’s fame both in Japan and overseas. As historian Richard Lane concludes, "Indeed, if there is one work that made Hokusai's name, both in Japan and abroad, it must be this monumental print-series...". While Hokusai's work prior to this series is certainly important, it was not until this series that he gained broad recognition and left a lasting impact on the art world. It was also The Great Wave print that initially received, and continues to receive, acclaim and popularity in the Western world.
Plot
This look at the work and life of block-print artist Katsushika Hokusai (1740-1849) begins with the political context of the Edo shogunate at the time of his birth: peasants driven off their land come to the city; a merchant class is emerging; samurais' power wanes. Hokusai lives in poverty, apprenticed as a printmaker, studying under the best artists of the day, especially Korin. Hokusai's unique style strives for realism. The camera slowly pans Hokusai's art: we see prints popular with merchants and commoners, particularly his caricatures; his subjects are often people at work. Late in life, political turmoil becomes his subject.
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Paranoia rips through my head
Wonder what it’s like to be dead
Intense hatred all about
Left alone to figure it out
Truth and justice just a joke
Entire system just a hoax
Weakening with insecurity
No such thing as racial purity
Life and death become a game
Live or die it’s all the same
Lost my sense of morality
Got no place in reality
Got no point of reference
Got no religious preference
Must have really lost my mind
Time to leave this world behind
Heard too many lies
Afraid to close my eyes
Just don’t know what’s real
What’s the fucking deal?
Total darkness without a clue
Not much choice what can I do
Used to believe now I don’t
Make a difference you know I won’t
Product of my environment
Won’t live to see retirement
Fight while I’m still young and bold
Probably die before I’m old
With my back against the wall
What to do can’t take a fall
The heaviness is pressing down
Trying to force me to the ground
Can’t give up must somehow win
Can’t go through this hell again
Have to give it one more try
One more time before I die
Heard too many lies
Afraid to close my eyes
Just don’t know what’s real
What’s the fucking deal?
I can’t believe what I see
Only my thoughts are free
This is where the blood of the machines
Is pumped from the dust of ancient Babylon
Rocket bombs bring out the sun at night
The pig-nose men in death machines fill the sky
Malignant ulcers infest mankind
Rivers and fountains turn to blood
The sea is burning, the sky rains black
All ocean life’s is dead on the beach
Every island, every mountain
Removed from its place
The sun turns black, the moon is blood
Stars of heaven fall to earth
Send the planes off to war
Drop the bombs, settle the score
Lock and seal shelter doors
Red alert, we’re at war
When a shell hits a tank
The tank rings like a bell
The bell rings you will know
Four more are burning alive
Your tongue burns in your mouth
Before your body hits the ground
Your eyes bubble in your skull
Before your body hits the ground
Your skin peels from your flesh
Your screaming body hasn’t hit the ground
No one left to bury the dead
Left behind by the nuclear cloud
This is where the blood of the machines
Is pumped from the dust of ancient Babylon
This is where you see the sun at night
And the half pig men do battle in the sky
This is where the brutal beast
Is heard to speak of the winds of fear
Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
I will fear no evil
The Antichrist masses his armies driven by false
religion
Holy angels walk among us to break the Seven Seals of
Revelation
Seeds of destruction on winds of hatred came from
halfway around the world
The fire mushrooms will grow here soon and nothing will
Growing tired of living this way
The meaning of life has faded away
I’ve seen the failure of glory’s plans
Control of future is not in my hands
But I can’t lose grip of the answers that l have found
It’s just more confusing the more that I find
In a world that is dying a good attitude is hard
Wonder why I stick around to see things fall apart
So I’m inviting Death to help me get away
One last step will kill the pain today
Standing on this building
Looking down at the ground
Searching through my mind
For answers that cannot lo be found
Peering out of this skull
Sick of what I see
Trapped, no escape
No hope of being free
Imprisoned in skin and muscle
Stretched over breakable bones
A hell so fragile can easily be destroyed
Dreaming with my eyes wide open
Floating in air, time is frozen
Am I falling, I’ve lost sensation
Death, please, come and take me away
There comes a time to leave but is this really the end
Or just smashing the shell that we’re trapped in
To somehow come back again
Look in the dead man’s eyes
He can tell if the spirit survives
Ask him what’s to be
The secret kept he sleeps silently
Imprisoned in skin and muscle
Stretched over breakable bones
Did he escape?
Where did he escape to?
Dreaming with my eyes wide open
Floating in air, time is frozen
Am I falling, I’ve lost sensation
Death, please, come and take me away!
Look into my neighbor’s eyes
All I see is fear and doubt
Paranoid, confused and lost
What was this all about?
See friendship fade to hate
Beauty and hope decay
Time to loose reality
Frustrating never-ending pain
Take that big step
It’s your last step
It’s time to fly
The only future is no future
I’ve canceled me
Take the big step
It’s your last step
It’s time to die
Moving along the assembly line of society
Becoming another piece of the machinery
You are expendable
The wars go on for years
You are replaceable
Just so many circuits and gears
Abomination of nature
Blasphemy of creation
The plagues now take their toll
Lessons in germ warfare
Cut out infected organs
Replace them with machinery
Our leaders are all playing God
Now we are running out of what we’ve got
They need a soldier that never dies
In a future that’s a little less civilized
Birds of prey fill the air
Sent to cleanse with rains of fire
In ivory towers with marble stairs
In front of TV walls sit billionaires
Live footage of the battles is always on the air
All those years spent going to school
Mind your manners, follow the rules
Don’t you step out of line
Getting nowhere, running out of time
Round and round we go
Spinning on our solar star
Picking up the pace
Final evolution of the human race
See the glow of the burning cites
In the distant evening sky
Hear the fighting getting closer
Fulfill your program, kill all that is alive
The will to kill is your only memory
Whose brain is behind those eyes?
For your crimes against society
We have a new death penalty
Take out your identity
Replace your brain with control circuitry
Birds of prey fill the air
Sent to cleanse with rains of fire
Chemicals fall from a smoke-filled sky
Freezing your lungs, melting your eyes
Blistering your skin but you’ll never die
It was then that I could see
All earth creatures will be extinct
Killed by the one with the mechanical brain
Killed by the beast called human being
Close the door and don’t go back
There is no way I’ll go back that way
Lock the door, lose the key
It’s not for you, not for me...
Don’t go down that path again
There is nothing there for us, my friend
There is what is and what should never be...
Lies!
Hate!
Greed!
Hundreds of sailors
Their lives slip away
As their lungs fill with icy death
The ship has gone down
There is no land in sight
No one will survive
From the cold and the waves
Torpedo finds its mark
Hundreds die for the cause
Ocean claims what now it owns
Bodies travel in legions of corpses
On a never ending journey
Bobbing and bowing
At the whim of the ocean
Decaying and bloated
Food for the fish
How long will they travel
Following the current
Until their bodies snag on some land
Sometimes they are submerged
And fish eat the flesh to the bone
Sometimes they are bloated
Easy prey for birds who peck at organs exposed
An eternal journey through watery graveyards
Even now submerged
Torpedo finds its mark
Hundreds die for the cause
Ocean claims what now it owns
Dog tags are rusting
Uniforms rotting
Eyeballs float out the skull
No peace for these deceased
Journey into hell
No one will remember
When all men have fell
Pale forms roll and somersault
Too far down to be clearly seen
Their corrupted faces
Better defined as they rise
The dead in dozens
Crab-picked and fish peeked
Their remaining flesh scarcely
Sitting on their bones
Their hair is swaying loosely in the current
Their heads lull and dance on rotting neck muscles
The sea looses possession
With each wave a lifeless shell
Spat out by the sea to stink for a while
And be stripped by the gulls
Picked at by crabs
The flies buzz in and out
Laying eggs that turn into maggots
The maggots feast on what the gulls leave behind
To one sprout wings and fly away too
Stripped by the gulls
Picked at by crabs
The flies buzz in and out
Pure evil, predator of man
Rancid bastard is stalking
The meek and innocent are easy prey
For the savage hunter to liquidate
Lonely creature, urgent hunger
Man-beast crazed with obsession
Shunned by the light, nocturnal flight
Ancient torment continuing
Corporate man
With blood on his hands
He don’t give a fuck
He’ll take your last buck
He’ll smile as you cry
He’ll laugh as you die
Feast on your brain
Life’s down the drain
He’s in your TV
He wants you and me
No mercy he’ll show
As he’ll watch you die slow
Random victim, assault obscure
Archaic ritual fulfilled
Puncturing flash with no remorse
Greedily claiming his prize
The thrill of hot bubbling blood
Sucked from a still living vein
The bleating whimper of a man dying
To feed what is no longer a man
The vapid body lay at his feet
His thirst is quenched for now
A lifeless shell discarded into hell
A damnation to be revisited
Tainted soul, demented and old
Transcending evil prevailing
Power, pain, vital fluid drained, cursed
It is death that sustains him
Corporate man
With blood on his hands
He don’t give a fuck
He’ll take your last buck
He’ll smile as you cry
He’ll laugh as you die
Feast on your brain
Life’s down the drain
He’s in your TV
He wants you and me
No mercy he’ll show