The best known of all Japanese artists, Katsushika Hokusai was active as a painter, book illustrator, and print designer throughout his ninety-year life. Yet his most famous works of all--color woodblock landscape prints issued in series--were produced within a relatively short time, in an amazing burst of creative energy from about 1830 to 1836. These ingenious designs, combining influences from schools of Japanese and Chinese art as well as European...

"This book tells the fascinating story of how, in the early nineteenth century, the color woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e first inspired tattoo artists as the pictorial tradition of tattooing in Japan was just beginning. It explores the Japanese tattoo's evolving meanings, from symbol of devotion to punishment and even to crime, and reveals the tales behind specific motifs. With lush, colorful images of flowers blooming on the arm of a thief, sea...