When confronted with the name Katsushika Hokusai, the thoughts of both art enthusiasts and laymen alike tend to fall upon one seminal work: Great Wave, or Under the Wave off Kanagawa, as it ought to be known. This is particularly true of the reception of Hokusai in the western world. Indeed, since its mass production in the thousands, Hokusai´s wood-block print of a crashing behemoth has effected so great and permeating an influence that we have seen it infiltrate a spectrum of cultural nuances that are as broadly defined as cinema and animation – both in Japan and in the west; music and the arts – in works such as…