Hokusai Manga: The Sketchbooks That Gave Manga Its Name

Hokusai's sketchbooks of people, animals, landscapes and spirits were published from 1814, and the word manga in the title meant something quite different then.

Published October 19, 2026 at 2:01 PM JST | By Tokyo Paul

Quick answer: Hokusai Manga is a series of woodblock-printed sketchbooks by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, first published in 1814. Its thousands of drawings cover people, animals, plants, landscapes and the supernatural. In the Edo period, "manga" meant informal sketches, not comics, but the title's association helped link the word with Japanese drawing culture.

What the Hokusai Manga is

Hokusai Manga (in Japanese, Hokusai Manga, literally "Hokusai's sketches") is a collection of woodblock-printed books filled with small, unconnected drawings. A single page might show a group of wrestlers, a crouching cat, a section of a bridge, a demon, a bundle of fish and a study of hands. The drawings are not arranged as a story, so the books are best browsed like a visual encyclopedia.

The first volume appeared in 1814, when Hokusai was in his mid-fifties. Printing continued in later years, and the whole set runs to about fifteen volumes, though sources count them a little differently. The last few were issued after Hokusai's death in 1849, and some historians question how much of the final volume came from his own hand.

Hokusai is better known today for his landscape prints, but this series shows another side of him: a tireless observer who drew everything around him. Its many pages are a record of what a curious Edo-period artist found worth drawing.

From drawing manual to bestseller

The books grew out of Hokusai's work as a teacher. From the early 1810s he produced art manuals, such as Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, which could earn money and attract students. Over his career he taught a large number of pupils, and instruction books were a practical way to spread his methods.

The first Manga volume was meant as a drawing guide. A preface by a minor Nagoya artist suggests that Hokusai's pupils helped in its publication and describes a gathering in Nagoya where more than 300 sketches were made. The first volume proved a quick success.

Demand supported further volumes. Readers in Japan wanted models for their own drawing, and the books could also serve craftspeople looking for patterns, so a collection of loose sketches could be useful to many different kinds of customers. That broad appeal helped the series continue over several decades.

What is inside the pages

The subjects are wide-ranging. According to published descriptions, the volumes cover landscapes, plants and animals, everyday life and the supernatural. There are fishermen and merchants, children at play, acrobats, and spirits from folk stories. Hokusai's linework is lively, and a commitment to realism in depicting people and nature is often noted.

The printing was done with woodblocks in three colors: black, gray and a pale flesh tone. Using so few colors kept the books affordable and let the clean outlines of the sketches stand out. Craftsmen carved the blocks from Hokusai's drawings, so the printed pages are a collaboration between artist, carver and printer.

Some volumes are arranged by topic, and others mix subjects freely. Researchers have debated whether Hokusai himself chose and arranged each sketch or whether carvers and publishers laid out the images on each plate. Either way, the result is a rich and varied collection.

Why the word manga looks different here

Today, manga means Japanese comics, a huge medium read around the world. The title of Hokusai's books uses the same word, which can be confusing. In the Edo period, manga described informal drawings, sketches that might be preparatory studies for paintings. A common way to render it in English is "whimsical sketches" or "casual pictures."

For that reason, Hokusai Manga is not a comic. It has no panels, speech bubbles or continuing characters. It is a sketchbook, and it is often called a precursor to the modern comic strip because of its lively groups of figures and its popular appeal.

The modern use of the word grew later, and historians describe a long line of picture-based entertainment in Japan. Hokusai's books are one important link in that line, and they gave the word manga a place in the national vocabulary of drawing.

The artist behind the sketchbooks

Katsushika Hokusai was born in Edo (today's Tokyo) in 1760, traditionally around October 31, though the exact date is uncertain, and he died there on May 10, 1849, at the age of 88. He worked in the ukiyo-e tradition, the art of "pictures of the floating world," and used at least thirty different names over his career. From 1834 he signed some works Gakyo Rojin Manji, which can be translated as "the old man mad about art."

His life was full of change. He started painting at a young age, entered an ukiyo-e studio as a teenager, and kept reinventing his style for decades. His daughter Ei, also known as Oi, became an artist and his assistant, and he taught roughly fifty pupils in all.

The Manga came in the middle of this long career, before the landscape series that made him famous. His Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji appeared in the early 1830s, and One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji began in 1834. Seen in that order, the sketchbooks can be read as years of practice that fed the later masterpieces.

Publishers, volumes and posthumous issues

The first publication is usually credited to Eirakuya Toshiro, a publisher in Nagoya. The house was renamed Eito Shoten in 1914. The preface points to a circle of pupils and admirers in the Nagoya area, which may help explain why the project began there instead of in Edo.

Volumes continued through the 1810s. After a pause, more appeared in the 1830s, and the series was completed after Hokusai's death. The publisher assembled some posthumous volumes from unpublished material, and the final one reused earlier works, some of them not by Hokusai. For this reason, some art historians consider the last volume inauthentic.

Anyone using the books for study should check which volume they have in hand. Editions, reprints and digital copies differ in quality and in the number of volumes included, and museum catalogs usually state the date and publisher clearly.

From Edo to Europe, and how to see it today

The Manga traveled far beyond Japan. The physician and scholar Philipp Franz von Siebold brought lithographs of Hokusai's sketches to Europe and published them in his work Nippon in 1832. Circulation in the West grew further after Commodore Matthew Perry's expedition opened Japan to wider contact in 1854. The Wikipedia article on the series names Gauguin, Van Gogh and Monet among the Western artists influenced by it.

Readers today can find Hokusai Manga in museum collections and published facsimiles. In Tokyo, the Sumida Hokusai Museum is dedicated to the artist and his connection to the Sumida area, and its official site posts the current opening hours, exhibitions and holiday notices. Check it before any visit, since schedules change.

For a home project, try copying a few sketches. Hokusai made these books for people learning to draw, and copying a hand, a branch or a cat is still a good exercise today. The books reward slow looking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Hokusai Manga the origin of modern manga comics?

Not directly. Hokusai Manga is a series of sketchbooks, not a comic, and in the Edo period the word meant informal drawings. It is often described as a precursor to the modern comic strip, and it helped make the word familiar. Modern manga developed later through many other influences in print culture.

When was Hokusai Manga published?

The first volume appeared in 1814, when Hokusai was in his mid-fifties. Further volumes followed over the next several years and again in the 1830s, and the last few were issued after his death in 1849. Sources differ slightly on exactly how many volumes exist and which ones count as authentic, so check any given edition.

What do the sketches show?

The sketches cover landscapes, plants, animals, everyday work and play, and supernatural beings. They were printed in black, gray and a pale flesh tone from woodblocks. The pages are not a story but a collection of small studies, which made them useful as drawing models for students and as pattern books for craftspeople.

Want to go deeper? Tokyo Paul's book Ukiyo-e & Hokusai: Beginner's Guide to 100 Japanese Prints is available on Amazon.

Keep Exploring

More guides from Tokyo Paul: Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji: A Beginner's Guide, Choosing a Japan Photo Book: What to Look For and Hokusai: The Artist Behind the Great Wave.