The immediate impetus for this music may be found in the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by the great wood-block print artist, Hokusai. Born in 1760 to a peasant family in Katsushika (a district of Shimōsa Province east of what is now Tokyo), his name at birth may have been Kawamura Tokitarō. His life extended well into the 19th century coming to a close not long before the arrival of the “Black Ships” in Tokyo Bay in the 1850’s.
The Thirty-Six Views actually comprise 46 prints, this anomaly possibly being explained by the addition of ten prints to the collection after its initial publication. However, “36” appears to have been a magical number of completion in traditional Japanese culture. In this case it may be an allusion to the “Thirty-Six Immortal Poets” of the Hei-an Period. When I was learning the traditional shakuhachi repertoire of “thirty-six” pieces (hon-kyoku) of my
“school” (Kinko-ryū) I found that no matter how often I counted them, inevitably the total turned out to be twenty-nine!
For Hokusai, the Thirty-Six Views was the result of many years’ work up to around 1832. In 1834 he brought out another Fuji volume, the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. Considering the old Japanese card game “One Hundred Poets” this might be an example of numerology at work once again, but it may have been nothing more than a publisher’s gimmick to try to outdo Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stages of the Tokaidō issued in 1832.
When the Thirty-six Views were published, Hokusai was in his seventies. At the full power of his art, the “Fuji views” must be considered as a distillation, a quintessence of that remarkable man’s view of art and life. They are replete with the vitality and humour of a resilient people living under the severe Confucian restraints of the Tokugawa Shogunate – the family government which had ruled the Japanese islands with an iron hand since the early 17th century following the expulsion of all foreigners (save for the Dutch trading colony whose activities were confined to an island in Nagasaki Harbour).

Visually speaking, the Thirty-six Views reveal transformations in the shape of the Sacred Mountain as seen from differing vantage points. Since the mountain could not possibly be seen –even in the best conditions – from some of the places pictured, these drawings also convey the spiritual power of its hidden presence. Indeed, fifteen hundred years of Japanese literature attest to the mountain’s hold on the Japanese spirit. Here is one of Bashō’s best known haiku on the volcano’s mystic significance:

Kiri – shigure
Fuji wo minu hi zo Omoshiroki
Fog – drizzling rain
Fuji can’t be seen on such a day (yet it remains) interesting

It is always there. In most scenes throughout the series, people are depicted going about their daily lives seemingly oblivious to the mountain – sometimes close, sometimes distant – whose snowy eye encompasses all in its view.
Selecting just a small number of prints from Hokusai’s collection for my own project was a difficult task, but finally I settled on six of them following Hokusai’s pictorial journey westward out of Edo (present-day Tokyo), first along the coast to the base of the mountain, finally circling around the massif in a great counter-clockwise loop. For the « abridged » violin and harp version Hokusai’s order was abandoned in favour of musical considerations.

Our musical journey through Hokusai’s landscape begins with Plate No. 43, Dawn at Izawa. Izawa is situated a little to the east of the present town of Kofu (called Kōshū in Edo times). A station on the Kōshū Kaidō, the main highway leading from Edo, it commands a fine view of both the north and west faces of Fuji, just as do other communities in the region. This quiet scene is divided into three reasonably equal parts. In the upper third, the dark mountain occupies the centre, with its snowy cone a rosy glow reflecting the colour of the sky in the approaching dawn. The middle third of the picture is given over to cloud banks over the low lands and the morning mist which has gathered over the Fue-fuki (literally the “flute-playing”) River. In the lower third, we see the single street of the village lined with thatched-roof buildings. Already a number of travelers, together with their pack horses, are ready to set out on their day’s journey.

The music does three things: 1) The violin opens with a suggestion of take-bue (transverse bamboo flute music) accompanied – 2) by the harp in some traditional patterns of the ancient music of the wa-gon – a distant ancestor of the koto and an instrument still a standard part of High Shintō ritual; 3) The middle section is given over to a rough-hewn melody in the violin derived again from Shintō shrine ceremonial music. Indeed, it’s easy to imagine, since Hokusai chose to design the picture as if he were standing on high ground above the village – a likely place for the location of the village shrine.

Close to the foot of the north and west faces of Fuji there is a series of lovely lakes – the “Five Lakes of Fuji.” These lakes are situated only a few miles to the southeast across the hills from Izawa. Perhaps the most beautiful setting is Lake Kawaguchi – the scene of Plate No. 42 – The Surface of the Water at Misaka. Here, Hokusai designs his picture as if he were looking down and across the lake at Misaka, a village at the foot of Misaka Pass. For Fuji-viewers it is a remarkable place as the mountain is visible almost in its entirety. Moreover, the image on the west side of the mountain seems a much sharper one than that on the Tokyo side. On exceptionally clear and still mornings the reflection is perfect. As such, for centuries, it has been a destination for Fuji-devoted pilgrims, earning for itself the name “the upside-down Fuji.”
Hokusai has set up his picture as an almost stable parallelogram with the mountain near the centre. On the opposite shore of the lake, see two clusters of thatched-roof houses, one directly on the shore, the other at the foot of a green slope. Dark pines mark the middle background. As for the mountain, we can see that it is mid-summer. There’s a total absence of snow. But the reflection? That’s something else. By the law of optics, Fuji is not where it ought to be – the reflection is somewhat “off-set.” But more than that, we find in the reflection a snow-capped Fuji instead!
Aside from this amusing aberration, all is serene loveliness. A lone boatman coming from the right steers his craft toward the village which seems to be silent and dreaming in the morning light. And as for the music, aside from the “Fuji” motif, the violin is given over to a very quiet melody, never far away from the patterns of Japanese folk-song. For the most part, the harp deals with the “Fuji” motive and its “upside-down” version at the same time.

Print No. 35, Ejiri in Suruga Province, takes us to a point just down the coast from the town of Shimizu. Instead of portraying the famous pines of Miho located nearby, we are presented with a drab plain, in the background of which Fuji appears as a quickly drawn line. A heavy wind is blowing. In the left foreground of the print two scraggly trees are bent before it. Winding off to the right, a path recedes into the distance. Seven human figues are making their way, coming and going along the path, their heads bowed into the wind. A bamboo hat is seen flying off to the right. At the immediate left by the two slender trees, a woman’s kimono is blowing right over her head and her packet of tissue paper (standard equipment for everybody in those days) has gone flying into the sky in what is probably one of the most vivid “windscapes” ever designed. Musically, Fuji appears as usual in these pieces as a rapidly rising and falling figure. In the harp, we get all kinds of windy, raspy noises. Finally, the poor lady’s tissues are counted one by one by the plucked sounds of the violin as they disappear into the grey background of the sky.

Our journey ends where Hokusai’s begins, with plate No. 1, a depiction of old Edo’s “Bridge of Japan” – Edo Nihon-bashi – which, in that day, crossed a wide canal that is now long gone. He views the scene as if he were suspended in the air above the throng of people swarming across the span at the late afternoon rush hour. We see only the tops of their heads, many wearing bamboo hats; someone is bearing a couple of heavy pieces of lumber sticking up above the crowd; a high-wheeled conveyance rumbles along with a load of bundled goods; another fellow is carrying a tray of confections high above his head. (In downtown Tokyo on the packed sidewalks of today’s Nihon-bashi, one can still see one of this chap’s descendants weaving his way through the crowd on the way to some business function.)
A fairly large craft is moving westward along the canal, others are moored at docks belonging to the stores and warehouses which line either side of the waterway. In the middle distance is yet another bridge beyond which appear the wooded areas surrounding the Shogun’s castle, the site of the present Imperial Palace. Close to the upper left-hand portion of the picture the snowy summit of Fuji appears above a bank of cloud glowing in sunset colours.
The music for this miniature is derived directly from the folk-song O-Edo Nihon-bashi. Everyone in Japan knows it. Fuji itself is symbolized musically by a figure built of fourths and seconds rising to a peak and falling back. Indeed, various forms of this rising and falling motive represent Fuji in all these pieces.