An illustrated novel of intrigue set in modern Japan for bookworms, computer geeks, & art lovers alike.

Mount Fuji is renowned worldwide as Japan's highest and most perfectly shaped mountain. Serving as a potent metaphor in classical love poetry and revered since ancient times by mountain-climbing sects of both the Shinto and Buddhist faiths, Fuji has taken on many roles in pre-modern Japan. This volume explores a wide range of manifestations of the mountain in more recent visual culture, as portrayed in more than 100 works by Japanese painters and print designers from the 17th century to the present. Featured alongside traditional paintings of the Kano, Sumiyoshi, and Shijo schools are the more individualistic print designs of Katsushika Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige, Munakata Shiko, Hagiwara Hideo, and others. New currents of empiricism and subjectivity have enabled artists of recent centuries to project a surprisingly wide range of personal interpretations onto what was once regarded as such an eternal, unchanging symbol.

Prestigious Tokyo art curator Keizo Yukawa is hired by robotics magnate, Ichiro Ono, to create a monumental museum for Ono's ancestor, Takenoko, who painted a view of Mt. Fuji every day for a year. Yukawa soon finds all is not as it seems with Ono and his intensely dysfunctional family, all of whom have inherited pieces of Takenoko's genius and madness. Will Yukawa survive his descent into their strange world? The novel is full of dangerous aesthetics, visionary artificial intelligence, and delightfully dark humor. Over four hundred works of art in the book tell their own story of creative obsession.

Considered Hokusai's masterpiece, this series of images -- which first appeared in the 1830s in three small volumes -- captures the simple, elegant shape of Mount Fuji from every angle and in every context. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

The beauty of art is necessary for happiness. In everyday life the arts give that extra dimension to life that makes it a great adventure. The art and design in buildings, city planning, gardens and parks, roads, bridges, everything that we use daily contributes to a happy and fulfilling life. Ugly buildings, sloppy design, poor quality workmanship, littering and defacing contributes to a miserable life. Why would you want a miserable life? Why would you want to impose a miserable life on others? Hokusai was not only a truly great artist. He also sent a message to common people, who could afford to buy his low cost prints. He conveyed the beauty of majesty, the mount Fujijama, in life. He conveyed the beauty of scenery, he said to people, look around you and see and enjoy the beauty of the scenery. He conveyed the beauty of a good human life , the craftmanship in making the timber, building the boat, fishing, growing tea, enjoying tea with the scenery. The 36 Views of Mt Fuji are religious prints. But different from the typical Christian religious motif the humans are not shown focused on the diety all the time, even if Mt Fuji is shown to have a pervading influence on their lives. The admiration and worship of Mt Fuji is often shown as incidental a single traveler of the group casting a glance at the majestic mountain while the others are busy with the many other things to do. In other words a very realistic rendition on how the divine is taking part in everyday life.