Album of Sketches by Katsushika Hokusai and His Disciples

This Album of Sketches reflects how Hokusai's drawn material circulated and was re-bound over the nineteenth century. Sketches were printed, collected, dispersed, and reassembled by publishers, dealers, and later Western collectors, so that the surviving albums are as much documents of taste and trade as of the artist's hand. The format — a bound sequence of leaves to be turned and pondered — mattered to how these works were used. Unlike a hanging scroll or framed print meant for a wall, the sketchbook was intimate and portable, consulted at the drawing table and passed between students. Its images demanded active looking: a reader would linger on a single figure, then copy it, then move on. This album preserves that studio culture, in which Hokusai's observations became shared property, a common vocabulary of forms. It is a reminder that the Manga's influence spread not through masterpieces displayed but through humble books opened, copied, and worn soft at the corners.