The Great Wave

When I was a very young boy, my mother traveled to Japan to vacation with my father who was there on cruise with the Navy. And so, growing up, there was also a hint of that trip to Japan in our lives… a print of the Golden Pagoda in the living room, and intricately carved cork landscape in a glass case, and the futon we used for guests and sleepovers since before futons became cool. But one of the most lasting impressions of my parents taste for Japanese art, wasn’t one found hung on the wall, but was in a set of bookplates used widely in their large library. The bookplates showed a portion of the woodcut titled “In the Hollow of a Wave off the Coast at Kanagawa”, a well-known print more commonly called just, The Great Wave. It’s always been a very memorable and favorite image of mine.

So when I learned that The Great Wave was on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery in Washington, DC, I knew I had to go and see it. Last week, I took a day off of work to join my family and be local tourists during their week of Spring Break. The younger kids got their fill of the artwork of Hokusai pretty quickly, but Jennifer, Katie and I really enjoyed it. My desire to see the Great Wave brought us there, but there was much much more to see and enjoy. The exhibition runs through May 14, 2006 at the Sackler.