Hokusai: A Life in Drawing by Henri-Alexis Baatsch Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was the most prolific and diverse artist of Japan's Edo period, with a body of work reputed to include more than 30,000 drawings, paintings, and prints. Hokusai traces the career of this child from a working-class district of old Tokyo, then known as Edo, evoking the special atmosphere of this great city and of Japanese life at a time when Japan was closed to foreigners. Its urban centers enjoyed increasing wealth and stability, leading to a flourishing culture of art and pleasure-seeking. Woodblock prints of the genre known as ukiyo-e—"images of the floating world"—became defining images of the age.Hokusai became one of the great masters of the woodcut.