When was Hokusai's Great Wave made? How museum records date the print

The work

Kanagawa oki nami ura ("Under the Wave off Kanagawa"), widely called The Great Wave, is a polychrome woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). It is part of the series Fugaku sanjūrokkei (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji). Because it was a print, many impressions were made, and many museums own one.

How collections date it

The same design carries slightly different dates depending on the institution:

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession JP1847, H. O. Havemeyer Collection): "ca. 1830-32".
• Art Institute of Chicago (Clarence Buckingham Collection): "1830/33"; its catalogue text says the series was begun in 1830, when Hokusai was 70.
• Yale University Art Gallery: "ca. 1831".
• Wikipedia's article, summarizing scholarship, places the final design in late 1831.

These are not contradictions so much as different levels of precision. The date has to be inferred from indirect evidence; Wikipedia, for example, notes that the publisher advertised the series' use of imported Prussian (Berlin) blue in early 1831. A range such as 1830-32 expresses that uncertainty; a single year reflects a particular scholarly argument.

Why it matters

When citing the print, give the date the holding institution uses for the specific impression you mean, and say whose date it is. Different impressions were also printed at different times; the Art Institute notes that its three impressions are all later than the first state of the design.

Limits and caveats

Dates and attributions in museum databases are revised as research advances, so the values above reflect records consulted on 2026-10-21. The Met record was read through the museum's public collection API because the web page was rate-limited at the time; the Art Institute record was read through its public API.