Hokusai Museum

The Hokusai Museum in Obuse, Japan, showcases the life and works of ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai, featuring original paintings, woodblock prints, and festival float ceiling panels.

Planning your visit

Hokusai spent his last years in Obuse, a small town in the Nagano mountains, invited by a wealthy merchant patron who supported him in his eighties. The Hokusai-kan museum there holds work from that late period, and it is not what most visitors expect from the artist of the Great Wave.

The centrepieces are two festival float ceiling panels he painted in his late eighties — dragons, phoenixes and waves, in colour on wood, made to be seen from below as the floats moved through the streets. They are still owned by the town and displayed in the museum, and they show an artist working at full power at an age when most have stopped.

Original paintings, sketches and prints fill the rest, along with material on his relationship with the town.

Obuse itself is a chestnut-growing town with a preserved centre, sake breweries and a garden designed by Hokusai's patron, and it makes a pleasant half-day from Nagano.

Bookable options include private tours combining the museum with historic Obuse, and formats pairing a sake brewery visit with a paint-and-sip session. Current availability is shown below.