Dear thinkers,
We’re excited to present you Drawings In One Stroke by Hokusai Katsushika. If you are a Matchbook collector, thank you. You can now view this book at www.codexlibrary.org. But why is this the first book in our collection?
The author’s philosophy and furious love for the art of drawing embody the values we believe in. His life was centered on the pursuit of knowledge. Hokusai Katsushika was an artist, teacher, and philosopher known for his iconic piece “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” which you may have seen before. We were looking for one of Katsushika’s drawing instructional books (we didn’t find it because his books are hard to come by) but we were happily surprised to come across a digital copy of Drawings In One Stroke. If you wish to read more, Aaron recently wrote a piece on him. Hokusai is a prime example of a prolific seeker.
Its simplicity immediately captivated us. The book is written in Japanese so we grabbed our Google Translate lens and attempted to translate it. The book has a few words (for example, song, frog, child) that are paired with beautiful drawings. A few pages only demonstrate wordless examples.
Expressive yet simple illustrations made with one single line are a constraint that yields wonderful images. He spent many hours studying and painting to reach this level of understanding and through this book he wished to demonstrate to his followers the dynamic power of simplicity. We are led to believe that this book was meant to be copied by students. It forms part of a larger body of work. Hokusai was generous with his knowledge of drawing.
Please note that the original book was meant to be read from right to left and has two editions. Matchbook collectors will have access to a digital copy of the first edition. The only original copy (that we know of) is currently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and we’d love to see it in person one day.
But for now, we hope you enjoy this digital viewing experience.
Cordially,
Codex
P.S. This is just V1 of the book-viewing experience. Please view this tweet for more details.
P.P.S. We recently looked into the history of “P.S.” — it is the abbreviation for the Latin post scriptum, which means “after writing.”