Hokusai

is credited with inventing the term 'manga' to identify his smaller, offhand sketches, many of which depict subjects that were considered to be too lowbrow to merit artistic rendering'not unlike the subjects of postwar manga and anime.

Of course, it is easy to get seduced by the present. Every age calls itself modern, and so on. Fans and critics of anime who take a historical perspective note the pronounced aesthetic influence of many of Japan's classical traditions'particularly that of ukiyo-e, or woodblock prints, and the work of Hokusai, the iconoclastic and prolific artist from Japan's Tokugawa period (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) who incorporated European influences into his work and revolutionized Japanese art. Hokusai is credited with inventing the term 'manga' to identify his smaller, offhand sketches, many of which depict subjects that were considered to be too lowbrow to merit artistic rendering'not unlike the subjects of postwar manga and anime artists in Murakami's underground theory.

hokusai, n.All

hokusai