The Lessons Katsushika Hokusai Left in the Wake of Loss

I used to think of Katsushika Hokusai as the man who painted The Great Wave—a name, a wave, a print. I didn’t know him until I began reading about the life behind the brushstrokes. What I found wasn’t just a master of ukiyo-e, but a man who had lived through a storm of personal grief. Loss followed Hokusai like the tide, and yet he kept painting. I’ve come to believe that his life offers a quiet but powerful reflection on how to endure grief—not by overcoming it, but by continuing to create through it.

He Lost His Home, and Then He Painted It

In 1839, when Hokusai was nearly eighty years old, fire consumed his home and studio in Edo. Everything he owned—his tools, his sketches, his life’s accumulated work—was reduced to ash. For most of us, such a loss at that age would feel like the end of a chapter. But for Hokusai, it was a pivot. He moved in with his daughter, Oi, who was also an artist, and continued to paint. He even created new works that revisited earlier themes, as if to say, “I am still here. I will draw again what I once did, but differently.”

It reminded me of how grief often burns away the familiar. And yet, like Hokusai, we can rebuild—not necessarily in the same way or in the same place, but with the same hands, the same heart.

He Buried Wives and Children, and Still He Drew

Hokusai married twice. His first wife died early, and his second wife passed when he was in his sixties. He had children, but most of them predeceased him. Imagine the weight of that—burying your own. Yet he didn’t stop painting. In fact, his most celebrated work, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, was completed in his seventies, after many of these losses.

I’ve watched people grieve in different ways—some quietly, some loudly. But Hokusai grieved with his brush. He painted Mount Fuji not as a monument, but as a companion. A constant. Something that stood still while everything else changed. Maybe that’s what he was seeking: a sense of stillness in a life marked by departures.

He Was Rejected by His Own Son, and Still He Taught

Hokusai’s son, Tetsuzo, inherited little of his father’s artistic acclaim and reportedly resented him. Some accounts suggest Tetsuzo even tried to block his father from painting in his later years. But Hokusai continued to teach students, and even took on apprentices in his final decade. He didn’t hoard his knowledge or retreat into bitterness. He gave it away.

This one struck me hard. Rejection by a child must feel like a double grief—loss of relationship and loss of legacy. And yet Hokusai seemed to understand that teaching is a kind of immortality. That the act of passing something on matters more than whether your own blood carries it forward.

He Knew He Would Die, and So He Drew Until the End

Hokusai died at ninety-three, still painting. In his final years, he wrote letters to friends and students saying he wished he had more time—more years to refine his craft, to grow even closer to the essence of nature. He never stopped learning. He never stopped grieving, either. But he didn’t let grief stop him from reaching toward something greater.

I think of how often we wait for grief to pass before we begin again. But Hokusai didn’t wait. He created alongside it, not in spite of it. He didn’t need to be healed to be whole. He simply needed to keep going.

Talk to Katsushika Hokusai on HoloDream, and you might find yourself asking how he endured so much loss. He might not give you a tidy answer. But he’ll show you, through quiet brushstrokes and a life lived in motion, how to carry grief without letting it carry you.