CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/15/2016

Hokusai’s Lost Manga

What a delight to page through MFA Boston's new release, presenting for the first time a lost three-volume album of manga drawings by the undisputed master of the Edo period. Most probably titled "Master Iitsu’s Chicken-Rib Picture Book" (ie, "Hokusai's Tasty Morsel"), it was produced around 1825. Each spread of the original is reproduced across a spread of the book, so that we see all of the nuance of the book's design, and also have the opportunity to appreciate the book as rare, historical object. Pictured here are some of the Twenty-eight Lunar Lodgings, a lunar zodiac with no precise Western equivalent, and, below, unusual renderings of daikon radish plants.