The archive / Ukiyo-e / Red Fuji (South Wind, Clear Sky)
Red Fuji (South Wind, Clear Sky)
Katsushika Hokusai · 1760–1849
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3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. sRGB · up to 300 DPI · personal-use license.
Print it your way — at home, a local shop, or a gallery print delivered to your door. See the printing guide →
Sizes in the download
Print-ready files at every standard frame ratio below — the full image, nothing cropped:
The borderless master is sharp at 300 DPI up to about 18×24″. Every ratio also prints big-wall at 150 DPI for a step-back view — up to about 36″ on the short side, so the 36×24″ reaches 54×36″.
The work
The same mountain, in a different key.
From his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai's South Wind, Clear Sky shows the volcano alone, reddened against a blue sky streaked with cloud. Its Japanese title, Gaifū kaisei, names a real moment: in early autumn, when the wind is southerly and the sky clear, the rising sun at dawn can turn the snow-bare peak red. It is the calm companion to The Great Wave, made in the same celebrated series.
Look closer
Before “Red Fuji,” there was “Pink Fuji.”
A 2019 British Museum study compared the bold red impressions everyone knows with a rarer, muted version — and concluded the Pink Fuji was printed first. It used costlier pigments, including orpiment, and shaded the mountain from green at the base to brown at the summit, a refinement unsuited to mass production. Later runs simplified the scheme to a cheaper, stronger red — the version that gave the print its nickname.
Why it matters
In Japan, the quiet one is the favourite.
Abroad, The Great Wave is the famous image; in Japan this serene Fuji is often the more esteemed of the two. Hokusai's craft shows in the print itself — the natural grain of the cherry-wood block was pressed into the paper along with the red colour, so the mountain carries the wood's own texture.
It seems highly likely that this print, nicknamed Pink Fuji, is a first edition.— Capucine Korenberg, British Museum conservation scientist, 2019
The file & the facts
- Title
- Red Fuji (South Wind, Clear Sky)
- Artist
- Katsushika Hokusai
- Year
- c. 1831
- Medium
- Woodblock print
- Original
- 25.6 × 37.5 cm
- Collection
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Rights
- Open access · personal use
- File
- sRGB · JPEG · 150–300 DPI
