"Kurara: The Dazzling Life of Hokusai's Daughter" (2017) is a two-part TV drama from NHK that covers over 30 years in the life of Oei Katsushika, daughter of the great Japanese woodblock print artist Hokusai (1760-1849), and tells it in a relatively short running time (ca. 75 min.). Oei worked as Hokusai's assistant, contributing to many of his paintings, along with a team of other staff who filled in the details on much of Hokusai's work, which constitute, arguably, the greatest body of Japanese art of the first half of the 19th century. There is a bit of romantic drama involving Zenjiro, a one-time assistant to Hokusai, who recognizes Oei's extraordinary talent and is able to discern which parts of Hokusai's paintings were done by her. He urges her to strike out on her own, but she continues to work by her father's side.
We see a lot of their actual work displayed on screen (borrowed from various collections), as well as scenes demonstrating the day-to-day process of conceiving, sketching and executing the work, both standalone paintings and woodblock prints. There is even a fascinating bit of history involving a Dutch client, Dr. Siebold, who commissions a series of "ranga" paintings (i.e. Western style) from Hokusai. The customer even visits the shop in one scene, at a time when Japan was officially "closed" to the west. As this scene shows, the Japanese knew a lot more about developments in the west at the time than Europeans or Americans did about Japan.
Oei is played by Aoi Miyazaki, who gained a lot of fans when she played one of the title characters in NANA (2005), one of a pair of 20-year-olds with the same name, but wildly different personalities, who separately strike out for Tokyo at the same time and wind up as best friends and roommates. Miyazaki perfectly embodied the more wide-eyed, effervescent and romantically gullible Nana, while pop star Mika Nakashima played the cooler, more sardonic, punk rock-styled Nana. Ryuhei Matsuda, who played the rock star boyfriend of the second Nana, is here in this TV movie as Zenjiro.
In this TV drama, Miyazaki plays an older, more worldly and self-aware character. She expertly conveys to the viewer what makes Oei tick and the sheer joy and excitement she gets from the act of painting and the discoveries of the properties of color, light and shadow and how to use them to make better paintings. She moves and reacts to people with a self-assurance and lack of formality that mark quite a contrast with our image of proper Japanese women from that time. It's quite refreshing.
There was an anime feature from 2015 called MISS HOKUSAI which takes place a few years earlier than the drama and has some parallel elements, but doesn't explore Oei's character with the depth this drama does. Still, it does have some lovely imagery and artwork and is worth seeing as a supplement to this.
NHK ran both parts of this drama on their streaming website. Part 1 came with a five-minute documentary segment in London showing Ms. Miyazaki visiting the British Museum, which was hosting a Hokusai exhibit at the time. She interviews Prof. Angus Lockyer, a lecturer on history at the University of London, who was a consultant for the exhibit and speaks fluent Japanese. She also interviews an unidentified owner of the Gallery of Japanese Art.
We see a lot of their actual work displayed on screen (borrowed from various collections), as well as scenes demonstrating the day-to-day process of conceiving, sketching and executing the work, both standalone paintings and woodblock prints. There is even a fascinating bit of history involving a Dutch client, Dr. Siebold, who commissions a series of "ranga" paintings (i.e. Western style) from Hokusai. The customer even visits the shop in one scene, at a time when Japan was officially "closed" to the west. As this scene shows, the Japanese knew a lot more about developments in the west at the time than Europeans or Americans did about Japan.
Oei is played by Aoi Miyazaki, who gained a lot of fans when she played one of the title characters in NANA (2005), one of a pair of 20-year-olds with the same name, but wildly different personalities, who separately strike out for Tokyo at the same time and wind up as best friends and roommates. Miyazaki perfectly embodied the more wide-eyed, effervescent and romantically gullible Nana, while pop star Mika Nakashima played the cooler, more sardonic, punk rock-styled Nana. Ryuhei Matsuda, who played the rock star boyfriend of the second Nana, is here in this TV movie as Zenjiro.
In this TV drama, Miyazaki plays an older, more worldly and self-aware character. She expertly conveys to the viewer what makes Oei tick and the sheer joy and excitement she gets from the act of painting and the discoveries of the properties of color, light and shadow and how to use them to make better paintings. She moves and reacts to people with a self-assurance and lack of formality that mark quite a contrast with our image of proper Japanese women from that time. It's quite refreshing.
There was an anime feature from 2015 called MISS HOKUSAI which takes place a few years earlier than the drama and has some parallel elements, but doesn't explore Oei's character with the depth this drama does. Still, it does have some lovely imagery and artwork and is worth seeing as a supplement to this.
NHK ran both parts of this drama on their streaming website. Part 1 came with a five-minute documentary segment in London showing Ms. Miyazaki visiting the British Museum, which was hosting a Hokusai exhibit at the time. She interviews Prof. Angus Lockyer, a lecturer on history at the University of London, who was a consultant for the exhibit and speaks fluent Japanese. She also interviews an unidentified owner of the Gallery of Japanese Art.