Ann Yonemura notes that "Hokusai gashiki (Hokusai’s painting style) contains full-size, often double-page, illustrations that express the artist’s mastery of composition, line, and pattern as well as the styles and subjects of established schools of artists, such as Kano and Maruyama-Shijo.... Many of Hokusai’s illustrations express a mature and distinctive personal style that set him (and his followers) apart from other artists working at the time and promoted his reputation as an innovative and independent master. His sympathetic focus on the labour and hardships of the common people and the bonds among families striving to survive is characteristic of this volume and is a recurring theme in his later colour prints, books, and paintings."1

The reader, on turning the pages of Hokusai gashiki is presented with a wonderful array of illustrations which transition somewhat randomly from mythological tales, sweeping landscapes, figural scenes of rural daily life, birds, fish and sea creatures, even an extreme close-up of a basket of flowers. One such mythological scene depicts Chinnan sennin, a sage possessed of supernatural powers, surrounded by other sages on a rocky shore, invoking the dragon from his alms bowl, as he is often depicted. A single-page illustration shows Minamoto Yorimitsu (948-1021) seated beneath The Earth Spider poised menacingly above in a giant web. Another double-page shows a group of woodcutters enjoying a break from their work to smoke pipes, whilst some travellers laden with luggage look on as they pass by.

A slightly later printing of Hokusai gashiki was issued with pink and grey colour blocks added to the illustrations, and with orange covers. The first edition, as here, has uncoloured illustrations. Copies of both editions are in The Gerhard Pulverer Collection, The National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian, accession nos. FSC-GR-780.223 (1st edition) and FSC-GR-780.224 (later edition), go to:
https://pulverer.si.edu/node/288/title/1
https://pulverer.si.edu/node/289/title/1

1. See commentary to accession no. FSC-GR-780.223, The World of the Japanese Book: The Gerhard Pulverer Collection, go to:
https://pulverer.si.edu/node/288/title/1