Wave

Japan is an island nation surrounded by ocean, and since ancient times the Japanese has been fascinated by the constantly changing face of the sea, created by the restless action of the waves. Artists strove to express the ever-changing form of the wave, and this had a great influence on Japanese design. In this issue, the artist Hiroko Takahashi reveals some of the design secrets used to depict waves in famous historical artworks by Katsushika Hokusai, Ogata Korin and others. We see the Japanese aesthetic sense in the use of geometrical design to capture the fleeting, transient nature of the wave.