alt Hacker Newssomebody explained me that the correct way to appreciate this painting is to invert it on horizontal axis.
the reason is, japanese is read from right to left.
once you invert it you can appreciate it better
Replies
Yes. Several references argue for that:
- Art Institute of Chicago (https://www.artic.edu/articles/1139/10-things-to-know-about-...)
- Daily Art Magazine (https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/great-wave-hokusai/#:~:text...)
- Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa#Re...)
Doesn't this assume that people (in the west, at least) "perceive" paintings from left to right? That doesn't strike me as particularly true.
... specifically, Japanese is traditionally written top to bottom, then right to left. (In contrast, English is written left to right, then top to bottom.)
So, armed with that knowledge, are you going to rotate it as well?
Japanese characters are actually written left to right, but sometimes the page order is right to left. Writing that you might find on a website, e-mails, and scientific writing is typically actually written left to right. While these kinds of texts may have pages that are ordered from right to left, the text on the pages is typically written from left to right. It is typically only when text is written vertically (yokogaki) that it is written in columns going from right to left, and in that case, the characters are read top to bottom.
Sources: [1] https://www.lingocommand.com/japanese/writing-systems-explai... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_and_vertical_writin... [3] I studied Japanese in college lol
You mean like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa_-...
His "Big Wave" has that right left position
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Th...
Love the birds in this one, especially the way it mirrors the wave crest fingers. Hokusai seems to have lunch ved these birds. They figure in his caged Bird pieces.