Hokusai and Tesselations

Escher invoking Hokusai in his sixties

"Ideally I would spend a whole year on a freighter watching the waves. If God himself, in honour of my 60th birthday, would give me the strength and the power and the glory, now and forever, to draw a beautiful wave. But no, nothing like that. As soon as I got home I tried it, to no avail. I started spirals instead. That at least gave me something to go on. Drawing waves—those apparently shapeless, chaotic glories—is something I will have to leave to you and your (almost ex-)compatriots."

https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fp...

Found a copy of the book on Wikimedia. It was originaly published as a pattern book for kimono textile, then rediscovered in 1986 in a collection at the Boston Museum. Since then art historians in Japan found further prints.

北斎模様画譜 (1884) - Hokusai Pattern Book - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANDL85...

Is there a way for non-Japanese speakers to experience this?

See also:

https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank/theme/hokusaimoyo

Hokusai Moyo Gafu: an album of dyeing patterns (ndl.go.jp) 170 points by fanf2 10 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992

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