The Terraces
The ink — every line and halftone dot holds at full size

The First Game

Kemari, a Hokusai Woodcut, c. 1801

Hokusai cuts the court game whose only rule was that the ball must never land.

Work
colour woodcut
Maker
Katsushika Hokusai
Date
c. 1801
Era
The Victorian game · 1870–1900
Source
Library of Congress · via Wikimedia Commons
A football whose only score is how long the ball stays up.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

A colour woodcut by Katsushika Hokusai, made about 1801 and small enough to hold in two hands: 17.7 by 24.4 centimetres in the Library of Congress record. Its subject is kemari, the football of the Japanese court, popular in the Heian and Kamakura periods and still played as a seasonal event at Shinto shrines in Kansai. Kemari has no opponent. The players work together to keep one ball in the air with the head, feet, knees and back, and never the hands. Hokusai was about forty when he cut this block. The Library of Congress holds the impression, and this plate is made from its scan.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

Kemari, a Hokusai Woodcut, c. 1801, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

Kemari, a Hokusai Woodcut, c. 1801 framed on the wall
Kemari, a Hokusai Woodcut, c. 1801 framed on the wall
Kemari, a Hokusai Woodcut, c. 1801 framed on the wall
Kemari, a Hokusai Woodcut, c. 1801 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A reproduction of colour woodcut — Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1801 — from the copy held by Library of Congress · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
  • Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
  • Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
  • Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
  • Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
  • If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

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The Invincibles, 1888–89 — team photograph, period photograph, 1888–89

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The Invincibles, 1888–89

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The Double Winners, 1896–97 — team photograph, period photograph, 1896–97

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League and Cup in one season — the Victorian double, photographed at full plumage.

Sixty-four years passed before it was done again.