For those who can't read Chinese ('Kanji'), some of the portraits cover Vietnam, Yunnan, China, India, Korea, Thailand, Mongolia and the Philippines as well as Japan. Possibly also some other areas in northeast Asia, I am unclear on the period terminology. As they are dated 1820s but seem to use Chinese terms from earlier periods, I guess this was an adaptation of an earlier set of Chinese descriptive texts or (heresy to suggest!) images that had been carried to Japan. But that's just supposition.

There is a huge overlap with Kanji, but I think chinese (characters) should be refered as 'Hanzi'or not? The page doesnt load too well on my mobile so not 100% sure what is on the page. Or you meant japanese kanji (adopted chinese characters)?

Considering Hokusai was Japanese, the descriptions are probably written in Kanji. The word “kanji” itself means Chinese character, so I wonder what exactly is your point?

Refereing to chinese character as Kanji is inaccurate. (Also the meaning of compound Hanzi and Kanji is often different, take "jiudian" as an example).

> Refereing to chinese character as Kanji is inaccurate.

"Kanji" is often translated into English as "Chinese character", so the two terms tend to be used interchangeably even when someone is referring to text written in Japanese.

Thanks. I didnt know that. So would people call chinese texts also as kanji?

In Japanese there is no distinction between kanji and hanzi, they are the same thing, and written equally - 漢字.

In English, it would be most appropriate to call Chinese language characters hanzi, and Japanese language characters kanji, but this is an English distinction, not one in the native tongues that use these characters.

As the author of these drawings is Japanese, the correct term would be “kanji”, but the word “kanji” literally means “Chinese character”.

Not intentionally I don't think, but people might do that if they're not sure which language the characters came from or if they just don't know the term "hanzi".

But in this specific case, it is a Chinese character (because that’s what kanji is, and that’s what the word kanji means), and the character is actually kanji, since it was written by a Japanese author.

I think I just found the linguistics equivalent to 'All asians look alike'

Why do you think so?

You referring to hanzi as kanji is more or less the same as someone referring to a chinese person as a japanese person.

I am a Japanese person. I don’t see your point.

Thank you for the link to the drawings themselves. The curator's comments are fascinating. The opening paragraph, for a taste:

> This group of 103 drawings represents a major new discovery relating to Hokusai’s life and works. An amazing range of subjects is represented – figure (religious, mythological, historical, literary), animal, bird and flower and other natural phenomena, and landscape.

> As the subtitle ‘India, China’ signals, the group is dominated by subjects that relate to China, Southeast Asia, India and lands further west.

> Some of the same subjects can be found within Hokusai’s known oeuvre, but many are completely new discoveries.

> Among the latter is a fascinating group of images which imagine the origins of human culture in ancient China – early forms of habitation, fire, agriculture, making rice wine and paper, among other scenes.

> All are treated with the customary fantasy, invention and brush skill found in Hokusai’s late works that could not be matched by any of his pupils – with the possible exception of his artist-daughter Eijo (art-name Ōi, about 1800-after 1857).