First Tuesday: Miss Hokusai

Join us for a free screening of Miss Hokusai (2015), director Keiichi Hara’s award-winning portrayal of the life of Katsushika Ōi, daughter of the famed artist Hokusai. The screening will be preceded by a special introduction by Mai Yamaguchi, Coates-Cowden-Brown Associate Curator of Asian Art.

Synopsis: As all of Edo (present day Tokyo) flocks to see the work of the revered painter Hokusai, his daughter O-Ei toils diligently inside his studio. Her masterful portraits, dragons and erotic sketches—sold under her father’s name—are coveted by upper crust lords and journeyman print makers alike. Shy and reserved in public,  O-Ei is as brash and uninhibited as her father in the studio, smoking a pipe while sketching drawings that would make contemporary Japanese ladies blush. But despite this fiercely independent spirit, O-Ei struggles under the domineering influence of her father and is ridiculed for lacking the life experience that she is attempting to portray in her art. Miss Hokusai’s bustling Edo is filled with yokai spirits, dragons, and conniving tradesmen, while O-Ei’s relationships with her demanding father and blind younger sister provide a powerful emotional underpinning to this sumptuously-animated coming-of-age tale.

PG-13 | 1h 33m | English audio