This is a biography of the famous Japanese woodblock print-maker Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), one of the most well-renowned Ukiyo-e artists. The Japanese title of the movie, Hokusai Manga, is actually the name of the 13-volume sketchbook he published cca. 1814. The sketchbook contains a number of shunga drawings (erotic pictures), which the film decides to focus on as far as Hokusai's work is concerned.
The people from Hokusai's life are all here; his daughter who spent her entire life with him, his friend and Japan's first professional writer, Kyokutei Bakin, an alluring model called Onae (who was, as it seems, invented for the film because there's no mention of her online at least), and even his contemporary Utamaro Kitagawa, another famous woodblock artist.
But really, the film fails to do anything memorable with this ensemble, instead turning into a generic biopic without any eccentricity or artistic vision. The movie feels very drawn out and boring at certain times. There are also some attempts at humor which completely miss their mark in the movie's first half. The second half, where everyone is much older, is a tiny bit more entertaining and the scene where Hokusai paints his famous tentacle porn drawing "The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" is pretty hilarious and reminds me of Ed Wood. By the way, the old person make-up is pretty bad.
This is pretty disappointing, especially coming from a great director such as Kaneto Shindo and with a notable cast (Ken Ogata, Jo Shishido, Nobuko Otowa). A bland biography with a very cheap budget. Usually that's not a bad thing in and of itself, but this truly comes off as a cheap TV-production. Campy acting, bad effects and an unappealing visual style where everything is set in like two or three rooms which all look the same in their watery brown-ish hues. There is some nudity in the movie which makes it less boring, but it doesn't save it much. The music isn't bad but sounds like it belongs to an adventure/action movie a la Indiana Jones (take a listen during the end credits).
