Miss Hokusai is a film by Keiichi Hara about the daughter of Katsushika Hokusai, one of the most famous artist’s of Japan. You may not know his name, but you have seen his work, like the iconic Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, of which this is one:
He was also the man who made Manga a household word meaning a picture book with words and sometimes a story, although that wasn’t his intent. Starting at the age of 55 in 1814, he wrote a series of Manga which were published every week or two as an instruction manual for his disciples and apprentices (pretty much the same thing in Japan at that time). There were only around 220 of them, so the publisher put the magazines up for sale to the public, in hopes of recouping at least part of his printing costs. Sales took off; working class people used them to to educate themselves and become more cultivated, craftsmen used the illustrations as models for their work, and the nobility and wealthy classes collected them avidly. Hokusai produced well over 1,500 of the volumes, and Manga became a mainstay of the Japanese culture. This anime is obviously a loving tribute of one artist for the work of another; I am sorry I missed it in the theaters, and will have to track down the disc or streaming service it resides on, because I really want to see it.