Observations placeholder
Hokusai’s floating world
Identifier
003928
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
In these two beautiful picture from Katsushika Hokusai we can see that this world is a spiritual world. Like the prophet Mohammed on his ‘horse’ and the other symbolic means of transport in which people travel round the spiritual world we can see that these travellers are indeed in a floating world. The poem tells us that they are returning to ‘the pleasure quarter’, which was the place where spiritual experience was induced.