Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa is hanging in Manchester until Sunday 15 November 2026, as the centrepiece of Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige at the Whitworth. Entry is free, and the show is the gallery’s first survey of its own historic Japanese print collection in more than a century.
It sets Hokusai and Hiroshige beside the printmakers working around them in Edo, and the closing weeks bring a free curator tour and two evening talks that are worth planning a trip around.
Hokusai's Great Wave and Hiroshige's Edo, seen up close in a Manchester gallery park
The Great Wave, on loan from a private collection
The print everyone comes for is The Great Wave, lent to the Whitworth by a private collector. Hokusai designed it around 1830 to 1832 for his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, and the fishing boats straining under the crest, with Fuji tiny in the distance, have since found their way onto fashion, record sleeves and film posters.
Woodblock prints were made in editions, so each surviving impression carries its own colour and wear. A privately owned one is rarely on public view, which makes this free showing the main reason to travel for the exhibition.
Edo becoming the world’s largest city, told through prints
Curator Imogen Holmes-Roe frames the show around Edo, today’s Tokyo, at the point it grew into the world’s largest metropolis. In her words, ukiyo-e “was the pop culture of its day; bold, affordable, everywhere”.
Early ukiyo-e was built on kabuki actors, courtesans and city pleasures. Hokusai and Hiroshige turned it towards landscape, travel and weather, and the Whitworth hangs their work alongside their contemporaries to show how busy and competitive that print market was.
Hiroshige, born in 1797, belonged to the generation after Hokusai, and his views of post towns, bridges and sudden rain made the journey itself the subject. The Whitworth also draws a line from Edo to its own city, reading the prints against Manchester’s history of industry, printing and trade with the wider world.
Free curator tour and Edo talks before 15 November
Everything in the exhibition’s events programme is free, and every event needs booking. Several earlier talks and tours sold out, so book as soon as you know your date.
| Date | Time | Event | Booking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 6 October | 2pm to 2.45pm | Visitor Experience Tour | Free, book on Eventbrite |
| Thursday 15 October | 6pm to 8pm | Studio Nights: Walking memory maps, for teachers and educators | Free, email steven.roper@manchester.ac.uk |
| Thursday 15 October | 6.30pm to 8pm | Global Samurai: Japan’s Warriors across Time and Space, with Professor Oleg Benesch | Free, book on Eventbrite |
| Thursday 29 October | 6pm to 7pm | Curator tour with Imogen Holmes-Roe | Free, book on Eventbrite |
| Thursday 12 November | 6.30pm to 8pm | The wave, along the road, and Mount Fuji, with Dr Monika Hinkel | Free, book on Eventbrite |
If you can only make one, choose the curator tour on Thursday 29 October. Imogen Holmes-Roe will pull out the social and historical themes behind the prints, and because Thursday is the gallery’s late night, there is time to go back round the rooms afterwards.
The talk on Thursday 12 November, three days before the exhibition closes, comes from Dr Monika Hinkel of SOAS University of London and follows mobility and power from Edo to Tokyo.
Opening hours, entry and getting to the Whitworth
Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige runs at the Whitworth, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER, until Sunday 15 November 2026. Entry is free.
The gallery opens Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm, with a late opening until 9pm on Thursdays. It is closed on Mondays.
Manchester Oxford Road station is about a 20 minute walk away. Buses 15, 41, 42, 43, 140 to 143 and 147 run along Oxford Road, and the stop to ask for is the one nearest Manchester Royal Infirmary. Street parking on Denmark Road is limited to two hours, and the nearest car park is on Cecil Street.
The Whitworth
The complete Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji at Dulwich from 20 October
London gets its own Hokusai show this autumn. Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji at Dulwich Picture Gallery opens on 20 October with all 46 prints of the series from the Iuchi Collection, the first time the complete set has been shown together in the UK. It runs until 17 January 2027, so a reader who sees both gets the Great Wave in Manchester and the whole series it came from in London.
Opening times, access information and any late changes to the programme are on the Whitworth’s Beneath the Great Wave page.
