The Local and the Global:
Hokusai’s Great Wave in
Contemporary Product Design
Christine M. E. Guth
Figure 1
Hokusai’s woodcut, “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” (Kanagawa
Katsushika Hokusai, “Under the Wave
oki no namiura), originally published in 1831 in the series Thirty-six
off Kanagawa,” color woodcut, 1831.
Views of Mount Fuji (Fuji no sanjûrokkei), is recognized around the
® Trustees of the British Museum.
world.1 (Figure 1) Arguably Japan’s first global brand, “The Great
Wave,” as it is commonly known, has been widely adapted to style
and advertise merchandise, including home furnishings, clothing
and accessories, beauty products, food and wine, stationery, and
books. Most of the goods that trade on its celebrity status, however,
are neither manufactured in Japan nor primarily dependent on
the commodification of the Japanese aesthetic or locale. This essay
examines the mobilization of “The Great Wave” to promote and sell
mass-produced goods in the first decade of the twenty-first century,
1 On its Japanese reception history, see
throwing light on the ways that this highly adaptive graphic design
Christine M. E. Guth, “Hokusai’s Great
Waves in Nineteenth-Century Japanese
can mediate between the local and the global without necessarily
Visual Culture,” The Art Bulletin 93,
referencing Japanese tradition.
No. 4 (December 2011): 468-85.
© 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
16
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A Fluid Brand Identity
Despite the outsized visual authority it commands, “The Great
Wave” does not communicate a uniform set of meanings. The
motif is not popular primarily because it expresses some unique
Japanese aesthetic sensibility, although desirable qualities associ-
ated with that country may be ascribed to it. Hokusai’s view of a
giant, white-capped, cresting wave, with three small boats strug-
gling to cut through it, and the perfectly conical form of Mount
Fuji in the distance has undeniable dramatic power, but the visual
qualities that make it so compel ing might be read in many, often
contradictory, ways inflected by local contexts. For instance, in its
country of origin it is seen as a wind-driven wave, while Euro-
American viewers often identify it as a tsunami. Paradoxically,
commercial uses of the wave for the most part encode an outlook
in which it figures as a positive countervailing force to late indus-
trial modernity, and one that can be managed through human
effort. This interpretive fluidity is central to its mediating value in
contemporary product design.

In her elaboration of what she calls the “production-
consumption-mediation (PCM) paradigm,” design historian Grace
Lees-Maffei has underscored the need to examine mediation of
design objects—their marketing, advertising, and exhibition—
both synchronically and diachronically. It is important to take into
account, she writes, “the degree to which mediating channels are
themselves designed and therefore open to design historical analy-
sis.”2 This mediation is particularly pertinent to the study of “The
Great Wave” because both designers and consumers might build
differently on the symbolic complex that has cumulatively formed
around it. Consequently, to assess the variety of representational
practices in which it has become implicated and the effect of the
meanings these practices produce on the creation, understanding,
and use of the goods on which it figures today requires taking into
account its reception history.

“Under the Wave off Kanagawa” originated as an inex-
pensive woodcut, of which some 5,000 to 8,000 impressions were
issued during the artist’s lifetime. Because it was a commercial
product made for a popular market and not a unique work of art,
in Japan it has long occupied a relatively low place in the artistic
hierarchy vis à vis painting, calligraphy, and the decorative arts.
The global success of anime and manga, whose enthusiasts hold
Hokusai in high regard, has contributed to a reevaluation of “The
Great Wave,” but the image still does not enjoy the same canonical
status at home as it does abroad. Its recognition as a masterpiece
of world art in Europe and America is bound up with the role that
Japanese woodcuts, and Hokusai’s in particular, are assigned in the
2 Grace Lees-Maffei, “The Production-
development of European modernism.
Consumption-Mediation Paradigm,”
Journal of Design History 22, no. 4
(2009): 351.
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Because of the Great Wave’s local, non-elite origins, contem-
porary Japanese graphic designers have been far less enthusiastic
than their Euro-American counterparts, at least domestically, about
embracing Hokusai’s wave for branding and marketing merchan-
dise. The motif figures on Sony’s Nintendo DS and on luggage
customized by the Tokyo designer Hideo Wakamatsu. However,
as these two examples illustrate, when it is used, it tends to be for
goods aimed at the international market, where the design more
likely carries connotations of alterity.3 Yet a niche market does exist
in Japan for brand-name imports that deploy the motif. This recep-
tivity suggests that external brand endorsement—aligned with the
European propensity to see the original design as a form of high
art, even if ironized—can serve to overcome any down-market
stigma that might otherwise attach to the great wave. Paradoxically,
when featured on fashionable foreign products, the motif becomes
a marker of local distinction.
Masterpiece Merchandise
Museums are leading purveyors of Great Wave merchandise. Paper
dioramas, tatebanko, are on offer at Tokyo National Museum; enam-
eled teaspoons made in Japan are at the Guimet Museum in Paris;
and paper stereoscopes manufactured in the Netherlands at the
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The British Museum has a partic-
ularly large range, including T-shirts, tea towels, plates, mugs,
watches, and clocks. The Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum sells
in its museum shop a print combining rabbits and the Great Wave,
by the Japanese-American artist team, Kozyndan. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art has a product line that through the years has
expanded from reproductions and paper goods to include scarves,
refrigerator magnets, and luggage tags. The intrinsic spectacularity
of the wave gives it the agency to transform even these common-
place things into something that communicates the authority of the
museum. Despite this authority, the wave remains an externally
applied decoration that affects the products’ perceived but not their
actual performance. Igor Kopytoff has observed that when objects
enter the museum, they undergo a process of “singularization” and
3 The Nintendo DS is one of many uses of
the motif available from www.designer-
“terminal decommoditization:” They are effectively deactivated as
daily.com/hokusais-great-wave-is-every-
freely circulating commodities.4 Objects in the museum nonetheless
where-4697 (accessed October 27, 2009).
continue to participate in the market in other ways. This process
Wakamatsu sells through a retail shop
of “museumization” increases the value of analogous works
in San Francisco and also makes it avail-
still in circulation by creating unique object value. The potential
able online at www.hideostore.com
for museum masterpieces to be adapted for use in the design of
(accessed May 31, 2011).
4 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography
commercial goods further complicates this narrative. Impressions
of Things,” in The Social Life of Things:
of Hokusai’s “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” can be “formally
Commodities in Cultural Perspective,”
decommoditized” in museums, but by their replication and adapta-
Arjun Appadurai, ed. (Cambridge:
tion in secondary forms, they “remain potential commodities.”5
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 80-83.
5 Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of
Things,” 76.
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Figure 2
Peggy Lindt, “East Meets West,” T-shirt
design, 2004. Image courtesy Peggy Lindt.

Masterpiece branding makes good commercial sense
because it gives mundane mass-produced goods a cachet that
distinguishes them from those available on the street. Such design,
through its replication, simultaneously markets both sameness and
difference. Visitors might be moved to pay more for a purchase
because it reconciles consumerist impulses with good work: As all
the Metropolitan Museum’s packaging announces, “proceeds from
the sales of all publications and reproductions are used to support
the museum.” A further attraction of such merchandise is its conno-
tations of quality. Unlike other comparable articles, the quality
of the museum-branded product is guaranteed not primarily by
the manufacturing process, but by the international y recognized
masterpiece in the museum’s collection. A pendant that advertises
itself as “inspired by the V&A collection,” on sale in the Fitzwilliam
Museum’s shop in 2010 and online at Amazon.com, illustrates how
commercial enterprises, by paying a licensing fee, can capitalize on
the aura of the museum.6

Consumers’ reasons for buying merchandise featuring “The
Great Wave” are no doubt highly variable. The small size, practi-
cality, and modest cost of many goods make them ideal souvenirs
or gifts to mark and remember a visit to the museum. The motif
might strike a chord among those with a special interest in Japan
and its culture. Museums often function as alternative sites for
people who are seeking but not able to have actual tourist experi-
ences; thus, a memento bearing a striking image of the wave and
Mount Fuji might appeal as a surrogate for a journey to the coun-
try. Conversely, such museum goods might also afford Japanese
abroad external validation of their own culture. As waves have
general connotations of travel and leisure, they also make taste-
ful gifts, even for those who don’t visit the museum. In 2008, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art was operating 23 satellite stores in
6 Available from www.amazon.co.uk/
major cities and airports across the United States, with the aim of
Inspired-Argentium-SilverThe-Great-
catering to such travelers.7 A display at the Houston International
Necklace/dp/B002SXN1US (accessed
May 31, 2011).
Airport in 2007 included silk scarves and date books featuring “The
7 New York Times, February 24, 2009.
Great Wave.”
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The Metropolitan Museum tries to contain and restrict the
circulation of “The Great Wave” by selling in its own retail stores
and websites products featuring only exact reproductions (some-
times skillfully cropped for dramatic effect). However, the number
of (sometimes cute or caricaturing) adaptations available from
other museums has undermined the aura of exclusivity that once
surrounded its merchandise. A case in point is an irreverent design
by Peggy Lindt that combines two incongruous extremes of scale
in a watery environment: the Great Wave and a bright yellow
rubber duck. A t-shirt bearing the design was available in 2004 at
the Denver Art Museum (see Figure 2). In addition, the same T-shirt
could be purchased online, by anyone anywhere in the world,
through Fliptomania.com.8

Today, the production and sale of masterpiece-branded
goods is bound up with the global flow of capital, just as any other
consumer good. Museums have extended their footprint by open-
ing new outposts in far-away locations, and blockbuster exhibi-
tions travel from one continent to another; not surprisingly then,
museum merchandising has also become part of a vast network of
material and symbolic exchange. However, these changes come at a
price: these institutions can no longer maintain top-down control of
their “brands.”
Alternative Lifestyles
While the image of the Great Wave itself pushes the limits in its
articulation or presentation of lived experience, it also delivers a
visual experience that, metaphorical y, may be readily translated
into a bodily one. The design has undergone a wide range of refor-
mulations in service of what B. Joseph Pine and James Gilmore
have termed “the experience economy”—the commercial value of
a promise by a particular product or service to provide a transfor-
mative sensorial experience.9 Many of these uses target individu-
als or groups that identify the wave with an alternative lifestyle.
Sometimes this perception is specifically mediated by the motif’s
identification with Japan. Pearl River, a wel -known novelty store
on the periphery of New York’s Chinatown, in 2007 sold bars of
soap featuring the wave (without Fuji). The front of the box showed
the Sino-Japanese character for eternity and the words “The Perfect
Spa-water… aroma… the healing place, the unwinding place;”
on the back was the explanation that the image was based on
Hokusai’s woodcut, “a perfect representation of a moment frozen
8 Available from http://Fliptomania.com/
in time.” It interpreted its packaging for would-be consumers by
category/2.html (accessed May 31,
explaining that “The ‘eternity’ symbol suggests the same idea:
2011).
awareness of every moment.” That the boxed soap was “Made in
9 B. Joseph Pine, II, and James H.
Australia,” as indicated under its list of ingredients, speaks to the
Gilmore, The Experience Economy:
logic and reality of global production.
Work is Theater and Every Business
a Stage (Boston: Harvard Business
School Press, 1999).
20
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Gennifer Weisenfeld, in her study of the use of a modern-
ist aesthetic in the packaging and marketing of Kao soap in 1930s
Japan, noted that one message this packaging conveyed implic-
itly was that, “even through a commodity as mundane as a bar of
soap, every man or woman could tap into an international culture
of modernism.”10 Similarly, the message in The Eternal Spa’s clumsy
effort to manufacture authenticity appears to be the promise that,
by using this product to wash, the bather can discover the natu-
ral purity and serenity that is the essence of traditional Japan. In
conveying this message, it relies on a time-honored trope of Japan
as an island of tranquility in the modern western world—an image
strangely at odds with the disruptive potential of the wave.

Consumption, as Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu have
written, is a process of self-construction through differentiation,
and marketing often capitalizes on the recognition that consum-
ers who buy to satisfy their desires often do so with a concern
for identity—but also with a need to authenticate their identity
in very particular ways.11 T-shirts provide a means of achieving
this end fashionably and inexpensively, and given their origins
as counter-cultural apparel, they lend themselves well to adop-
tion by those who want to assert their independence from bour-
geois value systems. Both the real and the virtual marketplaces are
full of entrepreneurial designers who make and market T-shirts to
commemorate a special event or membership in a particular social
community. Treasured as records of personal experience by those
who buy them, they often take on social and cultural value beyond
their modest cost.
Figure 3
Designer unknown, “The Great Wave as
perceived by Mrs. Hokusai,” T-shirt design.
Image courtesy Anne Walthall.
10 Gennifer Weisenfeld, “From Baby’s
First Bath: Modern Soap and Modern
Japanese Commercial Design,” The Art
Bulletin 86, no. 3 (September 2004): 577.
11 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the
Leisure Class (London: Unwin, 1970).
Also, Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A
Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste,
trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1984).
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For example, when a woman wears a T-shirt or sweatshirt
that shows a great wave emerging from a top-loading washing
machine, with an inscription reading, “The laundry as perceived by
Mrs. Hokusai,” she does not simply don an item of functional attire
but makes a personal statement (see Figure 3). This shirt subverts
the muscular and masculine rhetoric of the Great Wave by suggest-
ing that, behind every great artist, there is a hard-working wife:
even great artists depend on willing partners who can take care of
the more (or less) mundane but necessary aspects of life.12 Wearing
clothing thus inscribed is a public act that invites reaction. In so
doing, it becomes a socializing experience that might bring together
those who share the outlook it expresses—or those who disagree
with it.

Most pastiches of Hokusai’s design, however, do not
point so explicitly back to the artist or his artwork. Many profes-
sional artists and graphic designers know “Under the Wave off
Figure 4
View of Warm Planet Bikes shop, San
Kanagawa” through their studies, but such knowledge is not
Francisco, California. Author’s photograph.
necessarily carried by the general public. In addition, those in the
former group don’t necessarily want or expect those in the latter to
make the connection between their design and the original work
by Hokusai.

Outdoor sports marketing fits well within already accepted
understandings of waves, even as it may expand these perceptions
in unpredictable, localized ways. To il ustrate, in 2008, California’s
Bay Area leaders responded to “the growing demand for sustain-
able transportation choices … amid growing concerns over global
warming” by authorizing San Francisco transportation authorities
to open a bicycle parking facility next to the city’s main Caltrain
station.13 The facility includes a repair shop and retail store oper-
ated by Warm Planet Bikes, whose logo—prominently featured on
the exterior wall and decorative gril s protecting the windows—
is an image of a cresting wave, with Sutro Tower (a San Francisco
landmark) replacing Mount Fuji in the background (see Figure 4).
The logo of Warm Planet Bikes clearly doesn’t speak specifical y
to cycling, but it evokes the Bay Area and the city where the shop
is located. Underscoring the highly specific and subjective inter-
pretation that individuals can bring to adaptations of the great
wave, “Kash”—the owner-operator of Warm Planet Bikes—wrote
of Sutro Tower, “it’s so overwhelming that most people block it
from their minds, but for me, it says ‘that direction, that’s where
home is.’”14 He also acknowledged Hokusai as the source of his
design, declaring “I rip off only the best”—an outlook that is likely
12 Although “Kasumi for RIC” appears
below the image, I have not been able to
shared by other creative consumers of Hokusai’s “Under the Wave
determine the identity of its creator.
off Kanagawa.”15
13 “New Bicycle Valet Service opens at SF
Caltrain Station,” press release January
9, 2008 (accessed May 20, 2011).
14 Email exchange May 13, 2011.
15 Ibid.
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The new creative landscape in which the Great Wave
appears includes interactive “product development” that
exploits consumers’ desire to personalize what they wear. Zazzle,
an online platform for custom products, invites consumers to take
an active role in the styling of their Keds sneakers—for example,
by allowing for the addition of a wide range of striking motifs.16
“The Great Wave” is one of the many artistic options this online
company offers in its “remixing” of icons. The self-customization
of comfortable, once inexpensive, canvas athletic shoes is achieved
using computer-aided printing systems, which allow for print-on-
demand products at competitive prices. Zazzle customers need
only a jpg, tif, or similar image file of reasonable resolution, which
in the case of the wave, Zazzle provides. Although the same wave
image is used on each pair of shoes ordered with it, customers have
considerable freedom to scale, crop, and place it. Thus, the process
simultaneously represents mass-produced standardization and
differentiation. Zazzle promotes its products using images of the
customer-crafted footwear, along with the names of the designer
customers; in so doing, it creates a sense of a transnational “imag-
ined community” through consumption and design interaction.17

Who are the members of this community and what makes
this design so appealing to them? Although their precise identity
is difficult to pinpoint, we might assume that they include skate-
boarders and surfers, whose activities, like bicycling, foster a highly
individualized sociability. In fact, Zazzle and other online sites also
can produce Great Wave customized skateboards and surfboards.18
Once marginal, and practiced primarily in Hawaii, California,
and Australia, surfing has become a global sport whose enthusi-
asts devote much money and attention to high-performance gear.
Since 2005, for instance, customers have been able to download for
the Apple Computer a “dashboard widget” styled with the Great
Wave; the app is called marée (tide) and gives the tide charts for
the current day, allowing users to choose from several harbors in
France and elsewhere.19 However, as Marjorie Kel ey has observed
16 Available from www.zazzle.co.uk/
in a study of T-shirts in Hawaii, where modern surfing originated,
zazzle+great+wave+shoes (accessed
“the vast majority of surf-related merchandise is sold to those who
May 31, 2011).
17 Benedict Anderson, Imagined
only empathize with this passion by surfing recreationally and by
Communities: Reflections on the Origins
emulating the hard-core surfer’s look and lifestyle.”20
and Spread of Nationalism (London:

Sports marketing might center on young and predominantly
Verso, 1991).
male consumers, or to those who buy for them, but it can spill over
18 See www.filf.co.uk/skate/carver-skate-
into other demographics as well. Themed greeting cards are among
boards/carver-skateboard-37-great-wave.
the items that allow people to “participate” in the surfing lifestyle
html (accessed June 3, 2011).
19 Available from www.apple.com/
without getting their toes wet. In 2004 and again in 2006, the Art
downloads/dashboard/information/
Institute of Chicago’s annual holiday sales catalogues, which reach
maree_bobbyhugges.html (accessed
consumers across the United States, advertised an unconventional
April 28, 2011).
Christmas card of a surfing Santa, designed by illustrator Tom
20 Marjorie Kelly, “Projecting an Image and
Hertzberg. Surfing also enjoys a huge following in Japan, and in an
Expressing Identity: T-shirts in Hawaii,”
Fashion Theory 7, No. 2 (2003): 205.
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interesting variation of the “artistic remix,” one enterprising maker
of inexpensive paper summer fans capitalized both on this motif
and on another celebrated Japanese brand, Hello Kitty.

Hokusai’s design lends itself to these disparate uses because,
by showing the huge, cresting wave in motion, it creates the illu-
sion of overcoming gravity, nature, and time, even as it retains the
threat of impending disaster. Its dynamic fluidity metaphorically
expresses the freedom, grace, and agility required for any sport,
while its heroic isolation is especially apt for those whose sports are
more individualistic, like cyclists, skateboarders, and surfers. The
Great Wave also has what might be characterized as street attitude,
drawing attention through its in-your-face spectacle but at the same
time keeping the beholder at bay with its implications of danger. If
its identification with Japan is implicated in any of these readings,
it is more for a generalized sense of anti-authoritarian alterity than
for any intrinsic aesthetic or cultural traits.
Corporate Products
Both skateboarding and surfing activities were once subculture
practices that expressed youthful rebellion, empowerment, and
freedom from the bourgeois work ethic. Today, they retain some-
thing of this lifestyle image but also represent part of a multi-
million dollar global business. The customization of Keds speaks to
the way marginal or subculture groups might, through their do-it-
yourself bricolage, have an effect on mainstream products.21 Keds
sneakers were first produced in 1916, but competition from new
styles of footwear, made by Nike and other manufacturers, forced
the company to close in 1986. In 2002, however, the shoes made a
come-back thanks to music, dance, and skateboarding. As one of
the numerous publications now devoted to the subject of sneakers
asserts, sneakers “moved out from the sports arena and exploded
into popular culture as a fashion style which simultaneously
transcend[s] race and class, yet defines who you are in today’s
urban tribes.”22 In their return, Keds took on connotations of back-
to-basics retro chic, with implications of resistance to the powerful
forces of global branding. The image of irresistible momentum that
“The Great Wave” projects when applied to this footwear echoes
the motion of the Nike Swoosh—providing commentary that is
simultaneously a tribute and a parody.

With its company motto, “Let My People Go Surfing,”
21 Dick Hebdige, Sub-Culture: The Meaning
the sporting goods company Patagonia typifies the commercial
of Style (London: Routledge, 1987),
mainstreaming of countercultural values. Since the opening of
102-06.
22 Sneakers: The Complete Collectors’
its first retail outlet in 1970 (The Great Pacific Ironworks, in
Guide, written and designed by
the beach town of Ventura, CA), Patagonia has used adapta-
Unorthodox Styles (London: Thames
tions of Hokusai’s design as the store’s logo and on a wide range
& Hudson, 2005), 7.
of apparel—especially T-shirts and long, baggy surfer shorts
23 See GPIW ™ Sign Logo T-shirt Style
(see Figure 5).23 This design reflects the love of founder, Yvon
51844 at www.patagonia.com (accessed
June 1, 2011).
24
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Figure 5
Patagonia Logo. Property of Patagonia, Inc.
Chouinard, for both mountains and surf.24 The company began as a
supplier of mountain climbing equipment, but when it moved into
colorful yet practical sports clothing in 1972, this was marketed
under the Patagonia label to give it a separate identity. The name
Patagonia, a reference to a region in Argentina, was selected
because it conveyed a romantic image of cosmopolitan ruggedness.
The Japanese inflected logo, with its jagged mountain and stormy
sea, reinforced this vision, while also making visible Chouinard’s
admiration of Japanese culture. The market in Japan for moun-
tain climbing gear and, later, for outdoor sports clothing led the
company to open shops there, and today clothing branded with
Patagonia’s distinctive logo has found special appeal among hip,
young Japanese consumers.25

Pitching parody instead of using the straightforward “buy
me” approach, and using language rich in visual and verbal quota-
tions has worked well for Now and Zen—an Alsacian white wine
24 Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go
sold in the United States, especially through the unconventional
Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant
Businessman (New York: Penguin Press,
supermarket chain, Trader Joe’s.26 The wine’s unusual name is a
2005).
pun on the phrase “now and then,” perhaps a coy allusion to the
25 On Yvon Chouinard’s engagement with
nationwide campaign urging consumers to drink in moderation.
Japan, see Chouinard, Let My People
The wine’s logo is a figure in a “tipsy” rowboat perched precari-
Go Surfing, 74-75, 127-28.
ously atop a playfully distorted cresting wave (see Figure 6). Now
26 A review by a Trader Joe’s fan is
and Zen is produced in France, as suggested by the Anglophone
available at www.facebook.com/note.
php?note_id=414711605669 (accessed
stereotype of the French mispronunciation of the word “then;” in
June 3, 2011).
turn, the name links the wine to Japan through identification with
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Zen Buddhism. The logic underlying its double-barreled branding
is to convey the idea that this “wasabi white” wine is suitable for
drinking with Asian fusion cuisine. This campy marketing attracts
even as it distracts from the fact that the wine is a down-market
product priced in 2010 at $4.99. The label may further capitalize on
Now and Zen as the title of a 1988 hit record from Led Zeppelin’s
Robert Plant (a connection not necessarily made, however, by all
consumers). Such unconventional branding is effective, especially
in the crowded global marketplace of low-cost wines. Together,
the brand name and logo create the image of a hip beverage that
is fun to drink. Now and Zen doesn’t claim to be Japanese, but it
banks on an eclectic mix of qualities that some consumers associate
with that country to impart transnational distinction to its product.

The wit and marketing savvy of the distinguished Paris
purveyor of gourmet foods, Fauchon, comes through in its La Vague
(The Wave) éclair. Filled with quivering, creamy white goodness,
La Vague’s decorative icing features the Great Wave, Mount Fuji,
and a single lemon yellow boat—all together also creating a visual
pun on the elongated boat-like shape of the pastry itself. The unex-
pected conjunction of “art” and pastry serves effectively to distin-
guish this relatively commonplace commodity so that consumers
are prepared to pay Fauchon’s high prices. The wave éclair is one
of a number of such customized delicacies at the gourmet shop; like
Fauchon’s dark chocolate Mona Lisa éclair, it capitalizes tastily, if
not tastefully, on identification with an internationally recognized
masterpiece. The message here is less about Japanese culture than
about the global culture of conspicuous consumption of which
Japan is a part.27

When or where Fauchon first introduced the éclair is not
clear, but its development was likely part of a global marketing
strategy to cater to Japanese consumers, both at home and abroad.
Figure 5
Now and Zen packaging (detail).
Author’s photograph.
27 Available from http://en.gigazine.net/
index.php?/news/comments/20090710_
hokusai_cream_puff/ (accessed
May 31, 2011).
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Fauchon has had a presence in Japan since the 1970s and still has
independent outlets there, as well as selling its confections through
the up-scale Takashimaya Department Store. References to the
delicacy on Japanese language blogs (where it is referred to as a
dezain—the Japanese pronunciation of design—éclair) and other
social networking sites suggests that it especially appeals to brand-
conscious young women for gift-giving.28

As part of the ocean that surrounds us, the cresting wave
clearly is a motif that conveys a global message of interconnectivity
that is attractive to multinational firms. In this sense it may func-
tion like the Coca Cola musical campaign based on the song, “I’d
like to teach the world to sing,” or the analogous “United Colors
of Benetton” slogan, built around compelling color photographs
of groups of people of disparate ethnic and racial backgrounds. In
2005, Levi’s devised a campaign that played on the idea of global
denim by mounting 35 pairs of blue jeans on a giant 22-foot-by-12-
foot canvas. Caroline Calvino, a Levi’s executive and enthusiastic
surfer, then painted over al of them in varying shades of blue a
single giant wave alluding to Hokusai’s woodcut. Called “Love and
Peace,” the col age was introduced at the Los Angeles fashion week
before being displayed in Japan. Following the showing in Japan,
32 pairs of the exclusive jeans, each identified with the words “Love
and Peace” on the back, were sent to stores in New York, London,
Los Angeles, Tokyo, and San Francisco and were sold for $1,000
each.29 By this clever ploy, Levi’s disguised the commodity status
of the jeans while simultaneously carrying out an act of commercial
seduction. As part of the art work, the jeans were unwearable, but
once dismantled, each pair was more valuable for its identification
with Calvino’s collage.

For Calvino, the Great Wave offered an innovative way to
28 Available from http://8tokyo.
engage consumers around the world with Levi’s product. Yet, even
com/2009/11/06/fauchon-eclair-la-
vague/ and http://blog.oggi.tv/
as her creative use of the motif brought audiences into a trans-
present/2010/05/fauchon.html
national conversation, online responses to her artwork indicate
(accessed May 31, 2011).
that it simultaneously drew attention to the wave’s identity with
29 Available from Ami Kealoha, “Denim
Hokusai.30 In so doing, it illustrates Viviana Narotsky’s assertion
Hokusai,” www.coolhunting.com/
that a “discourse of national identity, which generally draws on
archives/2005/10/14 (accessed June 3,
2011). Another example of promotional
pre-established cultural stereotypes, can be arbitrarily constructed
use of Levi’s jeans is available at
‘from the outside’ around certain products, reflecting the global
www.designer-daily.com/hokusais-
context in which they are created and consumed rather than their
great-wave-is-everywhere-4697
intrinsic formal or ‘essential’ qualities.”31
(accessed October 27, 2009).

An advertisement developed in 2008 for Kikkoman soy
30 Ibid.
sauce by the Swedish division of the advertising agency, Scholz and
31 Viviana Narotsky, “Selling the Nation:
Identity and Design in 1980s Catalonia,”
Friends offers a further illustration of this. The ad shows a dramatic
Design Issues 25, no. 3 (Summer 2009):
photographic close-up of the rich, amber-colored sauce splashing
68, 71.
in the shape of Hokusai’s cresting wave, and over it, the company’s
32 Available from: http://adsoftheworld.
distinctive, hexagonal Japanese crest, with the character for 10,000
com/media/print/Kikkoman_the_
in the middle. Inscribed in small letters above the image is the
great_wave_f_Kikkokman?size=original
(accessed October 27, 2009).
tagline, “Culinary art from Japan.”32
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 2 Spring 2012
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There is nothing intrinsically Japanese about soy sauce. It is
an indispensable ingredient in all East Asian cuisines, and one that,
until the surge in popularity in sushi and other “healthy” Japanese
delicacies, was more likely to be associated with China. Many
consumers outside the region where it was historically consumed
have long used a splash of it in cooking, and brand identity is
unlikely to be a major consideration in its purchase. Kikkoman is
a company with a long domestic history, but since the 1970s, it has
also sought to expand its international profile; thus, advertising
campaigns have emphasized the fact that it is naturally brewed and
fermented—an image that goes hand in hand with the perception
that Japanese food is healthy.33

The advertisement described, only one of many developed
for European and American consumers, trades on the stereotype
of Japan as an artistic nation, and the dissemination of Hokusai’s
“Under the Wave off Kanagawa” that has been implicated in the
creation of that stereotype since its introduction to Europe and
America. However, unlike the geisha, samurai, cherry blossoms,
and other motifs of Japanese origin that have become part of the
idiom of modern-day Japonisme, the Great Wave has the capac-
ity to take on a plurality of identities through its displacements to
new forms and media and, in doing so, to simultaneously express
and suppress cultural difference. As used by a Swedish graphic
designer on behalf of a Japanese corporation that seeks to market
a product whose ingredients are sourced and brewed around the
world, the image can hardly be claimed to be part of an internally-
driven nationalistic discourse on tradition.
The Local and The Global
This essay has sought to document, analyze, and make available
for critical reflection “The Great Wave”—a graphic icon serving as
a powerful cultural signifier for over a century and, for the past
decade, as one deeply embedded in the language of global prod-
uct design and promotion. I have necessarily been selective; no
one essay can reflect the full range of commercial products and
services to which the motif has been applied. The messages this
icon communicates are pluralistic, ambiguous, and, like the wave
itself, in a constant state of change. Nevertheless, at this point, we
can reasonably ask whether there is a logic underlying the diverse
products on which it appears and the messages it conveys. What
can we conclude about the consumer tastes, social and economic
forces, and other factors that have contributed to its ubiquity?
33 Ronald E. Yates, The Kikkoman
Chronicles: A Global Company with a

Does the image make visible the eastward migration of
Japanese Soul (New York: McGraw-Hill,
power and capital to Asia, and more specifically Japan? Might it
1998), ch. 1, 1-11.
provide coded acknowledgement of the process that sociologist
34 Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering
Koichi Iwabuchi, in his 2002 book of the same title, described as
Globalization: Popular Culture and
“recentering globalization,” with Japan at its center?34 The ubiq-
Japanese Transnationalism (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2002).
uity of this graphic design can well be understood as a cultural
28
DesignIssues: Volume 28, Number 2 Spring 2012

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phenomenon that gestures toward a value system outside Europe
and America. Although the image’s transnational celebrity has a
long history, it has also unquestionably benefited from the global
success of Japan’s pop culture—animation, manga, characters,
computer games, and fashion. And yet, when used as a design on
or for promoting products, the great wave and its permutations are
simultaneously context specific and variously situated. This multi-
valence argues in favor of seeing its mediating power as residing
in its potential to communicate the dialectics of globalization—its
decentering effects as well as its centering effects.

In discussing the reasons for the commercial success of
Japanese products in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia, where there
is a strong legacy of anti-Japanese sentiment, Iwabuchi underscores
the absence of the “odor” of national identity in such products—a
trait that he characterizes as deterritorialization: mukokuseki.35 Might
the globalizing, free-floating product identity he suggests be useful
in explaining the remarkable popularity of the Great Wave as well?
With its image of constant movement to, from, and between bound-
aries, and its implication of experience at the expense of materiality,
the wave (without Mount Fuji) does seem to be emblematic of the
pluralistic, fragmented, and media-saturated landscape of the post-
modern world. And yet, such a reading fails to acknowledge the
agency of individuals to make new social meanings for the things
they see and use. The visual language and subject of the Great
Wave invite the adaptation and adoption of its “deterritorializing”
qualities to refer to or reflect on local socio-cultural structures, often
blurring the boundaries between production and consumption.
The web has been a key platform for such critical engagement, and
one that has helped the motif to become a symbol of global cool.
Although the Great Wave has been mobilized to confer desirable
Japanese connotations on some products, today it functions increas-
ingly as a transnational signifier of local difference. Paradoxically,
the aura of alterity that it confers on the products it promotes is
dependent on its status as a global icon.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Allen Hockley for his comments on an earlier
version of this essay and, especially, Kimberley Chandler for her
35 Ibid., 28.
research assistance.
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