Read the excerpt from "Hokusai's The Great Wave.”But there are other ways of reading Hokusai’s Great Wave. Look a little closer and you see that the beautiful wave is about to engulf three boats with frightened fishermen, and Mount Fuji is so small that you, the spectator, share the feeling that the sailors in the boats must have as they look to shore – it’s unreachable, and you are lost. This is, I think, an image of instability and uncertainty. The Great Wave tells us about Japan’s state of mind as it stood on the threshold of the modern world, which the US was soon going to force it to join.