"Ideally I would spend a whole year on a freighter watching the waves. If God himself, in honour of my 60th birthday, would give me the strength and the power and the glory, now and forever, to draw a beautiful wave. But no, nothing like that. As soon as I got home I tried it, to no avail. I started spirals instead. That at least gave me something to go on. Drawing waves—those apparently shapeless, chaotic glories—is something I will have to leave to you and your (almost ex-)compatriots."
Found a copy of the book on Wikimedia. It was originaly published as a pattern book for kimono textile, then rediscovered in 1986 in a collection at the Boston Museum. Since then art historians in Japan found further prints.
It's mostly pictures and not much text, except for the initial popup you see which is the usual cookie consent prompt (left button = minimum required, right button = agree to all). But looks like British Museum also has this book if you want an English interface:
If you are asking about the text written on the pages themselves, it takes a bit more effort unless you are familiar with archaic script. I can make out some of them as guidelines on how to draw the patterns.
"Ideally I would spend a whole year on a freighter watching the waves. If God himself, in honour of my 60th birthday, would give me the strength and the power and the glory, now and forever, to draw a beautiful wave. But no, nothing like that. As soon as I got home I tried it, to no avail. I started spirals instead. That at least gave me something to go on. Drawing waves—those apparently shapeless, chaotic glories—is something I will have to leave to you and your (almost ex-)compatriots."
https://escherinhetpaleis.nl/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fp...
北斎模様画譜 (1884) - Hokusai Pattern Book - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANDL85...
I used safari’s built in translate feature to translate the page from Japanese to English, scroll down for download options.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANDL85...
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1973-0723-...
If you are asking about the text written on the pages themselves, it takes a bit more effort unless you are familiar with archaic script. I can make out some of them as guidelines on how to draw the patterns.
https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/en/imagebank/theme/hokusaimoyo
Hokusai Moyo Gafu: an album of dyeing patterns (ndl.go.jp) 170 points by fanf2 10 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992