The most famous wave in the world took Hokusai 34 years to get right.

In 1797 he tried to draw it and failed.

He crumpled sketch after sketch and threw them across the studio.

The wave refused to live.

He tried again in 1803, and again years later.

Each time the sea stayed flat, stylised, almost dead.

He moved house more than forty times and changed his name again and again.

A stroke nearly took his hand, and he taught himself to hold the brush again.

Once, to win a contest before the shogun, he dipped a chicken's feet in red paint and let it run across the paper.

By 70 he was a widower, ruined by a grandson's gambling debts.

Then a strange new blue arrived in Edo from a Berlin laboratory.

And in 1831 the wave finally came alive, on his fourth attempt.

Why it took him a lifetime is the whole story.

👇