Visual Genesis of Japanese National Identity offers an entirely new perspective on the concept
of constructing nation-states. The book explores the nature of national identity constructs
produced in pre-modern Japan by examining two aspects of its cultural production the sphere of
fine arts and the sphere of literature intertwined with a genre of poetry pictorialization. The
discussion is centered on the artistic practice of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and
contextualizes his woodblock print series entitled Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki in a wider
perspective of Japanese historical political social cultural and artistic phenomena emerging
prior to the birth of the modern Japanese nation. Hokusai's work oscillating between the
domain of text and the domain of image transposes the classical Japanese poetry into late Edo
period (1603-1868) popular culture. Machotka argues that in the process of text image
translation Hokusai projected a new image of «Japaneseness» therebycontributing to the
development of national identity prior to the emergence of Japan as a modern nation-state.
