Miss Hokusai

In the Edo period, O-Ei works in the studio of her father, the painter Hokusai, and draws part of what goes out under his signature herself. The film follows her days: commissions, masters, her blind younger sister, and her father's indifference. It is not interested in the life of the great artist. It is interested in the labour of the person whose name gets erased: O-Ei's brush goes unrecognised because the signature belongs to her father. The film presents this not as a complaint but as an everyday arrangement. The form is episodic. The story does not climb towards a single peak; it wanders around Edo. The scenes between bridge, river and studio read like the pages of a sketchbook. The source is Hinako Sugiura's manga Sarusuberi. Sugiura was both a manga artist and a researcher into the daily life and customs of the Edo period, which is where the film's period detail comes from. Keiichi Hara directed, and Production I.G produced. Anne Watanabe voices O-Ei. Who it is for: viewers who like historical anime, portraits of artists and the Edo period. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a driving plot. The film is deliberately fragmented and most of its characters leave the way they arrived.