Europe thought it had a monopoly on artistic genius. Hokusai proved it wrong | Jonathan Jones

Japanese artists’ style was admired by Europe’s 19th-century avant-garde, but these prints and drawings reveal the inspired individuality they overlooked

In Jeff Wall’s 1993 photograph A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), a disparate group of people are caught in a wild breeze. They seem liberated by the blast: as papers go flying about in comic disarray a businesslike man in a dark coat, white shirt and tie responds to the gust with ecstatic abandon, set free from his constrained existence by this moment of chaos.

Related: Katsushika Hokusai's later life to feature in British Museum show

Hokusai watches people with compassion, tolerance and curiosity

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