Is Hokusai’s Red Fuji Public Domain? Choose a Named Impression

The short answer

Yes. Hokusai’s historical design known as Red Fuji or Fine Wind, Clear Morning is public domain. The Metropolitan Museum of Art provides an identifiable open-access image of its impression JP9, under CC0. Start with that museum file rather than assuming that every red mountain image found online has the same terms.

There are two separate decisions: whether the old composition can be reused, and whether the particular download is suitable for your use. The first is straightforward for this nineteenth-century published print. The second depends on its source, any modern additions, and what the file actually shows.

Three names for the same design

The Met’s collection record calls the work South Wind, Clear Sky, gives its Japanese title as Gaifū kaisei, and also identifies it as Red Fuji. Other institutions use Fine Wind, Clear Morning. These are different English titles for the familiar composition from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, not three unrelated paintings.

The work is a colour woodblock print: ink was transferred to paper from carved blocks. An impression is one individual sheet printed from those blocks. The design could therefore exist on many sheets from the beginning. That is different from a unique painting subsequently photographed for a website.

For the image at the top of this page, the useful identifiers are Hokusai, the series, about 1830–32, and accession JP9. The Met records the sheet as 24.4 × 35.6 cm, acquired through the Rogers Fund in 1914. Keeping those details together stops an attractive image from another collection being accidentally described as the Met’s example.

Why the published print is public domain

The publication evidence is stronger than “it looks old.” The Met’s collection record dates the print to about 1830–32 and names the publisher Eijudō when describing the expansion of Hokusai’s Fuji series. This is evidence for an issued historical print design, not merely an early date attached to an unknown drawing that remained private until recently.

For the United States, an early nineteenth-century publication is well beyond the maximum 95-year term explained in Copyright Office Circular 15A. Foreign origin does not restart that clock: Circular 38B describes restoration as the remaining term a qualifying work would otherwise have had, not a fresh term from rediscovery or museum digitisation.

Hokusai died in 1849. The design is also outside ordinary life-plus-70 economic copyright in the UK and Türkiye, as described by their government and ministry guidance. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs states that its 2018 term extension did not revive rights that had already expired.

This conclusion concerns economic copyright in the historical design. It is not a worldwide assurance about every trademark, attribution rule, contract or new adaptation associated with Mount Fuji. For an unusual territory or disputed derivative, the relevant local question still needs its own answer.

Which Red Fuji are you downloading

Look at the whole sheet before choosing a file. The mountain’s outline, the clouds, the tree line, the signature and the title are all part of the composition. Two files with a similar red triangle may differ in colour, margins, wear, printing or later editing.

Those differences are not an invitation to combine whichever pieces look most vivid and call the result a museum scan. If you use one impression’s sky and another’s mountain, you have made a composite. It may be an intentional design, but it is no longer a faithful record of JP9.

Nor does a modern photograph necessarily show a nineteenth-century sheet. A present-day printmaker can carve new blocks after Hokusai; a designer can redraw the mountain; a publisher can add lettering around it. The historic source can be public domain while a particular product contains other contributions. Identify those contributions before borrowing the finished product image.

For a simple article illustration, a complete, unaltered institutional image is usually the clearest choice. It allows readers to see the same object you name and to compare it with the institution’s record.

The open file and its limits

JP9 has a Public Domain label on the Met’s object page. The museum’s Open Access policy makes its qualifying artwork images available under Creative Commons Zero, including commercial reuse. That is the file route used here.

Save the downloaded image together with its object URL, accession and rights statement. If a later redesign uses another museum’s photograph, repeat the file check; do not leave the old Met credit attached to the replacement.

CC0 is not a promise that every image on the museum website is open. A photograph of a visitor standing in a gallery, an exhibition installation, a video and a branded product mockup are different resources. The museum’s webpage text and visual identity are not part of the artwork download either.

Likewise, naming the Met as the image source does not make a print an official Met product. An accurate source credit explains where the image came from. It should not suggest a partnership that does not exist.

Keep the shape and record your changes

Red Fuji is a wide composition. A tall phone wallpaper may need a substantial crop; a standard print size may remove edges if it has a different ratio. Preview the result before deciding that a technically available file suits the format.

For a reproduction intended to show the complete design, preserve the sheet’s proportions. Do not stretch the mountain upward to fill a portrait rectangle. Add space around the image or choose another output ratio if you want the entire composition visible.

A crop is not automatically prohibited by CC0, but describe it as a detail. A recoloured design should be labelled as an adaptation, not evidence of the original colours. Keep a clean source copy so that a later editor can distinguish your changes from features in the institutional file.

Legal availability and image quality are also different. A small thumbnail may be reusable but unsuitable for a large wall print. Test the actual download at the intended size rather than judging it only on a phone screen.

A credit that identifies the sheet

A concise credit can read: Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji), about 1830–32. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1914, JP9. Public Domain / CC0. Link the museum record, and add “detail” or “adapted” if that describes the version shown.

For the wider artist and the differences between original prints and later editions, continue with the Hokusai rights guide. The related Great Wave public-domain check shows the same distinction using another exact museum impression. This is practical research information, not individual legal advice.