Hokusai
a celebrated Japanese artist. Born in Tokyo in 1760 he left home at the age of 13 and worked in an engraver's shop for five years when he left to study designing with one of the famous Japanese artists. Losing his position because of his original work which was displeasing to his master, he tried illustrating and_later peddling without much success. It was 1810 before he can be said to have made a success of his art. In that year he opened a school and soon had more pupils than he could accommodate. His greatest work was his "Ten Thousand Sketches," which appeared in 1836. His work was popular in the best sense of that word and free from the conventionality that characterized his contemporaries. He died in 1849.
HOLACANTHUS (hol-ä-kan'thus), a genus of fishes, in character and distribution similar to the Chætodon. They are remarkable for the great beauty and symmetry of their colors, and for their excellence as articles of food. The body is compressed, and the gillcover bears a strong spine. One of the best known of the 40 species, called Emperor of Japan by the Dutch, is H. imperator, one of the most esteemed fishes of the East Indies, rivalling the salmon in flavor.
Its greatest size is about 15 inches long; its color is deep blue, with numerous narrow bands of orange, the pectoral fins black, the tail bright yellow. In beauty it is rivalled by an allied species, H. diacanthus, of similar distribution .