Let us imagine that In, say, 1840, we show a typical Japanese person Katsushika Hokusa’s The Great Wave (approx. 1832) and Winslow Homer’s The Gul Stream (1899).
You ask he Japanese person which artwork represents water that looks more like water.
Would the Japanese person say:
A. The Great Wave’s water looks more like water really looks?
OR
B. The Gulf Stream’s water looks more like water really looks, though The Great wave better captures the spirit of water?
Moderator Action
Since this is about interpretation of works of art, let’s move it to CS (from GQ).
I’d say the one that makes the poster turn up after 17 years and only 21 posts to start 2 new threads in one day. That would make Jesus walk on water, if he could decide which painting to walk upon.
I doubt that anyone, anywhere, any time (who has seen large, turbulent bodies of water) would have a problem distinguishing which looked more realistic. Japanese Ukiyo-e is just a popular way of stylizing art, just like Ancient Egyptians didn’t really think people Walked Like An E-gyp-tian and modern Japanese realize that real schoolgirls don’t have gigantic…um…eyes and polychromatic hair.
(And as an aside, we in the age of video of course now know that a tsunami looks nothing like a large breaking wave.)
Objection, the OP is asking the witnesses to speculate as to the opinions of long-dead Japanese people.
Without any links, I can’t offer up any opinion, but I will state a principle which I always try to keep in mind with regard to visual art: An exact and true physical representation doesn’t necessarily convey the experience of seeing the subject.
A person with *eyes *who has seen the sea, which is going to be most of the population of ancient japan, would agree that Homer’s style is a more accurate representation.
Which piece of art is *better *is totally subjective, there’s a reason art museums aren’t full of just photographs and near photo-realistic drawings and renderings.
I contest that claim. Japan is more than a hundred miles across in many places. In the ancient world, a sixty mile journey from the heart of the island to the coast would be a week’s round trip for most of the population (horses were expensive). I seriously doubt that most ancient Japanese (peasantry) could spare the time or justify the expense.
Japan’s interior is quite mountainous. While I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing most people lived rather close to the sea.
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Neither is particularly realistic, though you could certainly say Homer’s depiction is slightly more so. That doesn’t say a thing about which one I’d rather have hanging on my wall. I’ve been partial to the Great Wave for a long time, but I had never heard of the Gulf Stream, and I have to say that it’s quite depressing in comparison. Even if both paintings depict people that are in terrible situations at sea, Homer’s is boring, and Hokusai’s is exciting.
Why are you guys talking about ancient Japan when the OP is asking about the mid-19th century?
It’s generally agreed that The Great Wave isn’t supposed to depict a tsunami.
Given that this thread started in GQ, I’ll supply a GQ answer to the following:
As glowacks points out, the interior of Japan is quite mountainous. Mountains and steep hills comprise about 80% of Japan, making them uninhabitable. Farming in only possible on about 16% of the land. The majority of large Japanese cities are on the coasts.
A quick googling shows the top 10 most populous Japanese cities from 1876, eight years after the Meiji Restoration when the total population of Japan was 33 million.
1 1 Tokyo Tokyo 595,905 Formerly known as Edo, whose population is estimated to be over a million under the Tokugawa, but after the Meiji Restoration, roughly half the city’s population emigrated. Nevertheless, Tokyo retained its position as Japan’s largest city, which it had held since the mid 17th century.
2 3 Osaka Osaka 271,992
3 7 Kyoto Kyoto 238,663
4 4 Nagoya Aichi 125,193
5 35 Kanazawa Ishikawa 109,685
6 11 Hiroshima Hiroshima 74,305
7 2 Yokohama Kanagawa 64,602
8 55 Wakayama Wakayama 61,124
9 12 Sendai Miyagi 51,998
10 87 Tokushima Tokushima 48,861
Of these cities, Kyoto is the only one which is not situated on the coast. Of course, about 80% of the population were farmers, but much of the the farm land would be located closer to the coasts than to the interior. There are several relatively large plains, the largest of which is the Kanto Plain which includes (what is now) Tokyo and Yokohama. Peasant farmers on the interior areas of the Kanto plain could very well have never been to the ocean. I lived in Miyakonojo, a basin in southern Kyushu where people would certainly never have seen the sea.
For those in the interior of Japan, a more immediate problem would be that people were not normally given permission to leave whichever of the 200-odd han or territory in which they belonged. Leaving without permission was a serious offense.
Most people traveling in Japan went by foot or in a foot carriage. There were simple ones and more those more elaborate. Travel by horse was not frequent even by the wealthier class. It simply wasn’t a traditional form of transportation. They did have a system horse riding messengers.
While “ancient” is not the precise term, the OP is specifying pre-Meiji era Japan, which was still a premodern closed, feudal society.
Small GQ hijack: do masses of sharks stalk small boats (as depicted in Homer’s painting)?
Uh, dude, It’s their hood. They’re just talking shop. What’s that suspicious guy doing hanging around there?! That’s the question. He looks stoned, or homeless. Possibly both. 
It sounds like you are asking if the perception of images was different for different cultures back then?
Why couldn’t they just say: one is a block-printed version produced as tourist souvenirs (designed to print up a bunch at a time) and the other was an example of western high art painting and both show the ocean in a way that exploits the advantage of each medium? (All of this would be said in Japanese, or course ;)).