1 Dollar Hokusai's Great Wave

Hokusai completed "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" around 1831 as part of his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series, published by Nishimiya Yohachi. It was originally a woodblock print sold cheaply to the Japanese public — mass art, not fine art. Western collectors rediscovered it after Japan's forced opening to trade in the 1850s, and it became one of the most reproduced images in history largely through that colonial-era appetite for japonisme.

Fiji's selection as issuer is purely jurisdictional convenience — the island nation licenses its monetary authority for commemorative programs with no domestic connection to the subject matter.