Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and the three volumes of his subsequent One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji show his fascination with a single motif: Mount Fuji. Hokusai's near-obsession with Fuji was part of his hankering after artistic immortality. In Buddhist and Daoist tradition, this mountain was thought to hold the secret to eternal life, as one popular interpretation of its name suggests: fu-shi ("not death"). Thirty-Six...