In the final year of his life, Katsushika Hokusai, already celebrated for his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, turned his attention to a legendary protector: Shōki the Demon Queller. What makes Red Shōki, the Demon Queller especially remarkable is that it was painted in 1847, when Hokusai was nearly ninety, his hand unsteady but his imagination undimmed. The subject, Shōki, was a talismanic figure in Japanese households, believed to ward off evil spirits and illness—a role that took on particular urgency during outbreaks of disease in Edo-period Japan.

Hokusai’s late fascination with supernatural guardians coincided with his own anxieties about mortality and the afterlife. Shōki stands at the center, sword raised, eyes fixed in fierce concentration as he confronts unseen demons. His robe, rendered in a striking red, signals both imperial authority and the power to repel evil—a departure from earlier depictions, which often show Shōki in somber blues or blacks. The exaggerated beard, wild hair, and the dynamic sweep of his garment amplify his supernatural vigor.

Unlike the more restrained, almost scholarly Shōki of Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s prints, Hokusai’s version pulses with restless energy, the brushwork loose yet purposeful. The background is left deliberately bare, focusing all attention on the hero’s solitary struggle. The precise medium of this work is not firmly established, though it is thought to be either ink and color on paper or silk, typical of Hokusai’s late paintings. Red Shōki, the Demon Queller has not traveled widely; it remains less known than his woodblock prints, and its early provenance is uncertain—like many of Hokusai’s paintings, it may have been a private commission for a wealthy patron seeking protection.

Today, it stands as a testament to Hokusai’s enduring inventiveness in his final years, when he declared, “From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things.” This late work reveals an artist still wrestling with demons, both literal and personal, at the very end of a long and restless career.