Which sentence best states the main idea of the passage?

Hokusai drew all his life, and his cheap prints reached ordinary people. (The passage stays on two points: he never stopped working, and prints put his pictures in ordinary hands. He drew many subjects, not only Fuji, and the text never mentions wealth.)

According to the passage, why could ordinary people own Hokusai's pictures?

Because prints were cheap (The text gives the reason directly: prints were cheap, so ordinary people could own them. Printing from wood blocks is the opposite of painting each picture by hand.)

What does his habit of changing his artist name more than thirty times suggest about him?

He kept changing the way he worked, again and again. (The text says each new name 'marked a new stage in his work,' so the names track changes in his art. Hiding, rules, and other artists are never mentioned.)

Hokusai and Mount Fuji: Level 2 Reading Comprehension Questions

Q: In the passage, 'studies' means:

quick practice drawings (The word sits inside 'filled sketchbooks with quick studies of hands, faces, and animals.' In a sketchbook, a study is a practice drawing, not a lesson or a room.)

Katsushika Hokusai was born in Japan in 1760. He began drawing as a boy and never really stopped. He worked in woodblock printing, a craft in which a drawing is carved into blocks of wood and then printed on paper many times. Because prints were cheap, ordinary people could own his pictures.

Hokusai changed his artist name more than thirty times. Each new name marked a new stage in his work. He drew fishermen, farmers, bridges, ghosts, and quiet streets. He also filled sketchbooks with quick studies of hands, faces, and animals.

In his seventies he made his most famous series, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. In every print the mountain appears somewhere, sometimes wide and calm, sometimes small behind a wave or a roof. The best known image shows a huge wave curling over small boats while Fuji sits quietly in the distance.

Hokusai died in 1849, at about eighty-eight. Late in life he wrote that he was still learning, and that his real work would begin only if he lived many more years.

Comprehension questions