Japan’s most looked-at picture is, in truth, the portrait of a mountain. The Great Wave off Kanagawa 神奈川沖浪裏, printed by Hokusai around 1831, is the first sheet of the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. While the enormous wave sinks its claws toward three boats, a small, snow-covered, motionless triangle rests on the horizon: Fuji 富士. The angrier the wave, the calmer the mountain. The whole of Japanese aesthetics is folded into that single frame: stillness in the middle of motion.

Fuji is Japan’s highest summit and its oldest sanctity. Poets have written to it for a thousand years, pilgrims have climbed its flanks for a thousand more; in 2013 UNESCO inscribed it as a sacred place and wellspring of art.

The Fuji Roll is a counter craftsman’s bow to that emblem: the layers rise like a mountainside, and the summit takes a cover of snow-white sauce.

Hokusai’s wave swells in our seas as well. The mountain on the plate, like the original, does not move.