This is one of eight stamps printed on the same sheet and honoring the 100th anniversary of the Universal Postal Union. Letter-writing themes were selected from major pieces of art. Katsushika Hokusai is considered by many to be the greatest of all Japanese printmakers of the Ukiyo-E school. His prints had a considerable impact in the West, especially among such late 19th-century painters as Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and James McNeill Whistler.