Katsushika Hokusai, the artist behind 'The Great Wave,' was famously restless, both in his location and his identity. Over his long career, he lived in over 90 different houses and changed his professional name more than 30 times. In Japanese art tradition, changing a name often signaled a shift in style or artistic philosophy. In his 70s, he began signing his work as 'Gakyo Rojin Manji,' which translates to 'The Old Man Mad About Painting.' Hokusai believed that his early work was insignificant and that he wouldn't truly understand the nature of art until he was 110. This constant evolution allowed him to master everything from traditional 'ukiyo-e' (pictures of the floating world) to landscape studies that eventually caught the eye of Western artists like Van Gogh and Monet after Japan's borders opened in the 1850s.