Focus on Hokusai Manga and explore the Publication history.
The preface to the first volume of the work, written by Hanshū Sanjin (半洲散人), a minor artist of Nagoya, suggests that the publication of the work may have been aided by Hokusai's pupils. Part of the preface reads:
This autumn the master [Hokusai] happened to visit the Western Province and stopped over at our city [Nagoya]. We all met together with the painter Gekkōtei Bokusen (月光亭墨僊) [Utamasa II, well-known Nagoya artist, pupil of Hokusai’s, and collator of Hokusai’s later work] at the latter’s residence, it being a very joyous occasion. And there over three hundred sketches of all kinds were made – from immortals, Buddhas, scholars, and women on down to birds, beasts, grasses, and trees, the spirit of each captured fully by the brush.
The final volume is considered spurious by some art historians.The initial publication is usually credited to Eirakuya Toshiro (永楽屋東四郎) of Nagoya whose publishing house was renamed to Eito Shoten in 1914.
Eirakuya Toshiro Hokusai sketches Nagoya