Tom Killion fulfills his dream of learning a hand-printing technique with a master printer in Japan.

Journey to Hokusai is a feature-length documentary that intimately follows an artist's creative process and discovery of the origins of his art.  Tom Killion, a woodblock print artist, identifies the 19th century Japanese artist Hokusai as his inspirational master. When Tom makes his California landscape prints, his most important artistic references are Hokusai's landscape prints. Tom sketches a real landscape just like Hokusai did 200 years ago. He carves woodblocks using Japanese hand tools. But when it comes to printing, Tom uses a German printing press and oil-based ink unlike the traditional method of printing by hand with watercolor ink.

The film follows Killion's painstaking creative process and his pilgrimage to Japan to study under Kenji Takenaka, a fifth-generation master printer in Kyoto. As he learns new techniques and trades in his oil-based ink for traditional watercolor, Killion discovers more and more about the history of printmaking. His odyssey takes him to a papermaker that is still in business after 1500 years and to the quiet village of Obuse, where Hokusai spent his final years. “Journey to Hokusai” is an intimate exploration of the connection between two artists from different worlds.