Ukiyo-e is the 'pictures of the floating world' of edo-period japan — woodblock prints depicting actors, courtesans, and landscapes.
Ukiyo-e ('pictures of the floating world') is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through the 19th centuries, primarily in Edo (modern Tokyo). The 'floating world' originally meant the urban pleasure quarters — the kabuki theatres and licensed brothel districts — and the prints initially depicted famous actors, courtesans, and beauties. The technique combined the painter's design with the work of specialist woodblock carvers and printers, producing affordable multicoloured prints in editions of hundreds or thousands. Suzuki Harunobu's full-colour prints of the 1760s, Kitagawa Utamaro's bust portraits of beautiful women, and Tōshūsai Sharaku's actor portraits of 1794–1795 were milestones. In the 19th century the genre expanded to landscape: Katsushika Hokusai's 'Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji' (c. 1830–1832), including 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa', and Utagawa Hiroshige's 'Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō' (1833–1834). When Japan opened to trade in 1853, ukiyo-e prints reached Europe in vast quantities and transformed Western art: Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Whistler, and Klimt all studied and absorbed their flat colour, asymmetric composition, and bold cropping.