Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave, Edo Period, c. 1831, woodblock print, 9⅞” x 14⅝”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Ukiyo-e (noun)
Click here for pronunciation.
Japanese for “pictures of a floating world,” a Ukiyo-e is a type of woodblock print that was produced by an artist, a woodblock carver, and a printer. Katsushika Hokusai designed many popular Ukiyo-e, of which some, as in the case of his print of the Great Wave, he printed thousands of times. In the late nineteenth century, Hokusai’s prints inspired many European artists to abandon linear perspective.
