The prints of the Ukiyo-e artists are not only incredible triumphs of design and composition unparalleled in the history of art, but they also provide an accurate pictorial record of a way of life long disappeared. The big cities of Edo, Kyoto, Osaka and many others were pictured along with their inns, street scenes and famous personages. Master artists like Utamaro, Hokusai, Yoshitoshi, Sharaku, and Hiroshige would leave us with a stunning visual record of old Japan.

Japan was not opened to the West until 1854, and only after that did Europeans become aware of the wondrous woodblock prints produced by the Ukiyo-e masters. During the 19th century European artists broke away from the dogma of representing "things as they are seen", and this is partly due to their exposure to Japanese artwork. European artists were so inspired by the Floating World style that they attempted to integrate it into their own.

The Impressionists saw in Japanese works proof positive that you could dispense with perspective and detail, yet still create evocative images. Degas, Manet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, to name but a few, were all inspired by the Japanese masters of the Ukiyo-e. The painter Claude Monet praised Japanese art as having a quality that "evokes presence by means of a shadow, the whole by means of a fragment."