Short answers, pulled from the story.
The term ukiyo-e emerged in the 1670s to describe a genre of Japanese art that translates to pictures of the floating world. Hishikawa Moronobu produced the earliest ukiyo-e works during this period, creating monochromatic prints of beautiful women that broke away from traditional aristocratic and religious themes.
The golden age of ukiyo-e in the late 18th century featured artists like Torii Kiyonaga, Utamaro, and the enigmatic Sharaku. Kiyonaga created realistic depictions of idealized female forms, Utamaro revolutionized the genre with his okubi-e large-headed pictures, and Sharaku introduced striking realism in actor portraits before disappearing in 1794.
Hokusai popularized the landscape genre with his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes his best-known print The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This work demonstrates the artist's mastery of perspective and composition by featuring a large boat in the foreground, a smaller one behind it, and a small Mount Fuji in the background.
Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, ukiyo-e suffered a sharp decline in quantity and quality due to rapid Westernization and competition from photography. Woodblock printing turned its services to journalism, and practitioners of pure ukiyo-e became more rare as tastes turned away from the genre.
Ukiyo-e prints were created by teams of artisans divided into four groups: the publisher, the artist, the woodcarver, and the printer. Normally only the names of the artist and publisher were credited on the finished print, as the original drawing was destroyed during the process of pasting it to a cherry wood block.
The largest collection of ukiyo-e in Japan resides in the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum in the city of Matsumoto. The genre has left an enduring legacy that extends far beyond Japan, influencing everything from modern manga to contemporary graphic design and shaping the perception of Japanese art in the West.