Ukiyo-e is the Japanese term meaning “pictures of the floating world.”
The word combines ukiyo, “floating world,” with e, meaning “pictures” or “paintings.” In Edo-period culture, the floating world referred especially to urban pleasure districts, theaters, entertainment, fashion, and transient pleasures. Ukiyo-e artists later applied the term to a much broader range of subjects.
Early ukiyo-e included paintings and single-color or hand-colored prints. The medium expanded dramatically when publishers developed multiblock color printing, allowing detailed commercial images to reach a mass audience. Popular subjects included actors, courtesans, beautiful women, landscapes, myths, and scenes from daily life.
The term does not mean that every ukiyo-e image literally depicts a pleasure district. Landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige are also ukiyo-e, even though they focus on travel routes, weather, bridges, and famous places.