Which ukiyo-e artist is often credited as the founder of the genre?

Hishikawa Moronobu is often credited as the founder of ukiyo-e.

Moronobu worked in Edo during the late seventeenth century and helped establish ukiyo-e as a recognizable artistic style. His designs appeared in illustrated books and single-sheet prints, often showing fashionable people, entertainers, and scenes from urban life.

Before Moronobu, Japanese printed images existed in several traditions, including religious and illustrated-book production. His importance lies in bringing lively secular subjects and a distinctive drawing style into widely circulated commercial imagery. He is therefore commonly described as the first major ukiyo-e artist, although the genre developed through several earlier traditions.

Moronobu is also associated with the early development of the single-sheet print. His works were generally monochrome or lightly colored, long before the elaborate multicolor prints of the nineteenth century. The later names Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Utamaro belong to a much more mature phase of ukiyo-e.