Ukiyo-e is a genre of paintings and woodcut prints that started in the Edo period. Ukiyo literary means “a transitory world” (often translated as “the floating world”), that is the world of our everyday lives as opposed to the world after death. E means a picture, so ukiyo-e is a picture of people and scenes familiar from daily life. During the Edo period these were mainly pictures of Japan and Japanese people.
The photo is a ukiyo-e by Sharaku (東洲斎写楽) from 1794.
