The ‘floating world’ of the Edo period — which would go on to become the muse of Van Gogh, Monet, and the whole of Impressionism.

Two hundred years of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate produced one of the earliest ‘urban consumer classes’ in history. Samurai had no war to fight, and merchants had money but low status; they spent it on theatre, geisha and the sumo ring — and the woodblock print was that era’s celebrity weekly, limited-edition figure, and travel poster all in one.

This aesthetic reached Paris in the late 19th century and sparked the craze called Japonisme: Van Gogh copied Hiroshige, Monet dressed his wife in a kimono to pose, Mucha’s compositions clearly borrowed from Kuniyoshi. Any flat illustration you scroll past today, any IG comic, any Studio Ghibli frame — the root is right here.