Page "Ukiyo-e" Paragraph 13

Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan became open to imports from the West, including photography, which largely replaced ukiyo-e during the bunmei-kaika ( 文明開化, Japan's Westernization movement during the early Meiji period ).

Ukiyo-e fell so far out of fashion that the prints, now practically worthless, were used as packing material for trade goods.

When Europeans saw them, however, they became a major source of inspiration for Impressionist, Cubist, and Post-Impressionist artists, such as Vincent van Gogh, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others.

This influence has been called Japonisme.

The prints also influenced early Modernist poetry in many important ways, with Imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and Amy Lowell allowing them strongly to influence their imagery and aesthetic sentiments.