GENRES AND THEMES
Ukiyo-e are popular pictures of the everyday life of the urban class in the Edo period. Originally the word ukiyo was used to designate one of the Buddhist categories and could be translated as "world of misery" or "world of sorrow". At the end of the 17th century ukiyo came to mean the modern world, the world of earthly joys and pleasure. The creation of Japanese ukiyo-e prints reached its heyday at the end of the 18th century. The main figures in ukiyo-e prints came to be representatives of the third estate: courtesans, actors, sumō wrestlers, characters from Japanese plays and legendary heroes. This led to the emergence of diverse genres in this art: depictions of beauties from "pleasure districts", portraits of actors and scenes from kabuki plays, prints of mythological and literary subjects, historical-heroic prints portraying samurai warriors in battle scenes, landscapes and depictions of flowers and birds
