The advent of commercial publishing in 17th-century Japan completely revolutionized the Japanese art tradition. For the first time, art was not exclusively created for the upper classes who could afford to commission it for private use. It was designed and produced for a general audience in the form of illustrated woodblock-printed books.

This artistic revolution was the result of newly-minted publishers in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo, who began to experiment with woodblock printing—a process that, for over a thousand years, had been restricted to Japanese temples for the production of Buddhist texts. These beautifully illustrated and commercially published books (and subsequent single-sheet prints) not only impacted the Japanese art tradition but, in the 19th century, inspired the Western art movements of Impressionism, Japonisme, and Art Nouveau. The publishing of illustrated books was then revolutionized in the 20th century with the introduction of photography, new printing processes, and artists taking complete control of their work for the first time.