Ōta Memorial Museum of Art

The ukiyo-e genre may not be familiar to the Western world by name, but its works are without a doubt some of the most popular examples of Japanese art we have today: Just picture the rearing, white-capped wave of Katsushika Hokusai. Japanese woodblock printing—dubbed ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world”—thrived from the 17th- to the 19th century, when a sudden thrust toward modernization transformed the tradition, rendering it a less desirable form of art. Today, some of the best examples of these woodblock prints (as well as nikuhitsu-ga paintings) are on display at Tokyo’s Ota Memorial Museum of Art, which hosts some 12,000 works  collected by late ukiyo-e enthusiast Ota Seizo V. Exhibitions change monthly to coincide with a theme.