The influence of Japanese woodblock prints, or 'ukiyo-e,' on late nineteenth-century French Impressionism is one of the most significant cross-cultural exchanges in art history. When Japan ended its period of isolation in the 1850s, prints by artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige flooded the European market, often as packing material for porcelain. Impressionists like Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt were captivated by the prints' unconventional compositions, particularly their use of asymmetrical balance and the 'cropping' of figures at the edge of the frame. This was a radical departure from the centralized, perspectival focus that had dominated Western painting since the Renaissance. Furthermore, ukiyo-e introduced a new approach to color, utilizing flat planes of bold, unshaded pigment rather than the chiaroscuro modeling used in Europe to create the illusion of three-dimensional depth. This helped the Impressionists move away from traditional realism toward an emphasis on the two-dimensional surface of the canvas. While some critics at the time dismissed the interest in Japonisme as a superficial fashion, it fundamentally altered Western ideas about space and color, providing the visual vocabulary for the birth of modern abstraction.