Museum of Japanese prints Ukiyo-e was founded in 1982, its base lay a huge collection of woodblock prints belonging to the family of Sakai. She began collecting Yoshitaka Sakai, merchant and philanthropist, who lived in the XIX century, and continued by his son and grandson of the matter. Today the museum is a private institution.

The main building of the museum was designed by Kazuo Shinohara, in 1995 it was extended by architect Hub Kunihari.

The collection includes prints, screens and old books, and, according to experts, it is the best in the world. Exhibits collections of family members gathered Sakai in Europe, North and South America, China and the Middle East. The museum has about 100 thousand exhibits, including works by famous masters of ukiyo-e, including Katsushika Hokusai and Hiroshige. Hokusai worked under a variety of pseudonyms, and their number (about thirty) excelled engravers and woodcuts. Hiroshige was known under the name of Ando Hiroshige as the author of the beautiful landscapes, subtly conveys the state of nature. His hand belong to about five and a half thousand prints.

Ukiyo-e is the direction of Japanese art, which became popular in the second half of the XVII century. The word "ukiyo-e" can be translated as "the world is changing." Some genres of ukiyo-e depict famous Kabuki actors, beautiful women, samurai, views, also has a genre of erotic prints and genre, called "flowers and birds."

On the creation of ukiyo-e worked three people - painter, engraver and printmaker. The artist drew a sketch, a cutter directly on the paper-cut picture on a board of wood pears, cherries or boxwood. The number of these wooden forms could reach several tens, and each form corresponds to one tone or color. Subsequently, the printer using these forms did impressions on wet rice paper.