This thesis explores the influence of Japanese woodblock prints called ukiyo-e on Impressionism and Post-Impressionism during the late nineteenth century in Europe. It briefly describes the history and development of ukiyo-e from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, the Japanese aesthetic, and the introduction of the prints to the West, beginning in the 1850s. It deals specifically with the influence on Proto-Impressionist Edouard Manet, Impressionists Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, and Claude Monet. It also discusses the influence on Post-Impressionists Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pierre Bonnard. Data was based on informed texts by both Japanese and Western authors, and visual analysis, supplemented with viewing of prints at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.