Picture the Floating World?

"Artists of the Floating World" this expressive phrase can be found in Memoirs of a Geisha. According to the novel it refers to the role of Geisha in Japan and it hints at the seeming "ungroundedness" of the world of beauty and entertainment. It is particularly evocative as it simply and effectively describes the unconnected nature of such a world with the deeper "reality" that lies beneath. Or so one might intimate as an English speaker. It is related to the artistic style in Japan known as Ukiyo-e or "Pictures of the Floating World." These pictures are of landscapes, pastoral scenes, kabuki theater, and pleasure quarters. Hokusai and Hiroshige are perhaps the two most famous practitioners of this style of woodblock prints and painting. The picture here is one of Mt. Fuji by Hiroshige, one of his 53 Stations of the Tokaido Series. Hokusai is also extremely well known for his 36 Views of Mt. Fuji. Though, he is most famous for the often appropriated The Great Wave at Kanagawa. This understanding of the "Floating World" is a unique and genuinely frustrating concept to parse out. Are we in the Floating World? Does this apply to people, places and things...or is it a manifold of sensible perception, or a state of being? Moreover, does the Japanese understanding of the word "float," have any connection to ours. Should we be appropriating this term in novels about Geisha, of which we perhaps do not understand the role they played within Japanese society? Something suggests that perhaps, "The Floating World" is no less real, or important and is no "lighter" than other worlds or realities.