Answer:
Japan was just beginning to open up to the western world. One of its exports at the time was porcelain. The porcelain was very fragile and was being brought to Europe on ships. To protect the delicate porcelain the Japanese began wrapping it in tissue paper that had prints of Japanse style art. when the porcelain reached Europe, and particularly France and Paris, the soon to be called Impressionsists absorbed it into their own art, the result was a foreshortening of the picture plane and and later in the post-impressionists time a a flattening of the subjects themselves.