The Irish writer Oscar Wilde spoke more than a century ago of something called "the Japanese effect," in his brilliant essay "The Decay of Lying." There he describes it as an artificial thing, an aesthetic attitude deriving from Japan. But he emphasized the "art" involved in constructing what was at that time primarily a visual presentation.
In Wilde's own work, the "Japanese effect" might be the disposition of a curtain in descriptive prose, or the use of concrete imagery in certain of his poems. These painterly effects came about because the plastic arts were more readily appreciable in Western countries. The "Japanese effect" that this anthology displays and celebrates depends as much on literary translation, which took a lot longer to get through.