Designed for pleasure
Subtitle: the world of Edo Japan in prints and paintings, 1680-1860
By: edited by Julia Meech and Jane Oliver ; with essays by John T. Carpenter ... [et al.].
Contributors: Meech, Julia.; Oliver, Jane; Carpenter, John T.; Asia Society.; Japanese Art Society of America.
Publisher: Asia Society and Japanese Art Society of America; In association with University of Washington Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York; Seattle
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780295987866
Subjects: Art, Japanese -- Edo period, 1600-1868 -- Exhibitions; Ukiyoe -- Exhibitions; Japan -- Social life and customs -- 1600-1868 -- Exhibitions
Genres: Exhibitions.
Description: This book examines the floating world of popular culture centered in Edo [modern Tokyo] during the period between 1680 and 1860, when Japan transformed itself from an agrarian to a booming commercial economy. By 1710, Edo was the largest city in the world, with a population of over a million. We know so much about this time in part because of the vast body of imagery created and treasured by succeeding generations. The artists and writers held a looking glass up to their heady world and, in the process, to themselves. Fads and fashions proliferated, and this highly literate, consumer-driven society insisted on being up to date. Innovative color printing techniques fed the demand for ever-new information.

Designed for Pleasure brings together paintings, prints, and illustrated books featuring images known as ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world. The carefully selected images present the principals of that realm—the actor, the artist, the courtesan, the poet, the publisher, the patron—and they also reveal the confluences and contradictions in a time of enormous social, cultural, and economic change in Japan.
Notes: Issued in connection with an exhibition held Feb. 27-May 4, 2008, Asia Society and Museum, New York, New York.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: A Mirror on the Floating World / Donald Jenkins; title: Hishikawa Moronobu: tracking down an elusive master / David Waterhouse; title: The original source (accept no substitutes!): Okumura Masanobu / Sarah E. Thompson; title: Suzuki Harunobu: the cult and culture of color / Allen Hockley; title: Katsukawa Shunshō: Ukiyo-e paintings for the samurai elite / Timothy Clark; title: Tsutaya Jūzaburō: master publisher / Julie Nelson Davis; title: The literary network: private commissions for Hokusai and his circle / John T. Carpenter; title: Designed for pleasure: Ukiyo-e as material culture / David Pollack.