Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680-1860

New York: Asia Society and Museum / University of Washington Press, 2008. Paperback. VG (Wraps are lightly edgeworn; textblock edges are lightly edgeworn/scuffed/smudged; interior is clean; binding is solid.). Color-illustrated wraps with black lettering on green spine. French flaps. 256 pp. with color illustrations throughout. "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." -- WorldCat.