Carl Peter Thunberg studied at Uppsala University in Sweden where he was a favourite student of the great Linnaeus, father of modern scientific classification. He determined to travel the world and enlisted as a physician with the Dutch East India Company. He arrived in Japan in the summer of 1775 and stayed one year, the maximum continuous term permitted for a European at the time. He travelled to Edo (modern Tokyo) where he became friends with the shogun's private physician, Katsuragawa Hosshu, a notorious rake. They maintained a correspondence even after the Swede had returned to his homeland. Thunberg's 'Travels' appeared in English in 1795 and was never reprinted. This edition makes available once again Thunberg's extraordinary writings on Japan, complete with illustrations. Fully annotated and introduced by Timon Screech.

This edition makes available once again Thunberg's extraordinary writings on Japan, complete with illustrations, a full introduction and annotations. Carl Peter Thunberg, pupil and successor of Linnaeus - of the great fathers of modern science - spent eighteen fascinating months in the notoriously inaccessible Japan in 1775-1776, and this is his story. Thunberg studied at Uppsala University in Sweden where he was a favourite student of the great Linnaeus, father of modern scientific classification. He determined to travel the world and enlisted as a physician with the Dutch East India Company. He arrived in Japan in the summer of 1775 and stayed for eighteen months. He observed Japan widely, and travelled to Edo (modern Tokyo) where he became friends with the shogun's private physician, Katsuragawa Hoshu, a fine Scholar and a notorious rake. They maintained a correspondence even after Thunberg had returned to his homeland. Thunberg's 'Travels' appeared in English in 1795 and until now has never been reprinted. Fully annotated and introduced by Timon Screech.

Isaac Titsingh was intermittently head of the Japan factory (trading station) of the Dutch East India Company 1780-94. He was a career merchant, but unusual in having a classical education and training as a physician. His impact in Japan was enormous, but he left disappointed in the ability of the country to embrace change. After many years in Java, India and China, he came to London, and then settled in Paris where he devoted himself to compiling translations of prime Japanese texts. It is one of the most exciting anthologies of the period and reveals the almost unknown world of eighteenth-century Japan, discussing politics, history, poetry and rituals. The Illustrations of Japan appeared posthumously in 1821-1822 in English, French and Dutch. This fully annotated edition makes the original English version available for the first time in nearly two centuries

Isaac Titsingh was head of the Japanese station of the Dutch East India Company 1780-94. He was a career merchant, but unusual in having a classical education and training as a physician. He could also read Chinese. In Japan, his impact was enormous. He became a friend and confidant of the shogun's father-in-law, the famously wise but wily Shimazu Shigehide, almost causing war between father and son-in-law. He also attempted the project of equipping Japan with an ocean-going fleet. However, he left Japan disappointed in the ability of the country to embrace change. After many years in India he settled in Paris, where he wrote down his experiences. It is one of the most exciting journals of the period and reveals the almost unknown world of eighteenth-century Japan, discussing politics, history, poetry and rituals. The Illustrations of Japan appeared posthumously in 1822 in English and French. This fully annotated edition makes the original English version available for the first time in 180 years.

It has long been assumed that Japan's closed country policy meant that the country was isolated form the influence of the outside, and in particular, the western world. However, this study of 18th century Japan, using sources wholly unstudied since their writing, reveals the profound influence that the introduction of western technology and scientific instruments including glass, lenses and mirros, had on Japanese notions of sight, and how this change in perception was reflected most clearly in popular culture. Screech offers interpretations of 18th century thought through popular objects, and makes propositions which many considered groundbreaking on the book's first publication in 1996. The conclusions reached here have yet to be substantially challenged. Curzon is pleased to announce a revised edition of this important work, with a new preface by the author. Previously only available in hardback.

Newly revised and expanded, this second edition of Timon Screech's definitive "Sex and the Floating World" offers a real assessment of the genre of Japanese paintings and prints today known as shunga. Changes in Japanese law in the 1990s enabled erotic images to be published without fear of prosecution, and many shunga picture-books have since appeared. There has, however, been very little attempt to situate the imagery within the contexts of sexuality, gender or power. Questions of aesthetics, and of whether shunga deserve a place in the official history of Japanese art, have dominated, and the question of the use of these images has been avoided. Timon Screech seeks to re-establish shunga in a proper historical frame of culture and creativity. Shunga prints are not like any other form of picture for the simple fact that they are overtly about sex. And once we begin to examine them first and foremost as sexual apparatus, then we must be prepared for some surprises. The author opens up for us the strange world of sexual fantasy in the Edo culture of eighteenth-century Japan, and investigates the tensions in class and gender of those that made and made use of shunga.

During the early modern period in Japan, peace and prosperity allowed elite and popular arts and culture to flourish in Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto. The historic first showing outside Japan of Ito Jakuchu's thirty-scroll series titled Colorful Realm of Living Beings (ca. 1757-66) in 2012 prompted a reimagining of artists and art making in this context. These essays give attention to Jakuchu's spectacular series as well as to works by a range of contemporary artists. Selected contributions address issues of professional roles, including copying and imitation, display and memorialization, and makers' identities. Some explore the new form of painting, ukiyo-e, in the context of the urban society that provided its subject matter and audiences; others discuss the spectrum of amateur and professional Edo pottery and interrelationships between painting and other media. Together, they reveal the fluidity and dynamism of artists' identities during a time of great significance in the country's history. Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/Distributed by Yale University Press

The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was the world's biggest trading organization until the twentieth century. It was originally a spice trading organization, and its existence was precarious in its early years. But its governors soon began to think bigger. A decade after its foundation, they started to plan voyages to more adventurous places, notably Japan. Japan had silver, was cold in winter, and had no sheep, so was a perfect market for England's main export, woollen cloth. The Company planned to add to its spice-runs, sailing back and forth to Japan, exchanging wool for silver. This could be done quickly and easily, over the top of Russia - or so the maps of the day suggested (these same maps also showed Japan twenty times too large, about the size of India). Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had got there before them, the Company prepared a special present to impress and win over their Japanese hosts. They chose as their first gift a silver telescope. The expedition carrying the telescope departed in 1611, and the Shogun was finally presented with the telescope in the name of King James I in 1613. It was the first telescope ever to leave Europe, and the first made as a presentation item. Before this voyage had even returned, the Company had dispatched another with an equally stunning cargo: nearly a hundred oil paintings. This is the story of these two extraordinary cargoes: what they meant for the fortunes of the Company, what the choice of them says about the seventeenth century England from which they came, and what effect they had on the quizzical Asian rulers to whom they were given.