Box of delight

Much of the image we have of life in Japan in the 17th through the 19th century, we have because of woodblock prints, or specifically ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world," which vividly capture a great variety of scenes and the people who inhabited them. The once-closed-off Japan has changed a great deal since that era, on most levels even more so than other countries, and the artistic portrayals of Japanese life have also multiplied enormously.