When you hear the term ukiyo-e, do images such as Katsushika Hokusai's big wave or his red Mount Fuji immediately come to mind? If so, "The Allure of Edo" exhibition currently at the Edo-Tokyo Musem will completely change your perception of the art form, as there is much more to ukiyo-e than that.
For starters, the 80 pictures in the exhibitions of old Tokyo's pleasure districts, beautiful women, kabuki actors and mystic animals by famed artists including Hokusai, Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsukawa Shunsho, are not even prints; they are hand-painted originals. And, unlike prints, they come in many different formats: scrolls, screens, banners, lanterns and mural-size theatrical signs.
"Most people are not aware that ukiyo-e is this diverse," says Masato Naito, chief curator of Idemitsu Museum of Arts in Tokyo.