Marks's (director & chief curator, Clark Ctr. for Japanese Art) clear, informative text, while valuable for scholars beginning research, also remains accessible to the average reader. With excellent production values and a modest price, this volume is recommended for all libraries, academic and public.

The meticulous organization of information notwithstanding, it is the prints which are the chief pleasure of the book: 523 prints that bring to life a Japan of heroic tales, beautiful women, ghosts, warriors, demons, and spring cherry blossoms. The exuberance of color, motion, and expression, all carefully arranged, make this a book for scholars and browsers, serious collectors and hedonists alike.

Marks provides the kind of concrete biographical details that most art historical treatments, more focused on style, genre, and influences, would pass over. And, besides, even for a minor artist like Eizan, we’re given five full-color images of examples of his work, one of them a full-page illustration, giving us a sense at a glance of his style – we don’t need it described out in lengthy paragraphs. So, in this way, I do think that Marks’ book is a wealth of knowledge, a real deep, solid, source to consult for names and dates and the like, a true compendium of artists. The fact that Marks includes publishers at all is also fairly revolutionary, since “traditional” scholarship on ukiyo-e has always focused on artists almost exclusively, elevating them, and all but ignoring publishers and others involved in the process.