The birth of Ukiyo-e. Socio-historical context.

Ukiyo-e prints appear in Japan around the time the Tokugawa Shoguns were consolidating their rule. After centuries of permanent civil warfare, the power of the Shoguns brought a long period of peace and was based in a military dictatorship imposed on a society strongly controlled and in a very strict separation of the four major classes: warrior, farmer, artisan and trader.

One of the most effective security devices created by the Tokugawa was the principle of alternate residence , or sankin kotai,  daimyos to reside in alternate periods in their fiefs and the military and political capital, Edo (present Tokyo). While the daimyos resided in their fiefs, their families were forced to remain in Edo.

This concentration of a significant part of the ruling class in Edo attracted a large number of artisans and traders who constituted, together with the minor functionaries dependent of the Tokugawa administration and of the daimyos, a kind of urban middle class. Thus, Edo was transformed from a small provincial town into metropolis of one million persons, one of the largest cities in the world.

The daimyos, their families and entourage , formed a very concentrated market, almost captive, which gave a big impetus to the activities of the traders and artisans. Their welfare rose in proportion. The trading class, in particular, rose to a position of economic dominance, without never acquiring the means to express politically and socially gained their newly gained importance.

The plebeian urban classes, in strict isolation from the dominant classes, developed their own social, cultural and artistic expressions. These forms and expressions developed in a context of entrepreneurship, and having always in their view the enlarged market of the urban middle classes.

Another very important aspect of this movement is the extraordinary importance given to luxury and to the pleasures of life. From this developed a complex of theaters, brothels, tea-houses, restaurants and guest-houses. Soon the Tokugawa power was trying to control and limit this complex, which led to the apparition of closed quarters such as the Shimabara, in Kyoto, and the Yoshiwara in Edo, to where these establishments were moved. If was to these pleasure quarters and to the connected houses, people and activities that the name Ukiyo, or floating world was given.

As a result of these two essential aspects, Ukiyo-e were considered a commercial activity, not related to "serious" art. This commercial character is essential to understand the preponderance of certain themes, characteristic of Ukiyo-e prints, and also plays a great role in explaining why some of the greatest artists of this form had so much difficulty in gaining recognition.