Biographical/historical: Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” is the term used for prints and paintings that portray everyday domestic activities, famous beauties, courtesans, actors, and other scenes and portraits of ordinary life during the Tokugawa Shogunate of the Edo period (1615-1868). Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?-1806) specialized in depicting women: well-known courtesans, celebrated beauties of the day, and unknown, ordinary women engaged in their daily activities. The audience for these eroticized and idealized portraits was a rising urban middle class, including those from Edo (now Tokyo), with money to spend on luxuries, like these works of art, which captured the transitory pleasures of life.