This course offers an introduction to the visual arts of early modern Japan by way of painting, prints, and theorizations thereof. The class begins in the seventeenth century with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate and ends in the late nineteenth century with the institutionalization of museums, art academies, juried exhibitions, and the concept of “fine art.” Topics to be covered include the practice of painting, artist lineages as construed then and now, the impact of foreign visual cultures such as those from China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Europe, and the relationship between representations of the world and the world ostensibly portrayed. Students will explore what the varying images and texts to be introduced throughout the course can potentially reveal about early modern Japan.