This book attempts to expand the grounds and methodology of studying Japanese art history by focusing on the conditions, procedures, events, and social interplay that characterized the production of paintings in late-fifteenth-century Japan. Though the book's ultimate concerns are art historical, its analysis also draws heavily from the insights of sociology and social history. At its core is a fresh examination of the major primary documents of the period in an attempt to liberate the study from assumptions long embedded in the historiography of late medieval Japanese painting history. Early...