Book excerpt: Aesthetics of the Floating World offers an in-depth account of three aesthetic concepts--mitate, yatsushi, and fūryū--which influenced the way early-modern Japanese popular culture absorbed and responded to this force of cultural tradition. Combining literary, historical, and visual evidence, the book examines particularly how the three concepts guided artistic choices in the context of Floating World prints (ukiyo-e), and how the concepts have shaped the direction of ukiyo-e studies since the Meiji period (1868-1912).