The Shogun’s Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States 1760–1829 is the third monograph published by Timon Screech since 1996 and completes his panorama of late nineteenth-century Japanese culture. Though the title features both Japan’s military ruler and period painting, the primary topics of the book are actually Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758–1829, chief shogunal councillor 1787–92, shogunal regent 1789–92) and the cultural history of his times. Screech covers this ground with great clarity, analyzing a diversity of aspects of Japanese culture from the bicameral nature of Japanese rule to the vagaries of shogunal kite-flying to the destruction of two early modern cities by devastating fires and the divergent paths of the metropoles to recovery. Though many readers may be familiar with this period through the “floating world” of the pleasure quarters celebrated in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, this volume scarcely mentions the culture of the townsmen, concentrating instead on the ruling elites and their real and perceived difficulties. Screech’s ideas are fascinating, often brilliant, and well grounded, as evidenced by ten pages of a tightly packed “select” bibliography. The five chapters of The Shogun’s Painted Culture set out the dismal situation of shogunal rule in the middle of the eighteenth...