Hotei Publishing is a commercial press established in Leiden in the mid-1990s as a specialized publisher of finely designed and beautifully illustrated English language books on Japanese ukiyo-e prints. In recent years it has expanded to publish books on various Japanese arts, mainly of the Edo (1615–1868), Meiji (1868–1912), and Taishō (1912–26) periods. Catering at first primarily to the large numbers of ukiyo-e print collectors in the West, its ukiyo-e publications are nevertheless distinguished by the rigorous scholarship of its authors, both collectors and academics. Consequently, its publications have immensely enriched scholarly understanding of the ukiyo-e tradition. Building on its reputation and on the wide body of recent scholarship that it has in part encouraged, Hotei has now undertaken an ambitious new project—the publication of this comprehensive two-volume encyclopedia of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Curiously, the title does not actually mention the word “ukiyo-e” (although readers of Japanese will note that the phrase does appear in Sino-Japanese characters [kanji] on the back cover), nor does it indicate the book’s chronological parameters (seventeenth century to 1926) that appear, however, in the chapter headings as listed in the table of contents. From the title, these omissions lead the reader to think that the...