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A movement that paralleled and occasionally intersected with the aforementioned developments in painting was that of the production of ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” which depicted the buoyant, fleeting pleasures of the common people. This specialized area of visual representation was born in the late 16th and early 17th centuries as part of a widespread interest in representing aspects of burgeoning urban life. Depictions of the brothel quarters and Kabuki theatre dominated the subject matter of ukiyo-e until the early 19th century, when landscape and bird-and-flower subjects became popular. These subjects were represented in both painting and wood-block ...(100 of 29399 words)