"Christine Guth offers a brilliant new perspective on early modern Japanese craft. She shatters the myth of unchanging traditions by demonstrating how craft communities were innovative, well networked, and responsive to sustainability. This astute and engaging study shifts the focus from elite patrons to bring clarity to the networks, materials, and processes of craftmakers."--Sherry Fowler, Professor of Japanese Art History, University of Kansas "This is a field-shifting work. It reflects the author's immense expertise in the historical study of Japanese visual and material cultures and gives us a richer and more multivalent and multisensory understanding of the often essentialized category of 'craft.'"--Gregory Levine, Professor of Art History, University of California, Berkeley