Review of Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art, 1750– 1900 edited by Akiko Yano. London: British Museum Press, 2024. 256 pages, 220 illustrations.

Salon Culture in Japan: Making Art, 1750-1900 argues that cultural salons functioned as spaces where collaborative artistic production transcended the rigid four-class social system promoted by early modern Japan's neo-Confucian ideology.By examining collaborative practices and works among established and "ordinary" participants, the book demonstrates that cultural production operated across social boundaries in ways that challenge conventional understandings of Edo period (1603-1868) social structure.It reveals more fluid and participatory cultural networks than previously understood.In this volume -which is simultaneously an exhibition catalogue and a scholarly contribution -the authors examine in five essays the salons' persistent social dynamics that operated across the late Edo period and early Meiji era .Published to accompany the exhibition "City Life and Salon Culture in Kyoto and Osaka: 1770-1900" in the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries (April 2024-March 2025), it presents initial findings from a larger digitization and database project 1 .The research project draws on over 100 illustrated book titles, 500 paintings, and 3,000 surimono (privately commissioned woodblock prints often featuring poetry) from the British Museum's Kyoto-Osaka collection, one of the most significant outside Japan.Japan's cultural salons brought together artists, poets, and "ordinary" people across social boundaries.Examples include collaborative paintings by 1 British Museum, "Making art together in Japan 1780-1880" https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/projects/making