Obtaining Images is a beautiful book, full of insights on every page. Timon Screech transforms our view of Japanese art, showing it to us through the eyes of the people who made, commissioned, bought and saw it, and in the process taking us right under the skin of this very different society and mindset.
Literary Review
Obtaining Images is a wide-ranging synthetic analysis of Edo-period art. Few authors have offered as much integrated commentary on Edo images and engaged with as many significant issues as Timon Screech has in this volume . . . Reading this book is a bit like seeing a familiar landscape in a fresh, new light . . . Pages are peppered with intriguing tales . . . packed with piquant detail and novel perspectives . . . Screechs aim is also to make his reader question received thought on Edo-period art and appreciate its great complexity . . . not only has he accomplished this, but he has accomplished something perhaps even more difficult: he has written a synthesis of the Edo-period pictorial world complete enough to satisfy the specialists expectation yet engaging enough to hold the non-specialists attention.
Monumenta Nipponica
For those with an interest in the marketplace of production, the book includes fascinating details on the interactions between consumers and patrons, on one side, and the artists and producers, on the other . . . I strongly recommend this book to all scholars and students (especially literary specialists) with an interest in Edo-period culture.
Japan Review