Professor of History of Art at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto. He has also taught at numerous other universities including SOAS, Chicago, Heidelberg, Meiji and Waseda. He is an expert on the art and culture of the Edo Period, including its international dimension, and has published some dozen books on the subject. His best-known work is probably Sex & the Floating World, a study of erotica, and he has recently completed a field-defining overview of the Edo arts, Obtaining Images. His work has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Polish and Romanian.