During the Edo period, decorative arts were used in a variety of contexts such as furnishing homes and as tokens in the elaborate system of gift exchanges. In towns, a burgeoning consumer culture led to a wide range of goods available for daily use in the home. Customers looked for more than simple practicality in these goods, they expected high technical and aesthetic quality. Kyoto and Edo were major centres of artistic production and exported objects to other areas of Japan, although craftsmen in regional castle-towns also met local demand for decorative items.

Although producers usually specialised in a particular field, there was no conceptual division between ‘fine’ and ‘decorative’ arts. Even modest homes usually possessed an ornamental alcove ( tokonoma). This contained a display of a scroll of calligraphy or painting, and objects placed on a shelf below. These included porcelain vases, lacquer trays and boxes, metal vessels (often using antique Chinese forms) and small sculptures ( okimono) made from wood or imported ivory. Objects were also produced for the ritualised serving of powdered green tea, often of earthenware ceramic and bamboo in intentionally ‘rustic’ forms. Glass-making techniques (known as biidoro) were acquired from studying European and Chinese texts, and beads, toys, hair ornaments, pipes and small screens made of glass became popular items.