EDO: ART IN JAPAN 1615-1868. Edited by Robert Singer, foreword by Earl A. Powell III. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, with assistance from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs and the Japan Foundation. 480 pp., 281 color plates. Unpriced. THE EYES OF POWER: Art and Early Tokugawa Authority. By Karen M. Gerhart. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. 212 pp., 38 b/w plates. $38.95

"Edo" is not only the name of a city, now Tokyo; it is also an era, 1615-1868, one during which Japan was governed by some 15 generations of a single clan, the Tokugawas. Like "Rome," the term refers to both a place and a time, and its influence can be variously assessed.

The period is usually viewed as a Pax Japanicus. Despite the "rigid hierarchical organization of society, . . . the political stability of the period enabled a vibrant popular culture to develop." The quote is from the foreword by Earl Powell III, director of Washington's National Gallery of Art, which hosted the comprehensive exhibition of Edo art of which this publication is the catalog.

Such a description, however, is too slight for this large, heavy, beautifully printed and bound volume, filled with exemplary color plates and texts of major distinction. It is an important publication and even though the exhibition itself ended last February, this extraordinary book will preserve it in spirit.