Stanford in the Floating World

From Ryan Tamares, on a postcard arriving yesterday (8/21) at my place (it was mailed much earlier at Stanford, passed for some reason through San Francisco, and then shunted back down to Palo Alto; the ways of the USPS are sometimes inscrutable), this extraordinary artwork by a Redbubble.com artist using the name UkiyoCities: “The Scholar’s Path at Stanford” Yes, Stanford in the Floating World, simultaneously in the California of today and in the Tokyo of more than 200 years ago. The Floating World. From Wikipedia: Ukiyo (浮世, ‘floating/fleeting/transient world’) is the Japanese term used to describe the urban lifestyle and culture of Edo period Japan (1600–1867), especially its pleasure-seeking aspects Ukiyo culture developed in Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo), the site of many brothels frequented by Japan’s growing middle class. A prominent author of the ukiyo genre was Ihara Saikaku, who wrote The Life of an Amorous Woman. Ukiyo culture also…