Asai Ryōi, writing in the 1660s, left what may be the most useful description of ukiyo:

"Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; caring not a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current."

He wrote this during a period of severe flooding in Kyoto. The "pauperism staring us in the face" was not a figure of speech.

This is what gets lost when ukiyo gets explained as a straightforward celebration of impermanence. It was more complicated than that. The people who filled the Edo theaters and the teahouses were not ignoring their circumstances. They were answering them. The floating world floated because the ground kept shifting.

The woodblock prints that came out of this period — Hokusai's wave, Hiroshige's rain — are beautiful because they're honest. The wave is about to destroy the boats. The travelers are cold. The world is gorgeous and precarious and passing. The prints don't resolve that. They just show it clearly.

Ukiyo was not escapism. It was a way of seeing the present so fully that neither the suffering nor the beauty could be denied. Both were there. The question was whether you were.