Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world," is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, the theatre and pleasure quarters. It is the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan. Ukiyo-e prints were mainly meant for townspeople, who were generally not wealthy enough to afford an original painting. The original subject of ukiyo-e was city life, in particular activities and scenes from the entertainment district. Beautiful courtesans, bulky sumo wrestlers and popular actors would be portrayed while engaged in appealing activities. Later on, landscapes also became popular. Ukiyo-e can be categorized into two periods: the Edo period, which comprises ukiyo-e from its origins in the 1620s until about 1867, when the Meiji period began, lasting until 1912. The Edo period was largely a period of calm that provided an ideal environment for the development of the art in a commercial form; while the Meiji period is characterized by new influences as Japan opened up to the West. Kuchi-e refers to the woodblock prints inserted into the fronts of popular literary magazines and novels from 1890-1912. As these publications were typically tall and thin, Kuchi-e woodblocks were designed as fold-outs and were usually folded twice to fit within the closed book, much like one might insert a letter into an envelope. The Japanese word "kuchi-e" literally means "mouth-picture" and translates into English as frontispiece. Kuchi-e woodblocks were not hastily produced and usually displayed remarkably refined printing techniques. It is said their production accounted for nearly half the cost of a book. Their imagery, grounded in the woodblock tradition of bijinga (pictures of beautiful women), perpetuated the traditional Japanese view of feminine beauty. However, Kuchi-e artists were primarily painters, not woodblock artists. Consequently, their depictions of women cut across all stylistic boundaries. The vast majority of all Kuchi-e deal with the plight and ordeals of Japanese women, since many of these images accompanied romantic novels. It is these modern women, shown at daily tasks, at festivals, in seasonal settings or simply lost in thought, who make Kuchi-e memorable and embody the cultural ideals of the period.