Example+page+for+Tokugawa+project

//Here is an example of the kind of page I am looking for. This is only a begininning. Yours needs to be longer.// =**The Development of Leisure in Tokugawa Japan**=

The Tokugawa or Edo period in Japanese history was a time of enormous social, economic and cultural change. As towns and cities grew due to changes in the political system, a new economy developed. this new economy led to the rise of merchant and townspeople. Their rise also led to changes in culture, with the development of a new culture aimed at their tastes. During the Tokugawa period, leisure activities and arts developed to cater to the tastes of merchants and townspeople. These new leisure activites included sumo wrestling, kabuki and the world of geishas.

**SUMO**

Sumo wrestling, while an ancient martial art, developed into an organized profressional sport during the Tokugawa period. As the above print by Utagawa Kuniteru from 1863 illustrates, sumo was a very popular sport with different social classes. Inexpensive prints depicting famous and popular wrestlers were purchased by townspeople, collected in thew way that baseball cards were collected by young men in the United States during the Twentieth century.

**KABUKI** Kabuki was a new performance art form that developed duiring the Tokugawa period. It incorporated exciting and sometimes salacious plots with outrageous costumes. The new art form appealed to the tastes of townspeople and merchants, unlike earlier forms of Japanese drama like Noh and Bugaku. Kabuki was wildly popular during the period. Woodblock prints like the above by Toshusai [|Sharaku]showing famous kabuki actor Otani Oniji II were collected by ordinary people in much the same way that teenagers collect posters of [|Justin Bieber] today.