Timon Screech was trained at Oxford, Harvard and Gakushuin and is currently Reader in the History of Japanese Art at SOAS, University of London, and Senior Associate at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. He is the author of over half a dozen books in Japanese and English on the culture of the Edo period, including Sex and the Floating World (1999) and The Shogun's Painted Culture (2000).