At a time when Hishikawa Moronobu (1618-1694) was the illustrator of choice in Kanbun era Edo (seventeenth-century Tokyo), ukiyo-e artist Yoshida Hanbei (active 1664-1692) was similarly in demand in Kyoto. These two artists were among the first to sign their work and so, among the first to be remembered as the great book illustrators of Japan.
This seven volume guidebook to Kyoto has been attributed to the latter. Princeton also holds a seventeenth-century travel diary Kōshoku tabi nikki illustrated by Hanbei. In his History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration, David Chibbett refers to Dekisai kyō miyage as a sequel to Kyo warabe (Child of Kyoto), an earlier guide to Kyoto by Nakagawa Kiun, published posthumously in 1658.
