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The oldest surviving painting of scenes of daily life in Kyoto (rakuchu rakugai zu, or "paintings of inside and outside the capital"), known as the Machida screens (now in the National Museum of Japanese History, Chiba), is executed by an unknown professional artist. This colorful, richly detailed panorama of a variety of people, sites, and activities mounted on a pair of six-fold screens marks the beginning of an interest in genre painting in the Muromachi period. Although genre images had been painted in the Heian period, typically as illustrations of narratives, rakuchu rakugai zu take the life of the entire city—commoners as well as the elite in their daily comings and goings—as their primary subject, and dispense with a storyline. As interest grows in depicting pleasurable indoor pursuits and artists' focus on their subjects narrows, the painting style known as ukiyo-e emerges.
