Edo in Focus: Japanese Treasures from the British Museum

Somewhere on the fourth floor, Kawanabe Kyōsai has painted a cat riding a melon while a team of mice pulls it along. It is one of the lighter moments in a show of Edo-period paintings and prints lent by the British Museum, which holds about 40,000 Japanese works.

You get the prints you came for, by eight ukiyo-e artists including Hokusai, Sharaku, Utamaro and Hiroshige. The museum puts the weight on the screens, hanging scrolls and picture scrolls shown in Japan for the first time. One section reunites Kano-school sliding-door panels of flowers and birds, split between a family in Aomori, London and the Seattle Art Museum, for the first time in about 150 years. Yoshimura Shūzan's folding screen of Osaka is here too: an 18th-century view of the city that had to fly in from London to be seen in it.

Tickets are ¥2,300, or ¥2,100 in advance from online and convenience-store sellers (not at the museum). Fridays run to 20:00, and the audio guide is ¥700.