Kamigata (上方) was the colloquial term for a region today called Kansai (kan, barrier; sai, west) in Japan.
It is not uncommon even today, particularly in Tokyo (Edo), for Kabuki performances to include completely disparate stories and characters inserted, at detriment to the plot's continuity, for the purpose of showing off an actor's dancing, mie posing, chanting, costumes or stage tricks.
The ukiyo-e art of the Kamigata area, for a long time consisted primarily of woodblock printed illustrated books (such as Amayo no Sanbai Kigen) and paintings.
Single-sheet prints depicting kabuki actors, landscapes, or beautiful women (bijinga), popular in Edo beginning around 1700 did not become common in Kamigata until roughly one hundred years later.
Though the very idea of selling single-sheet prints of actors was inspired by the medium's success in Edo, the tastes of the artists, their customers, and the kabuki being represented were decidedly different.
Gion Seitoku and Mihata Jōryū were two of the most prominent Kamigata ukiyo-e painters, influenced largely by the Shijō school of painting, based in Kyoto.
These prints, often handpainted, with inscribed calligraphy, and/or gold, silver, or mica used to enhance the image, were commissioned largely by literati and the like, and were closely related to the Kamigata development of poetry circles.
The pleasure quarters quickly came to be centers of popular culture in general, and the refined world of the courtesans began to attract literati types, along with artists and writers.
This can be demonstrated in the way the pleasure districts in Edo and Kamigata figured prominently in plays that became popular particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries such as Brilliance and Bravado, Message of Love, Five Great Powers, Ise Dances and Taihei Chronicles.
For instance, Kamigata's yukaku had a more creative atmosphere than the pleasure districts that thrived in Edo because this city was more heavily regulated on account of its status as a political center dominated by warriors and their families.