In the Tokugawa period, artists of what were then considered high cultures, such as Kano school painters and noh performers, were employed by the shogunate or other feudal domains as goyo-eshi or goyo-yakusha. They were provided with land to live, and paid annually in rice.

However, those posts were mostly hereditary, and ukiyo-e painters and kabuki playwrighters were not among them. They had to make their living by publishing posters and books on the orders of private publishers.

In the Heian period, court painters belonged to the Takumi-ryo of the Nakatsukasa-sho, and in the later eras, to the E-dokoro of the Kurodo-dokoro.

The two authors of the Heian literary classics, Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon, were both daughters of court officials, and worked in the Kyokyu, Empresses' private section in the court. They wrote poems officially in events like uta-awase, but thier diaries and novels were written as hobbies.