The exhibition employed around 100 Japanese men and women in a setting built to resemble a traditional Japanese village. The exhibition was a commercial venture organised by Tannaker Buhicrosan, who had been organising travelling Japanese exhibitions in Britain for several years beforehand. As a result of the opening up of Japan to trade with Britain in the 1850s, an English craze for all things Japanese had built through the 1860s and 1870s, fed by the British perception of Japan as a mediaeval culture. This resonated particularly with devotees of the Aesthetic movement of the late nineteenth century and made the exhibition very popular, with over 250,000 visitors during its early months.