Takebe Ayatari (1719-1774), the subject of this detailed and scholarly monograph, enjoyed an unusually varied life. Detected at 20 in a love affair with his brother's wife, he ran away from both home and the respectable career for which his bushi-bourgeois background might have prepared him.
He moved to Kyoto, set himself up as a haiku master, and devoted himself to printing and publishing his and his disciples' works.
From there he traveled to Nagasaki where he took up the literati style of painting. Still later, now back in Edo, he began writing novels in the popular yomihon style.