A tragic narrative for women persists even as times change
A Heian Period text reads, "Ladies must often depend on men who are nothing to them — it is the way of the world." In Japanese literature, not much has changed.
Loyalty before love in the tales of Saikaku’s samurai
A group of travelers comes to a river and must decide whether or not to cross. Scornful of danger, the young lord among them proceeds … and samurai politics soon come into play.
Saikaku pens five tales to inspire lovers in the Edo Period
Born in the mid-17th century, during the earlier days of the Edo Period, novelist Ihara Saikaku explored love in "Five Women Who Loved Love."
The first chapter in a long tale of Japanese romance
From the coupling of gods to form Japan to a female samurai dying on the battlefield, stories of love have always been intertwined with history.
Japan's modern crime literature: Centuries in the making
Japan boasts an impressively large and growing body of native-grown mystery fiction that dates back to the 1920s.
The evolution of the Japanese ego: the discovery of themselves
'There was no room for mercy in view of their crime." None asked, none given. "They met their end ... with ... a touching acquiescence in their fate." The world we are entering is that of Osaka novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642-93). It was, first of ...
The shifting sexual norms in Japan's literary history
More than 3,000 women and almost 900 men — that's the number of lovers the main protagonist in Ihara Saikaku's 1682 novel "Koshoku Ichidai Otoko" ("The Life of an Amorous Man") tallies up as he reminisces. Saikaku, born in Osaka in 1642, became a ...
The merry residents of Japan have long sought to attain the 'pleasantest of all diversions
