This unique anthology is the first representative collection of Japanese literature from one of the most creative periods in Japanese culture, known variously as the Edo or the Tokugawa. It includes a wide range of fiction, poetry, and drama, and also essays, literary criticism, folk stories, and other noncanonical works with a number of new translations. Focuses on the early modern period in Japanese literature. This anthology introduces English readers to prose fiction genres, including dangibon (satiric sermons), kibyoshi (satiric and didactic picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion), yomihon (reading books), kokkeibon (books of humor), and gokan (bound books).
| notes: | Contents: Preface, Historical Periods, Measurements, and Other Matters, 1. Early Modern Japan, 2. Ihara Saikaku and the Books of the Floating World, 3. The Poetry and Prose of Matsuo Basho, 4. Chikamatsu Monsaemon and the Puppet Theater, 5. The Golden Age of Puppet Theater, 6. Dangibon and the Birth of Edo Popular Literature, 7. Comic and Satiric Poetry, 8. Literati Meditations, 9. Early Yomihon: History, Romance, and the Supernatural, 10. Sharebon: Books of Wit and Fashion, 11. Kibyoshi: Satiric and Didactic Picture Books, 12. Kokkeibon: Comic Fiction for Commoners, 13. Ninjobon: Sentimental Fiction, 14. Gokan: Extended Picture Books, 15. Ghosts and Nineteenth-Century Kabuki, 16. Late Yomihon: History and the Supernatural Revisited. |
| genre: | Fiction |
| ISBN: | 9780231144148 9780231144155 9780231516143 |
| OCLC number: | 316062920 |
| publisher: | Columbia University Press |
| publication place: | New York, Chichester |
| english publication date: | 2008 |
| document type: | Book |
| description: | xvi, 550 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. |
| related: | Translations from the Asian classics. |