This Scheming World. Ihara Saikaku
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This Scheming World
Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), bom Hirayama Togo in Osaka, was originally a successful merchant, but the tragedy of losing his wife and blind daughter moved him to forgo business and to travel and write. He began his literary career as a haiku poet, astonishing contemporaries with his skill at composing thousands of stanzas in a single sitting. Later he turned to writing ukiyozoshi, a popular prose form in which he enchanted readers with racy accounts of the amorous and financial affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. In addition to This Scheming World, his masterpieces include The Life of an Amorous Man, Five Women ‘Who Loved Love, and The Life of an Amorous Woman.
Masanori Takatsuka, a graduate of Hiroshima Koshi, and David C. Stubbs, a graduate of Florida State University, were both faculty members of Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan at the time they translated This Scheming World.
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions, with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759
Copyright© 1965 by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Co., Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First Tuttle edition, published 1965
ISBN 978-1-4629-0260-6
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Portrait of Saikaku Ihara by Kazumasa Haga
FOREWORD
THE LATTER half of the 17th century is a significant age in the history of Japanese literature, for it was in this age that the townspeople, who could boast of neither rank nor birth, came to hold the hegemony of literary