The Relationship Between Comic And Tragic Aspects Of The Calendar Maker's Wife

Introduction

This comprehensive anthology of early modern literature offers an extensiverange of prose fiction, poetry, drama, essays, treatises, and literary criticism.More than two hundred woodblock prints and photographs illustrate the text,giving a sense of how the material looked on the page in the original Japanese,as well as how it appears on stage. While the collection overall is aimed at studentsof Japanese literature, much of the material is of interest to Japanesetheatre specialists, with numerous introductions and translations elucidatingintegral relationships between the world of the theatre and other aspects ofsociety. Certainly the most relevant selections are the eleven kabuki and puppetplays, including both sewamono (contemporary domestic plays) and jidaimono(period plays).

Less known but of benefit to the theatre teacher, practitioner,and student are selected translations of the dangibon (satiric sermons),kibyöshi (satiric and didactic picture books), sharebon (books of wit and fashion),yomihon (reading books), and kokkeibon

Discussion

“Ihara Saikaku and the Books of the Floating World” (ukiyozöshi) is devoted to the writings of this prolific Genroku era author, who was as important to popular fiction as his contemporary Chikamatsu Monzaemon was to popular drama. Saikaku briefly wrote plays for the noted ningyö jöruri (later known as bunraku) chanter Uji Kaganojö in 1685, competing with Chikamatsu, who was writing for Takemoto Gidayü.

The influence of this experience is clear in Saikaku's famous 1686 work, Five Sensuous Women (Koshoku gonin onna), particularly his use of “stage conventions such as the michiyuki (travel scene), the focus on dramatic scene and dialogue, and the use of sekai (established world) and shukö (innovation) in which an established story is given a new twist or interpretation.” (p. 60) In the Great Mirror of Male Love (Nanshoku Ökagami, 1687), Saikaku addresses the practice of male-male love.

Though only one story is included ...