Five Women Who Loved Love

by Saikaku, Ihara

• ISBN13: 9780804801843
• ISBN10: 0804801843
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1989-12-15
• Publisher: Tuttle Pub

Summary

First published in 1686, Five Women Who Loved Love was an immediate bestseller in the bawdy, life-loving world that was Genroku Japan. And the novel's popularity has, if anything, increased with the years, making it today a classic like Boccaccio's Decameron or the writings of Rabelais. The book follows five determined women in their always amorous and usually illicit adventures. But the book is more than a collection of skillfully told erotic tales, for, as the translator points out in the introduction, "Saikaku&is both a discriminating and compassionate judge of his fellow men."

Author Biography

Saikaku Ihara (1641-93), novelist and poet, is credited with founding the genre called ukiyo-zoshi (books of the floating world), a type of popular fiction written between the 1680s and the 1770s. Once downgraded as vulgar, today Saikaku is acclaimed a great realist, largely because of his minute and accurate delineation of characters, customs, and events of his day.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 9
Introduction	p. 13
the Story of Seijuro in Himeji	p. 39
the Barrelmaker Brimful of Love	p. 73
What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker	p. 115
the Greengrocer's Daughter with a Bundle of Love	p. 157
Gengobei, the Mountain of Love	p. 195
Saikaku's "Five Women"	p. 231
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