Five Japanese Love Stories

These five stories, first circulated in 1686 as Koshoku Gonin Onna, follow women in seventeenth-century Japanese towns whose love affairs break the rules of marriage, money, and rank. A shopkeeper's wife, a cooper's beloved, an almanac-maker's household, a greengrocer's daughter, and a monk's late passion each move from desire to scandal, flight, or death. Merchants, servants, and officials fill the streets and shops. The tone is worldly rather than courtly: Saikaku treats appetite, gossip, and the cash economy as the engines of the plots. The volume is a set of linked urban novellas, not a single romance.

De Bary. Eight full-page wood. Full pale green artificial silk. Grey endleaves with a design in purple by Severin. Dark purple-red slipcase.