The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings (UNESCO Collection of Representative Literary Works)

by Saikaku Ihara and Ihara Saikaku

Book Overview

One of the great fiction writers of Japan, Ihara Saikaku (1623-93) wrote of the lowest class in the Tokugawa world--the townsmen who were rising in wealth and power but not in official status. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811201872
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: New Directions
• Length: 403 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.1" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Be aware...

This is not a complete translation of The Life of an Amorous Woman. Instead, it is actually a selected anthology that excerpts from four of Saikaku's work. In the preface, Ivan Morris (translator and editor) says: "The translator's aim has been to give as wide a view of Saikaku's prose as is practical within the confines of a single volume." This book pulls from the writer's erotic works and townsman works. It does not contain any of his samurai or provincial stories or poetry. While for me it was fine that it was an anthology, it would be frustrating to buy this book if you thought that you were going to get the entirety of The Life of an Amorous Woman. Aside from the title work, the works excerpted include: Five Women Who Chose Love, The Eternal Storehouse of Japan, and Reckonings that Carry Men Through the World. The book is bound with three detailed appendices: Sources, Money in Saikaku's Time and the Hierarchy of Courtesans. Although I was not aware that this was an anthology when I bought it, I still enjoyed reading it. I had been refered to Saikaku as a counterpoint after having read The Pornographers by Nozaka. As the credited inventor of the "floating world" genre, much of Japanese literature with an adult theme owes a debt to Saikaku. The notes were richly detailed. I probably would have preferred to either have them at the end of the section or under the page rather than at the end of the book. But that is a general complaint of mine-- I always like to know the detail, and do not enjoy flipping back and forth to the back of the book. The illustrations that were reproduced are well-chosen, and add quite a bit to the understanding of the text. Recommended, if you have an interest in the subject area.

A collection of collections

Saikaku was a popular writer of the seventeenth century, and also a populist writer. These aren't high tales of courtly romance, but more realistic tellings of more realistic stories, generally with a bawdy side. The first group of stories has been published elsewhere as "Five Women Who Loved Love," not the title used here. Using one story for each, it describes five women overcome by their passion, then overtaken by their fates. These have a moralizing tone - except for the one woman who converted a lover of men, they all end badly. The next clutch of stories trace the life of the title's "Amorous Woman." The setting is a monastic hovel, where the now-old woman lives in retreat. Some young men bring her gifts, and ask for adivce in the ways of the world. She replies, starting with her own earliest stirrings for men at an improbably young age. The ancdotes wander through marriage, courtly life, prostitution, and work as a seamstress, teacher, and scribe. The general tone is amusing as she enters each new passion or strategem but ambiguous as a whole, tinged but not drenched with regret. Finally, "The Eternal Storehouse" and "Reckonings" each present a few short tales. One of those short stories, "Daikoku" is itself an exchange of stories among travelers, a little like Chaucer. The final segment presents unrelated anecdotes, tied together by the common theme of resolving debts when entering the New Year. These are mostly stories of tricks used to avoid paying, or the trickier business getting payment anyway. Some, Dickens-like, just relate moments of the sadness of poverty. Between the preface and the appendices, explanatory material weighs in around 175 of the 400 pages or so. It would have been a bit easier to chase the 800+ footnotes if they had been presented page by page instead of segregated in the back. Still I prefer the author's decision to let the text appear uninterrupted, except for a few enjoyable block prints of line drawings. The notes are not just filler, by the way. They really do help to fill in the cultural background that makes the stories make sense. This is a very readable, very enjoyable set. The times, people, and moods all vary from story to story, but the collection as a whole gives interesting insight into Saikaku's times. //wiredweird

Off to the Pleasure Quarters

This was the first book by Ihara Saikaku that I have read, but I will be reading m any more in the future.The book begins with a very detailed introduction by the translator Ivan Morris, author of the world of the shining prince. Dr. Morris gives the reader a quick and easy to read background of the period of time in which Saikaku lived and wrote. He follows this with a brief history of Saikaku himself, sadly very little is known about the writer. next comes a small portion about the style of Saikaku's writing and his impact on Japan's literature.The writings themselves are broken up into four sections beginning with Five Women who Chose Love. Three of the stories are reported in this book,and mainly deal with illicit affairs. The next is the title work which is basically the story of a nymphomaniac. The next two sections deal with the merchant class, and their ways of life.A very nice book that gives good detail of the lives of the merchant class of Edo.

A poetic portrait of Japan that many don't know exists.

I stumbled on to Saikaku's writings while looking for another novel by another author for my book club. After briefly reading some of the summaries and glimpsing thru the stories I knew I would be intrigued. Let me describe who I, as the reader, am. I am a 30 year old, black female born in Los Angeles, CA. Some people would ask why or how I could have ever found Saikaku's writings to begin with, but I am a person who appreciates the universals that exist between human beings. And as I get older, I still believe in fairytales and I am fascinated by fairytales with adult themes.The Life of An Amorous Woman and other writings, provides us a snapshot of human nature, and what's even better, it provides some of the timeliest as well as most humorous observations of human nature we as readers are going to find. And unlike Shakespeare, there are no hidden euphemisms here: Many of the encounters, be they erotic, sexual,heterosexual, homosexual, or auto-sexual are direct and free of any "family values" or "hide this one from the church" type of encryption.The characters' identities are not as deeply sculptured to the demands or standards of the modern novel--like Holden Caufield is in Catcher in the Rye, but they aren't caricatures of the modern novel either. Saikaku's characters, from story to story might seem familiar, but their paths are different, and I felt like Alice in Wonderland on a lazy day on a dreamy riverbank, listening to friend or a fascinating stranger tell me fables about many people's lives. Maybe they existed but even if they did not some sense of them exists inside of me. And I learned, and I compared our situations.The Cons?: Saikaku's writing does rely heavily on a symetry of style carried from one story to the next, and sometimes you might wonder how one segment of the story relates to the next. Sometimes, it might not.Be that as it may Saikaku still fills his short stories and his longer work, The Life of An Amorous Woman, with some great details, and definitely unexpected twists of plot (because it's human nature--not the nature of the Formula movie--sorry I'm preaching I know) which I expect from a non-American work. It is actually quite alright to stray to an isolated moment and take it in for what it is.By the way, you won't find the stereotypically submissive Japanese women that stupid men at stupid bars talk about. But they aren't the iconoclastic type of Japanese female Ling portrays on Ally McBeal either. These are simply women who are existing, surviving, falling in and out of love, or just falling. The men treat women with respect and the fact that a man created this story really does impress me about his insightfulness and love for human beings. One is especially fortunate to have this particular edition, translated by Ivan Morris. There is a line by line glossary of notes at the end of the book, explaining many of the details that we may not understand from styles o