• William Theodore de Bary (Translator)

• Tuttle Publishing, 1989 (first thus edition 1956)

• 272 pages

• Paperback

• Used

First published in 1686, the book is composed of five separate tales, each divided into five individually titled chapters. They consist of vignettes that reveal the sensual and—of equal interest—financial activities of members of the leisure class, demimonde, and merchant class.. The five heroines are Onatsu, already wise in the ways of love the tender age of sixteen; Osen, a faithful wife until unjustly accused of adultery; Osan, a Kyoto beauty who falls asleep in the wrong bed; Oshichi, willing to burn down a city to meet her samurai lover; and Oman, who has to compete with handsome boys to win her lover's affections.

But the book is more than a collection of skillfully told erotic tales, for "Saikaku…could not delve into the inmost secrets of human life only to expose them to ridicule or snickering prurience. Obviously fascinated by the variety and complexity of human love, but retaining always a sense of its intrinsic dignity he is both a discriminating and compassionate judge of his fellow man."

Saikaku's style, as allusive as it is witty, as abbreviated as it is penetrating, is a challenge that few translators have dared to face, and certainly never before with the success here achieved in a translation that recaptures the authenticity of the original.