Five Women Who Loved Love: Amorous Tales from 17th-century Japan [Paperback]

Ihara Saikaku (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 1989

First published in 1686, this collection of five novellas was an immediate bestseller in the bawdy world that was Genroku Japan, and the book's popularity has increased with age, making it today a literary classic like Boccaccio's Decameron, or the works of Rabelais.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Story collection written by Ihara Saikaku, published in Japanese in 1686 as Koshoku gonin onna, and considered a masterwork of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867). Five Women Who Loved Love 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 Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing (December 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804801843
• ISBN-13: 978-0804801843
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life is short. Love is long, February 25, 2008

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Five Women Who Loved Love: Amorous Tales from 17th-century Japan (Paperback)

Ihara Saikaku understood his modern world. A writer of the Genroku Period, considered the golden age of the Edo era, he lived in the perfect flicker of a moment when peace was reigning, arts and leisure were refined, and the flower of the modern era was slowly starting to unfold into what would be the strife that would follow. Ihara knew that the time of the martial masters, the samurai and the daimyo, were over, and the merchant and the golden coin were the true rulers of Japan. Instead of the aristocracy, with their strict Confucian codes of honor and filial piety, he wrote of the townspeople, the rascals and pleasure seekers, the ones who did most of the real living and dying in Japan.

Like in his The Life of an Amorous Man and This Scheming World (Tuttle Classics of Japanese Literature), "Five Women who Loved Love" is about these average folks, specifically of the lives of five woman who were so bold as to seek love and pleasure, in spite of social attitudes about such things. They are not always admirable women, and their loves are not always beautiful. These are not role models for romanticists, and some of them are little more than aggressive pleasure seekers.

But their stories and real. Saikaku often based these stories off of real accounts, writing up semi-fictional versions of them, in order to flesh out the tale and make sure that a nice little moral lesson was included. This was important, as in order to get by the Shoganate censors it was necessary that all the characters were punished for their breaking the rules of society. But these little moral come-uppances are often just tagged on at the end, and one gets the feeling that Saikaku doesn't really feel that the punishment is fitting the crime. The only crime, in fact, is that these woman wanted love, by whatever definition they applied it.

This Tuttle Press version is also nice in that it contains the original illustrations that were included with Saikaku's version from 1686. There is also a good essay in the back, by Richard Lane, where the original stories of Saikaku's Five Women are told, and the real facts are sifted from the fiction. It provides a nice background to the book, and was very enjoyable.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely, April 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Five Women Who Loved Love: Amorous Tales from 17th-century Japan (Paperback)

These stories are beautifully written, with lively characters, witty plots, and a good mix of humor and tragedy. Moreover, the translation is masterful. This book is an under-recognized gem.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Price of Love, November 26, 2002

By 

Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Five Women Who Loved Love: Amorous Tales from 17th-century Japan (Paperback)

Ihara Saikaku was a a very gifted writer during Japan's Genroku Period. After a very successful career as a haikai poet, Saikaku decided to start writing prose. His first book was _The Life of an Amorous Man_ A few years later he wrote this book, which is really in fact 5 independent stories. They all have one unifying feature and that feature is love, Saikaku is also revolutionary with these stories because they are the first in Japanese literature in which females take the lead role and are agressive. Thi book is not _The Tale of Genji_ in which the man makes his move on docile women, but a book in which the women take the motive. The stories deal with young love, infidelity, and the consequences of these loves. Saikaku, the master story teller that he is shows us these characters in a humorous light, and although a few of the characters come to a bad end, the reader is not depressed over their demise, but in fact is happy to have gotten to know the characters even if just for a little while.