A Genealogy of Saikaku’s ukiyo-zōshi

Abstract

In an article published in 2014 in Bungaku 文学,1 Nakano Mitsutoshi 中野三敏 repeated his previous call for an extension of the term gesaku 戯作, or “comical writings”—used to describe most vernacular prose from the middle of the 18th century onward—to those prose works of Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴 (1642–1693) known collectively as ukiyo-zōshi 浮世草子, and even to the literary works of the early 17th century known as kana-zōshi 仮名草子. This article, presented the same year at the spring session of the Saikaku kenkyū kai 西鶴研究会 (Society for Saikaku Studies), was the starting point of a heated debate, something which is seldom seen lately in the field of Edo-period literary studies. Nakano Mitsutoshi’s view was rejected by his colleagues in Saikaku studies, and the debate ended once again inconclusively.2 Still, this episode is notable because it underlined the need to retell and reinvent the history of Edo-period prose literature, and to replace the existing narrative based on traditional categories such as kana-zōshi, ukiyo-zōshi, yomihon 読本, and gesaku. These are probably still indispensable, but are also too vague and lack precise definitions, being in addition too local, something that makes it difficult to relate Edo-period literature to the global movement of world literature in modern times.3 Nakano Mitsutoshi is certainly right when he underlines the continuity between Saikaku—or even Saikaku’s predecessors— and later prose writers (gesakusha 戯作者) such as Hiraga Gennai 平賀源内 A Genealogy of Saikaku’s ukiyo-zōshi