The Great Mirror of Male Love - Softcover

Saikaku, Ihara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804718954 ISBN 13: 9780804718950

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1991

Synopsis

The first complete translation of Nanshoku okagami by Ihara Saikaku (1642-93), this is a collection of 40 stories describing homosexual love affairs between samurai men and boys and between young kabuki actors and their middle-class patrons. Seventeenth-century Kyoto was the center of a flourishing publishing industry, and for the first time in Japan's history it became possible for writers to live exclusively on their earnings. Saikaku was the first to actually do so. As a popular writer, Saikaku wanted to entertain his readership. When he undertook the writing of Nanshoku okagami in 1687, it was with the express purpose of extending his readership and satisfying his ambition to be published in the three major cities of his day, Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo. He chose the topic of male homosexual love because it had the broadest appeal both to the samurai men of Edo and to the townsmen of Kyoto and Osaka, his regular audience. Homosexual relations between a man and a boy were a regular feature of premodern Japanese culture and carried no stigma. When a boy reached the age of nineteen, he underwent a coming-of-age ceremony, after which he took the adult role in relations with boys.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“A welcome opportunity for wider comparison of the literary traditions and sexual conventions of Japanese and Euro-American cultures.”—Journal of Japanese Studies

Language Notes:

Text: English, Japanese (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0804718954
• ISBN 13: 9780804718950
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384