Unit 2
Today, we’re looking at two pieces from one of 17th-century Japan’s most famous authors: a figure named Ihara Saikaku, from the city of Osaka. Osaka, during the Edo period (and today), was one of the most populous cities in Japan and a major producer and consumer of popular culture. Osaka is very closely associated with the mercantile class we discussed in our last unit, and one hallmark of literature of the Edo period is an intense interest in the lives of this mercantile class. Saikaku is an excellent example of this: he was born into a wealthy merchant family in Osaka, received a good education, and started his career as a merchant. He gave up his family business as a young man, however, and embarked on a career as a writer: not of fiction, originally, but of a poetic form called haiku that we’ll discuss next session.
