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A Kamigata Anthology -- Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface to the Three-Volume Anthology -- Preface to the Volume -- Introduction: Negotiating a New Literature -- Notes for the Reader -- Chronology -- I. Characters and Manners, High and Low -- The Poetic Competition of the Twelve Zodiac Animals -- Twenty Local Paragons of Filial Impiety -- Characters of Worldly Shop Clerks -- II. Exploring Japan: Traveling the Freeways on Foot -- Fact, Fantasy, and Foibles on the Roads and in the Cities -- Denizens of Kyoto -- Famous Places along the Tōkaidō -- Glittering Highlights of Edo: Traces of Famous Places New and Old -- A Journey to Ise: Some Sibling Scribbles -- III. The Monstrous and the Weird -- One Hundred Tales from the Various Provinces -- The Bearded Lady of the Haunted House -- IV. Staging the Supernatural: Heroism in Kamigata and Edo Theatre -- A Courtesan's Soul within Incense Smoke -- Kagekiyo -- V. Landscapes and Seasons -- Saikaku's Hundred Linked Verses, Annotated by Himself -- Starving Poets, Courtesans, and Sandal Makers: Three Sequences from Bashō and His Disciples -- The Peddler of Poems -- Beneath the Trees -- Throughout the Town -- VI. Nature and Sentiments -- Two-Needle Pine -- The Jeweled Water Grass Anthology -- VII. Love and Eros -- The Tale of Zeraku -- Puppets of Passion: Early Edo Songs -- Lovebirds' First Journey -- Evening Mist over Mount Asama -- To Toribe Mountain -- A Puppet Master of the Floating World -- VIII. Passions among Men -- Mongrel Essays in Idleness -- Male Colors Pickled with Pepperleaf Shoots -- How a Pledge of Undying Love Was Reborn -- The Back Side of Nō Chant -- Bad Boy Morihisa, from Virtuoso Vocal Pieces: Beating Rhythm with a Fan -- The Male Players' "Takasago," from Virtuoso Vocal Pieces: A Stacked Pair of Sake Cups -- IX. Gossip, Reportage, and Advertising -- Newfangled Spiels -- Stirrups of Musashi: An Account of the Meireki Fire of 1657 -- A Garden of Words from the Boudoir -- Rounding Out the Snowman -- X. Laughing at Everyday Life -- A Sackful of Wisecracks -- Today's Tales of Yesterday -- Today's Book of Jokes -- This Year's Jokes -- Hand-Rolled for Laughter -- Stories Told by Buzaemon -- Jokes Told by Tsuyu -- Jokes Worthy of Your Ear -- Jokes Left by Rokyū -- Jokes to Bloom in Summer Heat, early eighteenth century -- Jokes for Side Stitches -- Jokes from the God of Fortune -- XI. Philosophizing the Ordinary -- A Collection of Fallen Grains-Addendum -- The Country Zhuangzi -- A Book of Everyday Morals -- Source Texts and Modern Editions -- Contributors -- Permissions -- Index This is the first of a three-volume anthology of Edo- and Meiji-era urban literature that includes An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan's Mega-City, 1750-1850 and A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan's Modern Metropolis, 1850-1920. The present work focuses on the years in which bourgeois culture first emerged in Japan, telling the story of the rising commoner arts of Kamigata, or the "Upper Regions" of Kyoto and Osaka, which harkened back to the Japan's middle ages even as they rebelled against and competed with that earlier era. Both cities prided themselves on being models and trendsetters in all cultural matters, whether arts, crafts, books, or food. The volume also shows how elements of popular arts that germinated during this period ripened into the full-blown consumer culture of late-Edo. The tendency to imagine Japan's modernity as a creation of Western influence since the mid-nineteenth century is still strong, particularly outside Japan studies. A Kamigata Anthology challenges such assumptions by illustrating the flourishing phenomenon of Japan's movement into its own modernity through a selection of the best examples from the period, including popular genres such as haikai poetry, handmade picture scrolls, travel guidebooks, kabuki and joruri plays, prose narratives of contemporary life, and jokes told by professional entertainers. Well illustrated with prints from popular books of the time and artwork containing poems and commentaries, the volume emphasizes texts currently unavailable in English and translated into entertaining, vibrant prose
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