Ihara Saikaku

feet about “seven inches long,” and that she should “not have a single mole on her body” (609-610). Saikaku, of course, satirizes this list composed of ridiculous demands to illicit laughter from the audience; this helps him both reveal and mock the expectations that the Ukiyo lifestyle inherently demands of only women in society. Furthermore, he exposes that Ukiyo has conditioned individuals to accept these gender biases by allowing expectations about women and their behaviour become the norm. A prime example of this is of the episode concerning the domain lord’s wife and his mistress; the wife accepts that she is powerless to do anything but lament on the fact that her husband is away engaging in sexual activities with his mistress, while the mistress is expected to fit the husband’s bill of…

While both Ihara Saikaku’s Life of a Sensuous Woman and Feng Menglong’s Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger both feature female protagonist as courtesans throughout the stories, the portrayal of these women and the societal structures surrounding them differ. You can draw a connection between both storylines that they both emphasize the idea of the objectification of women, love, power, wealth and had significant effects on men. But how they objectify these each throughout vastly differ. In…

Love was written by novelist and poet Saikaku Ihara. It is a combination of five novels and was first published in 1686. These different novels have been around for 330 years now and has since been a very popular book as age increased. Ihara was able to really understand the modern world. He was a writer during the Genroku period, which was the Edo era and known as the golden age. Saikaku born in 1642 and is a son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka. He had a wife and three kids, one of which…

Reading the “Sensuous Woman” by Ihara Saikaku reminds me of the times when the elderly members of my family would come over to my grandparents’ house and reminisce about the stories of their youth. I never cared about the actual details of the story, instead I loved listening to the lesson that each story taught. By reading her life stories, I would definitely consider asking for her advice. Even though her stories may not be morally accepted by many people, they still tell a story that many…

money and not spend it on materials they wanted, but instead spending it on materials they needed. “Their mother opened a savings account for each child and into each put the first five dollars. The children felt proud to see their names in the passbooks, and wanted to know when they could take the money out. But they were told they had to save their money not spend it” (Narrator 436). This is an example of a pro in wanting and needing something. Instead of the children buying materials they…