Saikaku Steers a Course: Negotiating Celebrity Status as an Author in Edo-period Osaka, 1684–86

Abstract: Ihara Saikaku first achieved celebrity in his native city of Osaka as a prolific, if not always consistent, composer and critic of haikai no renga (linked-verse poetry). Later, his ukiyo-zōshi prose narratives set in the "floating world" of Japan's licensed pleasure quarters and chōninmono accounts of everyday urban life were bestsellers that lifted him to stardom. His collaboration with the most famous ukiyo-e artists of his day, Hishikawa Moronobu and Yoshida Hanbei, cemented his position as one of the most important authors of the Genroku era, one of the most prolific periods in Japanese literary history. Yet Saikaku's path to fame was by no means assured, and the course of his early career was shaped by his reactions to censorship, piracy, and market demands. This essay describes pivotal episodes that determined the course of his work during the crucial years of 1684–86, including his famous linked-verse marathon performance in front of Osaka's Sumiyoshi shrine, the pirated Edo edition of his The Life of an Amorous Man , and his ongoing responses to the Tokugawa shoguns' censorship as reflected in his books Five Women Who Loved Love and Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan .