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The Life Of An Amorous Woman
is a novel depicting the "floating world" of Edo period Japan, written by and published in 1686. Plot summary A man of the world who lives in the capital city Kyoto travels to , a suburban district of Kyoto, with some friends. They meet an old woman who lives in a grass hut and listen to the story of her life experiences. She was born as the daughter of a family of court nobles, but lost her privileged status and fell through the ranks of both the nobility and the pleasure quarters; first as the mistress of a , then as a courtesan, and then finally as a common streetwalker. At each stage, the woman tried to free herself from the situations she found herself in, but was trapped by her own nature causing her to fail. Adaptation The film ''Life of Oharu is a 1952 Japanese historical fiction film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi from a screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda. It stars Kinuyo Tanaka as Oharu, a one-time concubine of a ''daimyō'' (and mother of a later ''daimyō'') who strugg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ukiyo
is the Japanese term used to describe the urban lifestyle and culture, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of Edo period Japan (1600–1867). culture developed in Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo), the site of many brothels frequented by Japan's growing middle class. A prominent author of the genre was Ihara Saikaku, who wrote ''The Life of an Amorous Woman''. culture also arose in other cities, such as Osaka and Kyoto. The famous Japanese woodblock prints known as , or "pictures of the floating world", had their origins in these districts, and often depicted scenes of the floating world itself such as geisha, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, samurai, merchants, and prostitutes. The term in medieval Japan was associated with Buddhism and meant "this transient, unreliable world". When written as meaning "the floating world", is also an ironic, homophonous allusion to the earlier Buddhist term , referring to the earthly plane of deat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edo Period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, perpetual peace, and popular enjoyment of arts and culture. The period derives its name from Edo (now Tokyo), where on March 24, 1603, the shogunate was officially established by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration and the Boshin War, which restored imperial rule to Japan. Consolidation of the shogunate The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's regional '' daimyo''. A revolution took place from the time of the Kamakura shogunate, which existed with the Tennō's court, to the Tok ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ihara Saikaku
was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later studied under Nishiyama Sōin of the Danrin school of poetry, which emphasized comic linked verse. Scholars have described numerous extraordinary feats of solo haikai composition at one sitting; most famously, over the course of a single day and night in 1677, Saikaku is reported to have composed at least 16,000 haikai stanzas, with some sources placing the number at over 23,500 stanzas. Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class, whose tastes of entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts. Biography Ihara Saikaku was born in 1642 into a well-off merchant family in Osa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kyoto
Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the city had a population of 1.46 million. The city is the cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Kyoto, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 3.8 million people. Kyoto is one of the oldest municipalities in Japan, having been chosen in 794 as the new seat of Japan's imperial court by Emperor Kanmu. The original city, named Heian-kyō, was arranged in accordance with traditional Chinese feng shui following the model of the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an/Luoyang. The emperors of Japan ruled from Kyoto in the following eleven centuries until 1869. It was the scene of several key events of the Muromachi period, Sengoku period, and the Boshin War, such as the Ōnin War, the Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daimyō
were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and nominally to the Emperor of Japan, emperor and the ''kuge''. In the term, means 'large', and stands for , meaning 'private land'. From the ''shugo'' of the Muromachi period through the Sengoku period, Sengoku to the ''daimyo'' of the Edo period, the rank had a long and varied history. The backgrounds of ''daimyo'' also varied considerably; while some ''daimyo'' clans, notably the Mōri clan, Mōri, Shimazu clan, Shimazu and Hosokawa clan, Hosokawa, were cadet branches of the Imperial family or were descended from the ''kuge'', other ''daimyo'' were promoted from the ranks of the samurai, notably during the Edo period. ''Daimyo'' often hired samurai to guard their land, and they paid the samurai in land or food as relatively few could aff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oiran
is a collective term for the highest-ranking courtesans in Japanese history, who were considered to be above common prostitution, prostitutes (known as ) for their more refined entertainment skills and training in the traditional arts. Divided into a number of ranks within this category, the highest rank of were the , who were considered to be set apart from other due to their intensive training in the traditional arts. Though by definition also engaged in prostitution, higher-ranking had a degree of choice in which customers they took; , in contrast, did not engage in sex work at all. The term originated in Yoshiwara, the Yūkaku, red light district of Edo in the 1750s, and is applied to all ranks of high level courtesans in historical Japan. The services of were well known for being exclusive and expensive, with typically only entertaining the upper classes of society, gaining the nickname for their perceived ability to steal the hearts and match the wits of upper-cl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenji Mizoguchi
was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed about one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include ''The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), ''The Life of Oharu'' (1952), ''Ugetsu'' (1953), and '' Sansho the Bailiff'' (1954), with the latter three all being awarded at the Venice International Film Festival. A recurring theme of his films was the oppression of women in historical and contemporary Japan. Together with Akira Kurosawa and Yasujirō Ozu, Mizoguchi is seen as a representative of the "golden age" of Japanese cinema. Biography Early years Mizoguchi was born in Hongō, Tokyo, as the second of three children, to Zentaro Miguchi, a roofing carpenter, and his wife Masa. The family's background was relatively humble until the father's failed business venture of selling raincoats to the Japanese troops during the Russo-Japanese War. The family was forced to move to the downtown district of Asakusa and gave Mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life Of Oharu
is a 1952 Japanese historical fiction film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi from a screenplay by Yoshikata Yoda. It stars Kinuyo Tanaka as Oharu, a one-time concubine of a ''daimyō'' (and mother of a later ''daimyō'') who struggles to escape the stigma of having been forced into prostitution by her father. ''The Life of Oharu'' is based on various stories from Ihara Saikaku's 1686 work ''The Life of an Amorous Woman''. The film was produced by the Shintoho Company and executive produced by Isamu Yoshiji, with cinematography by Yoshimi Hirano. The production designer was Hiroshi Mizutani and Isamu Yoshi was the historical consultant. Plot The story opens on Oharu as an old woman in a temple flashing back through the events of her life. It begins with her love affair with a page, Katsunosuke, the result of which (due to their class difference) is his execution and her family's banishment. Oharu attempts suicide but fails and is sold to be the mistress of Lord Matsudaira with the hop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1686 Novels
Events January–March * January 3 – In Madras (now Chennai) in India, local residents employed by the East India Company threaten to boycott their jobs after corporate administrator William Gyfford imposes a house tax on residences within the city walls. Gyfford places security forces at all entrances to the city and threatens to banish anyone who fails to pay their taxes, as well as to confiscate the goods of merchants who refuse to make sales. A compromise is reached the next day on the amount of the taxes. * January 17 – King Louis XIV of France reports the success of the Edict of Fontainebleau, issued on October 22 against the Protestant Huguenots, and reports that after less than three months, the vast majority of the Huguenot population had left the country. * January 29 – In Guatemala, Spanish Army Captain Melchor Rodríguez Mazariegos leads a campaign to conquer the indigenous Maya people in the rain forests of Lacandona, departing fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edo-period Works
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characterized by economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, a stable population, perpetual peace, and popular enjoyment of arts and culture. The period derives its name from Edo (now Tokyo), where on March 24, 1603, the shogunate was officially established by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The period came to an end with the Meiji Restoration and the Boshin War, which restored imperial rule to Japan. Consolidation of the shogunate The Edo period or Tokugawa period is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's regional '' daimyo''. A revolution took place from the time of the Kamakura shogunate, which existed with the Tennō's court, to the Tok ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Novels About Geisha
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
