was the pen name of , a Japanese novelist of the

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 characteriz ...

. In Japan, he is best known for the romantic novel (1832–1833), the representative text in the

ninjōbon The is a pre-modern Japanese literary genre. Founded and developed in the early nineteenth century, this style of books derived from the early sharebon and kokkeibon genres and is a subgenre of gesaku. ''Ninjōbon'' was one of many genres in the ...

genre. He followed up to this with sequels and his son, who called himself Shunsui Tamenaga Junior, continued the series. In Japan, he is considered a major writer of the Edo period, remembered for disobeying the

Tenpō Reforms The were an array of economic policies introduced between 1841 and 1843 by the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan. These reforms were efforts to resolve perceived problems in military, economic, agricultural, financial and religious systems. The changes ...

. He also wrote a version of the

Chūshingura is the title given to fictionalized accounts in Japanese literature, theater, and film that relate to the historical incident involving the forty-seven ''rōnin'' and their mission to avenge the death of their master, Asano Naganori. Including the ...

called "Iroha Bunko". In Western literature, he is probably better known for his humorous story ''Longevity'', which was translated by

Yei Theodora Ozaki O'Yei or ''Theodora'' was an early 20th-century translator of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. Her translations were fairly liberal but have been popular, and were reprinted several times after her death. Biography Ozaki was born in Lon ...

for her book ''Japanese Fairy Tales'' in 1903, and since then has been reprinted in some children's Asian fairy tale collections.

Sources

The 47 Rônin are Introduced to the World
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tamenaga, Shunsui 1790 births 1844 deaths Japanese writers of the Edo period