Ihara Saikaku

Seated statue of Ihara Saikaku at the Ikukunitama shrine

Ihara Saikaku ( Japanese 井 原 西 鶴 ; actually: Hirayama Tōgo ( 平 山 藤 五 ); * 1642 in Ōsaka ; † 1693 ) was a Japanese writer of the Edo period . He is considered the first Japanese social critic who created a new form of prose with haikai elements in books like Nanshoku Ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love, 1687) or Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko (The Life of a Man in Love) .

Life

Saikaku was the son of a merchant. He lost his wife and blind daughter early on.

At 14 he became a student of a group of poets who used the seventeen- syllable haiku . Six years later he received the title of master. Since that time he took his mother's surname, Ihara. From the 1670s he made numerous trips; He later processed the experiences he made with people from all walks of life in literary terms. His first prose work was published in 1682 and quickly became known. Thanks to his hard work, he was able to complete 1–2 books per year that were bestsellers.

His ability to write poetry in true marathon events - supposedly several thousand in a day - earned him the nickname Master of the 20,000 Haikus . Another nickname was Oranda Saikaku , which means something like Holland-Saikaku (Dutch West Crane), but presumably does not indicate relations with the Netherlands - the only foreign state that was allowed to operate a trading post in Japan. just to express the fact that Saikaku was not a conservative old-school Japanese writer. The new, modern direction of haiku, which emerged around 1670, was more popular, funnier and more human-based than the previous ones.

Immediate influences from Saikaku can be found e.g. B. at Ejima Kiseki . Works by the author are still published today and have been compared with Boccaccio and Casanova .

Works (selection)

• The Path of Love of the Samurai, Edition Peperkorn, 1998, ISBN 3-929181-15-0
• Japanese parallel falls in the shade of the cherry tree (Honchô-ôin-hiji). Iudicium 2007. ISBN 9783891293850
• Kôshokumono. Niehans 1957.
• Yonosuke - the three thousandfold lover. European Book Club 1966.
• Saikaku oridome. Scenes from Japanese Folk Life in the 17th Century. Reclam 1973.
• 好色 五 人 女 Kōshoku Gonin Onna, 1685.
  • German: Five stories of loving women. Heyne 1978. ISBN 3-453-42050-0 .
• 本 朝 二十 不孝 Honchō Nijū Fukō ("Twenty Cases of Disloyal Children"), 1685
• 武 道 伝 来 記 Budō Denraiki ("Transfer of Martial Arts"), 1687
• 武家義 理 物語 Buke Giri Monogatari ("Tales of the Honor of the Samurai"), 1688
• 日本 永 代 蔵 Nippon Eitaigura ("The Eternal Treasury of Japan"), 1688
• 世間 胸 算 用 Seken Munazan'yō ("Calculations with which man gets through this scheming world"), 1692

Web links

• Literature by and about Ihara Saikaku in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ihara Saikaku as a haiku poet, with pictures

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Ihara is the family name, Saikaku the first name.