Editorial Preface

This issue of HJAS features three articles that engage with literary works. Gala Follaco examines four "chronicles of prosperity" (hanjōki 繁盛記) that describe Tokyo during the first years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, with a particular focus on their depiction of its aural landscape—the newfangled bells and whistles of a rapidly changing city. Suyoung Son, working at the intersection of art history, book history, and literary studies, writes on the successful late Ming publisher Yu Xiangdou 余象斗 (ca. 1560–1637) and the images of himself he inserted into his books. She sees these images not so much as self-promotion as a call for readers to appreciate the publisher's intellectual labor. Finally, Keith McMahon offers a sustained critical analysis of the language of sex in the classic late Ming novel, Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅 (The plum in the golden vase). He discusses the novel's sexual content in terms of its "high erotic" and "graphic" language, which he connects to a broader consideration of Jin Ping Mei's aesthetic purposes. Together, these contributions highlight intriguing new directions for humanistic scholarship while also reaffirming the importance of close reading and other traditional tools for the study of literature. They reflect the intellectual creativity of our authors, who show us how to hear sounds in written texts, read the meanings of small woodblock images, and unearth new insights into one of the most exhaustively studied texts in the East Asian literary canon.

DLH