An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750-1850

Notes for the Reader

Notes for the Reader 1. Uses of Japanese terms are kept to a minimum except for those that are commonly used in English. Certain interesting expressions and widely used terms are introduced in parentheses following English equivalents throughout the volume. 2. Japanese names, including pen names, are listed in the Japanese order, with the family name first. Commoners usually did not have family names, but some merchants were called by the name of their establishment , as in “Tsutaya Jūzaburō.” The popular writers of the period are generally called not by their family name but by their given name or that part of their pen name, as in “Nanboku” for “Tsuruya Nanboku.” Exceptionally, Chikamatsu Monzaemon is customarily referred to as “Chikamatsu,” often with the honorific prefix “Ō” (lately “Dai”) meaning “Great.” 3. Some diacritics are added to aid the pronunciation of Japanese names and words. Macrons indicate long vowels. An apostrophe is added to indicate that two characters in the English alphabet are to be pronounced separately as in “Matsu’ura.” 4. The vowels “a,” “i,” “u,” “e,” “o” are pronounced approximately like “ah,” “ee,” “ew,” “eh,” and “oh.” Every vowel, even an “e” at the end of a word, is pronounced, as in “Edo-mae.” An exception is “saké,” which has become an English word and is spelled with an acute accent mark. 40 NOTES FOR THE READER 5. The spelling of a Japanese word that is established as an English one may be altered to represent the proper pronunciation in Japanese, as in “shamisen” instead of “samisen.” 6. Throughout the volume, asterisks (*) denote the title of a work that is included in this volume either in full or in part. 7. Japanese is read vertically and from right to left so that an Edo-period book, consisting of double-folded pages in traditional Japanese paper, was read in the reverse order of one in a Western language. Adjustments have been made in placing English translations into pictures in “yellow books” to allow for reading from left to right horizontally. 8. Many of the books were published in a number of thin volumes. A book could be divided into “parts” (hen), which were sometimes subdivided into “volumes” (maki), but the number of volumes ran through the entire oeuvre. A “yellow book” could be in three thin volumes, while a “sentimental book” could be divided into four parts, the first one containing volumes 1 through 3, the second part containing volumes 4 through 6, and so on. Bakin’s “reader’s books” were divided into “books” (shū), each of which were subdivided into “volumes,” consisting of two “sections” made up of two separate “episodes.” Episode numbers ran sequentially throughout the novel so that the Eight Dog Warriors is made up of 9 books and 98 volumes, totaling 106 sections. 9. The lunar calendar cannot be translated precisely into the solar calendar . The gap between the two is about a month. The months in this anthology are based on the lunar calendar so that what we call the “First month” does not represent “January” in our calendar. The year consisted of twelve months, and one month was either twenty-nine or thirty days, requiring people to consult a monthly calendar. Further adjustments were needed so that a “leap month” had to be installed occasionally to catch up with the actual season. The day was divided into twelve “hours,” each approximately two hours by the solar calendar. Hours were also movable and approximate: the dawn (rather than sunrise) and dusk (rather than sunset) determined the six hours of the day and the six hours of the night, so that the length of the “hour” varied according to the season. 10. Distances are represented bysun (approximately 1.2 inches), shaku (ten sun, or approximately one foot), ken (six shaku, or approximately six feet), chō (sixty ken, or approximately half a mile), and ri (thirty-six chō, or approximately two miles). 11. The currency of the time was in the form of gold, silver, and copper. While Edo’s system was based on gold, that of Kamigata, or the western regions, was based on silver. This necessitated currency exchange for NOTES FOR THE READER 41 commerce between the separate parts of Japan. The rates fluctuated but essentially one ryō in gold was equal to sixty monme in silver and anywhere between four thousand and six thousand mon in copper, depending on the time...