Ihara Saikaku

Ihara Saikaku (Japanese井 原 西 鹤; actually: Hirayama Togo (平 山 藤 五) in Osaka * 1642, † 1693) was a Japanese writer in the Edo period. He is the first Japanese company critic who ( The life of a man in love ) created a new form of prose books like nanshoku Ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love, 1687 ) or Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko, which was crossed by haikai elements.

Life

Saikaku was the son of a businessman. Early on, he lost his wife and his blind daughter.

At 14 he became a student of a group of poets who used the siebzehnsilbige haiku. Six years later he was awarded the title of World Champion. Since that time, he took his mother, Ihara the family name on. From the 1670s he made ​​numerous trips; the experiences he made ​​it with people from different layers, he processed later literary. His first prose work was published in 1682 and known quickly. Thanks to his diligence he could finish 1-2 books per year, which included bestsellers.

His ability to write poems in true marathon events - allegedly several thousand in one day - earned him the nickname master of 20 000 haikus. Another epithet was Oranda Saikaku, which as much as Holland- Saikaku ( Dutch West crane ) means, but probably on relations with the Netherlands not - the only foreign country where it was allowed to operate a commercial establishment in Japan - suggesting, but only the fact should express that Saikaku was not a conservative Japanese writer of the old school. The new, modern direction of haiku, which emerged in 1670, was popular, funny and went more from man than the previous one.

Direct influences Saikakus can be found eg in Ejima Kiseki. Works of the author are placed still and covered with compare with Boccaccio and Casanova.

Works

• The path of love samurai Edition Peperkorn, 1998, ISBN 3-929181-15-0