Abstract

Andrew L. Markus
Kimura Mokuro (1774-1856) and His Kokuji shosetsu tsu (1849)

Kimura Mokuro (1774-1856), a senior official of Takamatsu han, was also one of his period's best-known connoisseurs of Japanese and Chinese colloquial fiction.  While no novelist himself, Mokuro nonetheless produced many letters, critiques, and miscellany that collectively describe a kind of late-Edo reader quite different from the naive "women and children" once thought the predominant audience for the light literature of the time.  His close association with prominent literary figures such as Kyokutei Bakin (1767-1848) and Ryutei Tanehiko (1783-1842) lend important insights into the lives and works of these writers, just as his 1831 Gekijo ikkan mushi-megane is an important contemporary source on early nineteenth-century kabuki.

Volume 26, Number 2 (Summer 2000)
© 2000 Society for Japanese Studies