New Developments in Edo Culture

I. Chonin or Townsmen Culture:

a. Literature

i. Poetry: the evolution of haikai or haiku poetry

waka 5-7-5-7-7 = the preferred 31 syllable form

renga or linked poetry 5-7-5---> 7-7

haiku 5-7-5

Matsuo Basho 1644-1694 was a leading figure in the Haiku movement. He traveled to the North and piblished his famous Oku no hosomichi (Narrow Road to the North) which helped reeaders appreciate the new compact verse form. But as historian Brent Walker points out, he was also contributing to a cultural construction of the nation even though it was still the premodern period. "Basho imagined a cultural community bounded by Japan's geography...[pointing to] the traces of an early national consciousness coalescing in the early modern period." (A Concise History of Japan, 139) Visiting shrines and nature sites on his journey, he helped define the country by "demarcating its cultural limits, boundaries and characteristics." (140)

ii. Prose: Ihara Saikaku b. Osaka 1642-1693 in a merchant family

Hakai poet and then turned to humorous and erotic prose writing. Ukiyo-zoshi, a new genre.

* The Life of an Amorous Man ( 好色一代男 , Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko?, 1682)

* The Great Mirror of Beauties: Son of an Amorous Man ( 好色二代男　諸艶大鏡 , Kōshoku Nidai Otoko Shoen Okagami ?, 1684)

* Five Women Who Loved Love ( 好色五人女 , Kōshoku Gonin Onna?, 1685)

* The Life of an Amorous Woman ( 好色一代女 , Kōshoku Ichidai Onna?, 1686) (made into the 1952 movie The Life of Oharu by Kenji Mizoguchi)

* The Great Mirror of Male Love (The Encyclopedia of Male Love) ( 男色大鑑 , Nanshoku Okagami?, 1687)

II. Theatre

Kabuki--the Actor's Stage

Bunraku--Puppet Theatre--the Writer's Stage

Chikamatsu Monzaemon 1653-1724 = "Japan's Shakespeare"

III. Visual Arts

Woodblock Prints Ukiyo-e

Katsushika HOKUSAI 1760-1849 36 Views of Mt. Fuji

Ando HIROSHIGE 1797-1858 53 Stations of the Tokaido

New, urban audiences and consumers for all of these new cultural forms of expressions.