Novel
The Life of an Amorous Woman
好色一代女
Ihara Saikaku · 1686
Synopsis
An old woman withdrawn to a hermitage makes a confession of her life to two visitors, in the first person. Born into the court nobility, she loses her rank and descends the ranks of the nobility and then of the pleasure quarters: lady of the court, wife, courtesan, a priest's concubine, a lord's mistress. The entry in an American documentary database adds to these positions those of dancer, nun and tea-house servant.
Context
The book appeared in Ōsaka in 1686, in six volumes of four chapters. It is a counterpart to its author's first prose narrative, which appeared four years earlier, whose hero finds here his female counterpart, according to the same documentary source. Both sources compare it to Defoe's novel Moll Flanders. Its French translation, by Georges Bonmarchand, appeared from Gallimard in 1975 under a title that presents it as a novel of manners.
Who it is for
A short novel in six volumes, made up of one long confession, for readers interested in the merchant towns of Edo-period Japan.
Prizes and reception
A novel that Mizoguchi Kenji brought to the screen in 1952, published in France under the title “La Vie d'O-Haru, femme galante”.