Review by Choice Review
This remarkable anthology introduces urban literature popular during Edo's transition to the modern capital of Tokyo, with the intent of rendering "the tone and style of the original texts." These texts include song lyrics, sections from serialized short fiction, human interest stories, and a popular style of visual literature in which art and narrative merge with satire and parody. An excellent introduction precedes each entry, analyzing its social and political context at a time when many Meiji writers were either deeply critical or unabashedly enthusiastic about Western "modernization." Jones (emer., Indiana Univ.) and Inouye (Tufts) organize the contents into eight thematic sections, from romance to the consequences of capitalism. These capture contemporaneous concerns and interests of the various social classes that made up Edo's reading public. The entire collection is prefaced with a comprehensive introduction that provides historical context and also examines the social and literary worlds of an urban landscape undergoing rapid change. These changes produced innovative literary journals that explored new progressive theories as well as evolving genres of fiction, comedy, drama, art, and poetry in a fluid period of rapid urbanization, which ended with skepticism over the virtues of Western "enlightenment." Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Teri Shaffer Yamada, California State University, Long Beach
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
