Under the Sakura Canopy

Saikaku's artistic style is remarkable for its ambiguity. Before the reader's eyes, metamorphoses and miracles constantly occur: the author tirelessly changes masks, transforming from a moralist and chronicler into a cunning, inexhaustible storyteller full of inventions and jokes.
"Laughter, - wrote Saikaku, - comes in two types: empty and that which comes from the depth of the heart. A person is like a vessel that can contain either lies or truth".
Irony, sarcasm, parodic grotesque are the author's favorite techniques, but in his laughter, one can hear sadness about the vicissitudes of life and human fate.
The genre range of Saikaku's works is extraordinarily wide. In this book, the reader will find works of different nature - romantic, everyday, magical-fantastic, judicial, and more.
Some of the stories are published in Russian for the first time.