Under the Sakura Canopy

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