Under the canopy of Sakura. Ihara S.

The art manner of Saikaku is remarkable for its ambiguity. In front of the reader, metamorphoses and miracles are constantly taking place: the author is tired of changing the masks, turning from a moralist and a householder into a crafty, inexhaustible to inventions and jokes of the narrator.

“laughter,” wrote Saikaku, “there are two types: empty and the one that goes from the depths of the heart. A person is like a vessel that contains a lie or truth. ”

irony, sarcasm, a parody grotesque - the author’s favorite techniques, but in the laughter of it you can hear the sadness of the vicissitudes of life and human fate. In this book, the reader will find different in nature of the work-love, domestic, magical-fantastic, judicial, etc.

some of the stories are published in Russian for the first time.