Ihara Saikaku (redirected from Hirayama Togo)

Ihara Saikaku (ē`hä`rä sī`kä`k), 1642–93, Japanese writer. Saikaku began his literary career as a haikai [comic linked verse] poet, astonishing contemporaries with his skill at composing sequences of thousands of stanzas in a single sitting. Later he turned to writing ukiyozoshi, a popular prose form which in his hands was elevated to high art through the use of literary allusion, techniques borrowed from poetry, an irreverent style and keen sense of the ironic. Saikaku's highly entertaining stories were populated by merchants, rogues, misers, warriors, and amorous women such as the heroine of Koshoku ichidai onna [life of an amorous woman] who was constantly tripped up by her own lustful nature.

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Ihara Saikaku

 or Ibara Saikaku known as Saikaku orig. Hirayama Togo

(born 1642, Osaka, Japan—died Sept. 9, 1693, Osaka) Japanese poet and novelist. He first won fame for his speed in composing haikai (humorous linked-verse poems), once producing 23,500 in a day. He is best known for his novels, including The Life of an Amorous Man (1682) and Five Women Who Loved Love (1686) in which he enchanted readers with racy accounts of the amorous and financial affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. He was one of the brilliant figures of the 17th-century revival in Japanese literature.