Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as "Japan's Shakespeare" and a "god of writers," was arguably the most famous playwright in Japanese history and wrote more than 100 plays for the kabuki and bunraku theaters. Today, the plays of this major literary figure are performed on kabuki and bunraku stages as well as in the modern theater, and forty-nine films of his plays have been made, thirty-one of them from the silent era.

Translations of Chikamatsu's plays are available, but we have few examples of his late work, in which he increasingly incorporated stylistic elements of...

Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as "Japan's Shakespeare" and a "god of writers," was arguably the most famous playwright in Japanese history and wrote more than 100 plays for the kabuki and bunraku theaters. Today, the plays of this major literary figure are performed on kabuki and bunraku stages as well as in the modern theater, and forty-nine films of his plays have been made, thirty-one of them from the silent era.

Translations of Chikamatsu's plays are available, but we have few examples of his late work, in which he increasingly incorporated stylistic elements of...

In early modern Japan, 1600-1900, thousands of sexually explicit paintings, prints, and illustrated books with texts were produced, known as 'spring pictures' (shunga). Frequently tender, funny and beautiful, shunga were mostly produced within the popular school known as 'pictures of the floating world' (ukiyo-e), by celebrated artists such as Utamaro and Hokusai. Early modern Japan was certainly not a sex-paradise; however, the values promoted in shunga are generally positive towards sexual pleasure for all. Official life in this period was governed by strict Confucian laws, but private life...