steve forrestさんのイラストまとめ

Given the number of spinoffs of his story in the Edo period, including TWO 17th century print editions of his collection, one illustrated, he had great popular appeal, as is clear from the number of ukiyo-e prints depicting him (or actors playing him). Lots to dig into!

5/6

Beautiful & unusual example of polychrome woodblock printing in work of popular fiction from 19th cent. Edo.

More on this anomalous text in the next Glimpses from Gōkan, tomorrow

(technically, it's a not-quite-a-gōkan, but close enough--I'll take it!)

#GōkanProject21

‘Jiraiya monogatari’ 自来也説話 is a vendetta tale with supernatural elements more or less translated from Chinese sources. It inspired retellings in song, woodblock prints, & on stage, leading eventually to the gōkan we’re looking at in this Episode.

Next time, more TOADS!

5/5

Talking of serial gōkan (works published over a number of years), our next title is one of the most striking examples, which reached *43* volumes over nearly 30 years.

It also features characters that will be familiar from “the most popular manga in the world”...

5/6

...which starts with Yajurō’s wife but grows to include other characters who cross the fleeing Gunnai.
At the conventional (for a gōkan) final confrontation, in addition to the text & image of vengeance accomplished, there are advertisements--for Kyōden's shop & pills!

6/8

@classical_txt ‘Tales of Ise’ reception is a vast topic, but happily there’s some great reading available in English (pictured: books by Joshua Mostow & Laura Moretti).

It’s easy to read the source text in translation, too (e.g. this by Royall Tyler & Mostow), & why not? It's a classic!

3/8

The genre had developed considerably in the more than two decades since Sanba & Toyokuni's inaugural work. Look at the image-text integration (& signposting!) in this spread (yellow=signposts; orange=some of the embedded dialogue; blue=character name-tags)

4/?

The preceding images were the covers for parts 1 and 2 of the first chapter (初編上、下）. In all 38 chapters appeared before Tanehiko's death: below are the covers of the last chapter (all via Waseda lib.). Gōkan covers (in pairs or threes) had their own aesthetic by now

2/?