Eiga Monogatari, First Edition (1 results)

Printed in kanji & hiragana. Eleven lines per page, 20-22 characters per line. 40 parts in 20 vols. 8vo (260 x 197 mm.), orig. semi-stiff blue wrappers (a little rubbed, several upper covers with careful mending), early manuscript title slips on covers, new stitching. [Japan]: ca. Genna to mid-Kan'ei (1615-40). First edition of the Eiga Monogatari [The Tale of Flowering Splendor], a work entirely written by women (see below). It has sometimes been compared to the Tale of Genji. We find no copy in WorldCat. This a fine example of Japanese printing by movable type (kokatsuji ban), a technology that David Chibbett, in his The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration (Kodansha: 1977), describes as "the single most significant single occurrence in the development of printing in Japan up until then" (p. 61). This is the fine set from the library of Frank Hawley, scholar and one of the most discerning collectors of Japanese books and manuscripts. His stamp appears on the first page of each volume. Eiga Monogatari is a "late Heian rekishi monogatari (ca. 1092). Its forty parts are considered to consist of thirty main and ten additional units by different handsWhatever the authorship, there is a degree of unity from the subject of the glory (eiga) of the court depicted and from the attention to the main character, Fujiwara Michinaga, under whom the Fujiwara regency and the court reached its cultural and political pinnacle "Most opinions hold to female authorship, or at least to participation by women in gathering materials. A tradition going as far back as the Kamakura period and accepted in some fashion by many holds the work to be by Akazome Emon [ca. 957-1041], an attribution some think derives from her service at the most cultured royal household of the time, that of J?t? Mon'in, where Murasaki Shikibu and Izumi Shikibu were the chief literary figures. It seems likely that Akazome Emon had some part in the work: as author of one of the several works presumed as sources, as a compiler of such sources, as a kind of editor or as more than one of these "Another attribution credits the first twenty-seven books (in which the poems are the most numerous) to another woman, Idewa no Ben, daughter of Taira Suenobu hence her full appellation, Dewa no Kami, Taira Suenobu no Musume Idewa no Ben. On this view, the other thirteen books are by some unknown court lady "The work inaugurated rekishi monogatari, historical talesThe splendors mentioned by the title are those of the two centuries and of the fifteen reigns from Uda (r. 887-897) to part of the reign of Horikawa (r. 1086-1107) "The main subject becomes court life, especially as viewed by women's eyesAbove all, it is an encyclopedic work, rich in details of dress, customs, and so on."Miner et al., The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature (1985), pp. 146-47. Fine set, preserved in three chitsu. With a bit of mostly marginal dampstaining and worming here and there. PROVENANCE: With the ownership slip on upper cover of first volume and seal on final leaf of final volume of Ozu Hisatari (1804-58), a member of a wealthy merchant family active in Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo. He was a noted book collector and ancestor of the director Ozu Yasujir? This set then entered the library of Hirase Rok? (1839-1908), an influential and wealthy Osaka merchant (with his seal at the beginning of each volume). For Hawley, see R.H. van Gulik's "In Memoriam. Frank Hawley (1906-1961)" in Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 16, No. 3/4 (Oct. 1960-Jan. 1961), pp. 434-47. This set appeared in Shigeo Sorimachi's monumental 40th anniversary catalogue of 1972, devoted to movable type books, item 216. ? Kazuma Kawase ????, Kokatsuji-ban no kenkyu ??????? [Study of the Early Typographic Editions of Japan] (1967), Vol. I, p. 529 & Vol. 3, p. 132, no. 394 (illustration).