Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai

“This is a book that was very, very famous in Japanese for a long time. Everyone and their brother cited it as an example of warriors observing society around them, the changes that were happening, and bemoaning those changes. But for the longest time, if you didn’t read Japanese, you couldn’t use it. Now, finally, a group of scholars has translated it and it came out a few years ago. Again, it’s a book that I assign to students because it’s easily readable and really gives us a sense of what’s going on in Edo society, the frustrations that warriors are feeling that things are changing and not in their favour.” Read more...

The best books on Samurai

Michael Wert, Historian