CHAPTER III
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Popular Literature—Saikaku—Children's Stories
—Chikamatsu, and the Popular Drama
Concurrent with the movement described in the preceding chapter, another and very different development of literature was going on in Japan. It was threefold, comprising fiction, the drama, and a new kind of poetry known as Haikai. But while the Kangakusha wrote mainly for the Samurai class, the writers of romances, plays, and Haikai addressed themselves for the first time in Japanese history to the people. Their public consisted more especially of the populace of the three great cities of Yedo, Kiōto, and Ōsaka. In Japan as in China, the traders occupy a very low place both morally and socially. Of the four classes into which the population is divided, the Samurai, including men of learning, soldiers, and officials of all grades, stand at the top. Next to them are the peasants, the artisans come third, and the merchants last of all. It cannot be denied that there was much justice in this classification. Under the Tokugawa regime the city populations enjoyed great material prosperity. But their moral standards were not high. Naturally quick-witted, and educated up to a point which may fairly be described by our own slang phrase,
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