Quaint Stories of the Samurais; Translated From the Old Original

Paris: Printed for Private Distribution; Maurice Darantiere, 1928. First Edition. 1st edition in English, from the 17th century Japanese root. Original printed self wrappers, modest age toning, crease to the front internal wrapper, 1/8” of wear to spine’s top else near fine. One of 500 copies. A very scarce title and a Japanese classic of 5 tales about gay samurai, originally written by Ihara in 17th century Japan in his book "The Great Mirror of Male Love" ( ). Saikaku's "The Great Mirror of Male Love" (1687) illuminates a great cultural divergence between East and West regarding same-sex relationships in the early modern period. In 17th century Japan, Saikaku openly celebrated male-male relationships among the samurai class, documenting these bonds as an accepted and even honored aspect of warrior culture. This literary frankness existed within a broader Japanese cultural context where same-sex relations carried none of the theological stigma that dominated Western thought. While contemporaneous European writers like Shakespeare could only hint at homoerotic themes through carefully ambiguous language and classical allusions, Saikaku wrote with straightforward explicitness about samurai lovers. Christian doctrine's categorization of homosexual acts as grave sins made such openness impossible in the West, whereas Japan's Shinto and Buddhist traditions lacked comparable concepts of sexual sin. The result was a literary freedom that would not emerge in Western writing for centuries.