Five Women Who Loved Love
Five townswomen of the Genroku years act on desire in a society where adultery is a capital matter: a swordsmith's sister who runs off with the head clerk, a cooper's wife undone by a misplaced dish, a calendar-maker's wife who begins the whole business as a joke, a greengrocer's daughter who meets her lover in a temple after a fire, and a girl who cuts her hair to follow a man with no interest in women. Saikaku took all five from criminal cases and street ballads still current when he wrote, and assumed his readers knew how each had gone. They were dramatised almost at once for the puppet and kabuki stages, where they have stayed.
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