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Title: Gay Tales of the Samurai by E. Powys Mathers, Henry M. Christman, Ihara Saikaku ISBN: 1-886360-00-6 Publisher: Alamo Square Distributors Pub. Date: 01 June, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: not gay and not a translation from Japanese
Comment: Mathers translated these tales, not from Japanese, but from the French translation of Mardrus, and they appeared originally in a three-volume collection called Eastern Love (1930). Hency this is more correctly called the Mardrus-Mathers translation. Mathers never used the word "gay", this is anachronistic and it is the publisher who created the title. The men and boys of old Japan who had love affairs were not gay, not queer, but pederastic or pedophile. This was a whole different situation from modern Japan. It had more in common with ancient Greece. They moved in a world that had nothing in common with the modern world, their values were entirely different.
Rating: 2
Summary: less good than bad
Comment: I was a bit disappointed at the selection of stories... but I can't blame the publishers. Blame the original medieval author, Saikaku, for writing tales that are somewhat predictable and... repetitive? Samurai falls in love with a beautiful boy. Samurai pledges undying love to the beautiful boy in a prose-filled letter or Samurai follows the beautiful boy to the ends of the earth. Beautiful boy eventually notices samurai. They either die for honor or live happily ever after.
The books is 110 pages long, with size 12 font and 1-1/2 inch margins. o_o In other words, painfully short. The book is separated into three sections: samurai love failed, stalemated, and victorious. All of them pretty much follow the guideline above.
However, there were a few gems in all the mediocre (and sometimes exceedingly corny) stories. The first in the book tells the tale of two lovers, fated to die. One of the later stories is a monk's letter to his friend about the beautiful youth he saw one day, filled with lovely prose. One of them cracked me up with the tale of two aged men who are the "greatest women-haters on the earth."
However, other than those few, many other stories are corny and others, others pathetically funny (when they're not intended to be). If I'm going to pay ten dollars for this book, there could be at LEAST some more substance, or more selections from Saikaku's works.
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Title: The Love of the Samurai: A Thousand Years of Japanese Homosexuality by Tsuneo Watanabe, Jun'Ichi Iwata ISBN: 0854491155 Publisher: Gay Men's Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1990 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Great Mirror of Male Love by Ihara Saikaku ISBN: 0804718954 Publisher: Stanford University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1990 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan by Gary P. Leupp ISBN: 0520209001 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title:Taboo ASIN: B0000687F5 Publisher: New Yorker Video Pub. Date: 20 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $26.96 |
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Title: Queer Japan: Personal Stories of Japanese Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals by Barbara Summerhawk, Chiron McMahill, Darren McDonald ISBN: 1892281007 Publisher: New Victoria Publishers Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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