Collection

One of the representative Yomihon (reader books)from the late Edo era. This is a fulllength romance novel that took 28 years for the author Kyokutei Bakin to complete. This museum has 117 such books. The story consists of three major parts. At the beginning, the story is focused on Battle of Yuki in the Muromachi era, the rise of the Nanso Satomi family, and the story of eight balls (balls refers to eight virtues respectively) which sprung from princess Fuse-hime. The next part is the biographies of eight samurai born in various places throughout the Eight Provinces of Kanto, and this part is the longest. The eight samurai warriors gathered with the Satomi family and fought the war against Kanto Kanrei and Kogakubo Allied Forces (a war against the governor-general of the Kanto area) and advanced toward the grand finale. The story was written in sentences containing both Japanese and Chinese elements, and made extensive use of the vocabulary of Hakuwa Shosetsu (a Chinese novel written in the spoken language). The illustrations were done by a collaboration of artists including Yanagawa Shigenobu, Keisai Eisen, Yanagawa Shigenobu, Yanagawa Shigenobu the second, and Utagawa Sadahide. It is said that Hundreds of Ukiyo-e prints were published in the theme of this book, which was very popular at the time.