Ihara Saikaku Author

Ihara Saikaku (1641-1693) has been called "the greatest popular Japanese novelist of the 17th century." Also a poet, Saikaku founded the ukiyo-zoshi (books of the floating world) genre, which flourished between the 1680s and the 1770s.

Wm. Theodore de Bary (born August 9, 1919), is an American sinologist and East Asian literature scholar who has edited numerous books relating to primarily Japanese and Chinese literature, history and culture. He is recognized as essentially creating the field of Neo-Confucian studies.