Kyūhon-ise-monogatari, a “Manabon” Book in Early Modern Times

Abstract

In 1769 Takebe-Ayatari reworked Ise-monogatari into a “manabon” edition called Kyūhon-ise-monogatari which was exclusively written in kanji characters. In so doing he had the intention to criticize the entertaining aspect of the earlier “manabon” edition Mana-ise-monogatari (1644) and raise the genre to the contemporary standards of Japanese literature. Indeed in this edition and its appendix Ise-monogatari-kōi Takebe displayed a highly academic attitude in elaborately making hermeneutic distinctions between the original text and its variants.