Utei-Enba wrote
Ka-ni-kuwarenu-majinai-Soga (1779) after the fashion of the
kabuki play of the Soga brothers’ revenge to vividly depict the scene of card gambling in colloquial style. This paper examines how the author was inspired by several dramatic works in writing it and points out that the narrative and structural characteristics of “kokkeibon” fiction can be already found in it. The origin of humorous stories in colloquial style is traced through Manzōtei’s comical book
Inaka-shibai (1787) to “ukiyo-monomane” mimic performance, but the use of dialects in them can be attributed to vernacular plays in
kabuki. It is thus likely that
Ka-ni-kuwarenu-majinai-Soga, a dramatic novel written in vernacular style, was the earliest form of “kokkeibon” novel which had a great influence on Shikite-Sanba and other writers of later generations.
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