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Description of  Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai, Abridged Edition (Translations from the Asian Classics)

By 1816, Japan had recovered from the famines of the 1780s and moved beyond the political reforms of the 1790s. Despite persistent economic and social stresses, the country seemed headed for a new period of growth. The idea that the shogunate would not last forever was far from anyone's mind. Yet, in that year, an anonymous samurai produced a scathing critique of Edo society. Writing as Buyo Inshi, "a retired gentleman of Edo," he expressed in Read more