Morishima Chūryō

Who was Morishima Chūryō?

Morishima Chūryō was an Edo period Japanese author of popular fiction who also wrote a number of works in the field of rangaku. He wrote under many pen names, including Manzōtei, Shinra Manzō, and Tenjiku Rōjin. The latter constituted an allusion to the pen name Tenjiku Rōnin, used by Hiraga Gennai, to whom Chūryō was the principal literary successor. Chūryō co-authored several plays with Gennai early in his career, and went on to write in almost all of the many genres of popular fiction that were collectively known as gesaku. He also wrote kyōka, or comic waka poetry, under the pen name Taketsue no Sugaru. Chūryō was the younger brother of Katsuragawa Hoshū, a shogunal physician and leading scholar of rangaku.