Tamenaga Shunsui

Who was Tamenaga Shunsui?

Tamenaga Shunsui was the pen name of Sasaki Sadataka, a Japanese novelist of the Edo period. In Japan, he is best known for the romantic novel Shunshoku Umegoyomi, the representative text in the ninjōbon genre. He followed up to this with sequels and his son, who called himself Shunsui Tamenaga Junior, continued the series. In Japan, he is considered a major writer of the Edo period, remembered for disobeying the Tenpō Reforms. He also wrote a version of the Chūshingura called "Iroha Bunko". In Western literature, he is probably better known for his humorous story Longevity, which was translated by Yei Theodora Ozaki for her book Japanese Fairy Tales in 1908, and since then has been reprinted in some children's Asian fairy tale collections.