Good Dogs: Edification, Entertainment, and Kyokutei Bakin's Nansō Satomi Hakkenden Walley Glynne

Good Dogs explores the intersection of didacticism, Chinese vernacular scholarship, social criticism, and commercial storytelling in late Tokugawa Japan through an examination of a masterpiece of 19th century popular fiction: the novel Nanso Satomi hakkenden (The Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi of Southern Kazusa; for short, Hakkenden), serialized from 1814 to 1842 by Kyokutei Bakin (1767-1848). Good Dogs begin with detailed examinations of Hakkenden as, in turn, a work of gesaku (popular fiction); an adaptation and critique of the Chinese vernacular novel Shuihu zhuan (J. The author argues that in Bakin's hands, popular fiction functioned to mobilize and hybridize high culture and low, official and heterodox ideologies, and the demands of both the moralist and the marketplace.

Suikoden, The Water Margin); and an exercise in kanzen choaku, "encouraging virtue and chastising vice."