At some time in the Kyōhō period (1716–1736), but prior to 1729, the Osaka publisher Shibukawa (Kashiwaraya) Seiemon published a box-set anthology of twenty-three otogizōshi—works of short medieval fiction—which he titled Shūgen otogi bunko (The felicitous wedding companion library) and advertised as being “beneficial for women.” Among the twenty-three works is a Japanese translation of Guo Jujing’s early fourteenth-century Quan xiang ershisi xiao shi xuan (Selected verses on all aspects of the twenty-four filial exemplars), which, since the late Muromachi period (1337–1573), has been known in Japan simply as Nijūshikō (The twenty-four filial exemplars). Around the same time, between 1698 and 1729, Shibukawa published at least six major educational texts for women, three of which include illustrated tales from Nijūshikō. The present article considers Shibukawa’s otogizōshi Nijūshikō in light of his Onna-yō bunshō kōmoku (Models of writing for women: An inventory, 1698), Onna dōji ōrai (Models of correspondence for women and children, 1715), and Onna daigaku takarabako (A treasure box of learning for women, 1716). By doing so, it seeks to explore the significance of Nijūshikō for women, both as Shibukawa might have imagined it, and as women themselves may have conceived of it upon reading Nijūshikō in the context of Shibukawa’s didactic works for women.
R. Keller KIMBROUGH (Sun,) studied this question.