Jippensha Ikku

Jippensha Ikku (十返舎 一九) was the pen name of Sadakazu Shigeta (Shigeta, Sadakazu), a Japanese writer active during the late Edo period of Japan. He lived primarily in Edo in the service of samurai, but also spent some time in Osaka as a townsman. He was among the most prolific yellow-backed novel (黄表紙) writers of the late Edo period &mdash; between 1795 and 1801 he wrote a minimum of twenty novels a year, and thereafter wrote sharebon, kokkeibon and over 360 illustrated stories (合巻).

Biography
Jippensha was considered the Le Sage and Dickens of Japan. He began his adult life with three marriages of which two were quickly ended by fathers-in-law who could not understand his literary habits. He accepted poverty with good humor, and, having no furniture, hung his bare walls with paintings of the furniture he might have had. On holidays he sacrificed to the gods with pictures of excellent offerings. Being presented with a bathtub in the common interest, he carried it home inverted on his head, and overthrew with ready wit the pedestrians who fell his way. When his publisher came to see him, Jippensha invited him to take a bath; and while his invitation was being accepted he decked himself in the publisher's clothes, and paid his New Year's Day calls in proper ceremonial costume. His masterpiece, Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige, was published in twelve parts between 1802 and 1822, and told a rollicking tale in the vein of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club." Aston calls it "the most humorous and entertaining book in the Japanese language."

In 1831, Jippensha was became paralyzed. On his deathbed, Jippensha enjoined his pupils to place upon his corpse, before the cremation then usual in Japan, certain packets which he solemnly entrusted to them. He died on August 7th of that year. At his funeral, prayers having been said, the pyre was lighted, whereupon it turned out that the packets were full of firecrackers, which exploded merrily. Jippensha had kept his youthful promise that his life would be full of surprises, even after his death.

He ashes were buried in Asakusa in Tokyo at the Zenryu temple.

Works
Hizakurige or Shank's Mare: Japan's Great Comic Novel of Travel and Ribaldry by Ikku Jippensha. Translated by Thomas Satchell. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company. 1960. ISBN 0-8048-0524-5
 * Footing It Along the Tōkaidō (東海道中膝栗毛)