Shanks Mare

This book is over 200 years old and still popular. There's a good reason for that. It captures all that people love about slapstick, and doesn't worry about toning it down for the kids. The two heros drift from town to town, bordello to bordello, and bar to bar. They're petty grifters, always trying to pull another meager scam, and always getting the worst of it in the end. There's no real plot here, just a sequence of vignettes. They're all like enough in kind to create a rhythm, but different enough to stay entertaining. Lots of the humor is low - potty humor, not restricted just to human waste. As in some britcoms, our heroes suddenly appear in their underwear time and again - or out of it, or next to it, or looking up into a tree at it. The real fun is in their silly pranks and exaggerations, always found out in ways that make them look like total twits. Ikku Jippensha's work is still a good read, even today. Sometimes, though, English doesn't capture the flavor of the original. The translator just shouldn't have bothered with some of the puns, and a few turns of phrase probably sounded better back when this was translated. End-notes are scanty, and there appears to be a systematic error in page number references towards the end of the notes. None of that really interferes with a good read. Enjoy the prat-falls as much as the original readers did, 200 years ago and in Japan. //wiredweird

Students of Japanese literature will find Ikku Jippensha's Shank's Mare to be an outstanding comic novel and essential to a thorough study of Japanese literary history and culture: Thomas Satchell provides the English translation of this story of adventure and discovery. The original was issued serially in 1802: this will appeal to modern readers.