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Zur literarhistorischen Stellung des Ukiyoburo von Shikitei Samba , by Margarete Donath-Wiegand
I discuss Shikitei Samba's (1776 - 1822) Ukiyoburo (The Bathhouse of the Floating World - 1809 - 1813) at some length in a recent review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/857767315?book_show_action=false
Here I just want to make a brief follow up for those who read German. In Zur literarhistorischen Stellung des Ukiyoburo von Shikitei Samba (1963) Margarete Donath-Wiegand provides the reader two appreciable services. First, she discusses the context of Edo period fiction,(*) reviews Samba's life and work, and offers a thirty page analysis of Ukiyoburo. Second, she delivers a German translation of fully half of Ukiyoburo; indeed, she translates all of the first two of the four books which together constitute Ukiyoburo. This is by far the most extensive translation of this work into a Western language I have been able to find so far. She does not try to suggest the many dialects used by Samba's characters (Leutner tried a little, but the task is effectively impossible), and, somehow, she manages to flatten out and homogenize all of the character's voices. Leutner's translation has more charm, but Donath-Wiegand's is much more complete. She also provides more extensive remarks in footnotes which explain a world of subtleties in the original text.
(*) Leutner calls her discussion somewhat dated. He fails to mention that she translated much more of the work than he did...
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