Along the Outer Rim of Edo Kabuki and Other Essays

Why do festival floats rise so high? Why do Bon dancers circle a singer? What lies behind the foxes worshipped at Inari shrines, or the love poems preserved in the Man’yōshū? Orikuchi Shinobu approaches these questions through ritual, language, performance, and oral tradition.

These seven essays range from the outer world of Edo kabuki to field-play festivals, stone gods, fox belief, and the development of exchanges in verse. A 65-item research plan offers a glimpse of scholarship in the making, while a remembrance of a teacher asks what it means to give life a classical form. The long discussions of festivals and poetry show meanings changing as practices pass into new settings.

A poet and scholar of Japanese folklore, Orikuchi combines close reading with speculative reconstruction. His historical conjectures and disputed etymologies remain visible, with notes explaining readings, damaged characters, and textual difficulties. This complete new English translation retains the supplied order, diagrams, numbered sections, and physical verse lines. AI-assisted translation.