The Chrysanthemum Plates

At Plate Mountain in the province of Mimasaka, any servant who breaks one of the Higashiyama family’s heirloom chrysanthemum plates loses a finger. The poor rōnin’s daughter O-Chiyo takes the post anyway, to pay for her mother’s medicine. When she is framed for a broken plate, the hairy, plain-spoken rice-pounder Gonroku smashes every plate that is left and dares his master to choose between fired clay and human beings.

His courage carries Gonroku into the service of a great lord in Edo, where the handsome rōnin Matsukage Daizō is rising fast by charm, forgery and murder. A poisoned jar of millet jelly, a love letter dropped beside a corpse, a maid’s secret message sewn into a kimono collar and a long road of inns, ghosts and comic travelers all lead at last to a moon-viewing party on the Sumida River, where the old elder from the provinces springs his trap. San’yūtei Enchō’s great storytelling serial is presented here complete and unabridged, with the preface and all forty-seven original chapters, concise notes and a documented source record.

A New English Translation in the series Japanese Classics in English Translation.