Gesaku (戯作) is an alternative style, genre, or school of Japanese literature. In the simplest contemporary sense, any literary work of a playful, mocking, joking, silly or frivolous nature may be called gesaku. Unlike predecessors in the literary field, gesaku writers did not strive for beauty and perfect form in their writings, but rather for popular acceptance. Gesaku writers were dependent on making a living by sale of their books. Like popular magazines and books of the 21st century, their product was aimed at as wide a public as possible. When a book was successful it was usually followed by as many sequels as the audience would tolerate.

A very popular humorous variety of gesaku fiction was Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige by Jippensha Ikku, the story of the travels and slapstick adventures of two carefree men from Edo along the Tokaido, the broad highway between Kyotoand Edo.

Historically, a specific group of late-Edo period Japanese writers whose work reflected a playful style, a joking and perhaps cynical voice, and disaffection with conventional norms, came to be called gesaku.

In 1618, in an attempt to regulate prostitution, the Japanese government decided to concentrate the licensed quarters within a single district in each major city. The most famous of these pleasure districts was that in Edo, an area known as the Yoshiwara. Established on the north-eastern outskirts of Edo after the great fire of 1657, the Yoshiwara was a walled city surrounded by a moat. Half a mile square, it had a long, broad central thoroughfare planted with cherry trees. This nightless city consisted of brothels, tea-houses and restaurants.

In the invented fantasy world of the Yoshiwara, the townsmen (chonin) and merchants could fulfil their desires for romance and adventure, which they were unlikely to encounter in daily life as romance was ruled out by pre-arranged marriage. (Travelling overseas was also forbidden, and a decree of 1633, revised in 1635, imposed a death penalty on anyone who travelled outside Japan.) In the Yoshiwara, the merchants, to whom the ruling class allowed little dignity or freedom of expression, could act out fantasies of influence and power.

The pleasures of the licensed district were not solely erotic. The exchange of letters between courtesans and their customers was an important part of the courting game. Fine handwriting, a sign of aesthetic refinement, would greatly enhance the desirability of a courtesan. In The Great Mirror of the Art of Love, the writer Fujimoto Kizan (1626–1702), a connoisseur of the pleasure quarters, declared: ‘It is unfortunate for anyone not to be able to write, but for a courtesan it is a disaster. 

Kabuki, literally ‘extraordinary thing’, with connotations of the degenerate or the unorthodox, emerged as a popular theatre of Japan in the early seventeenth century.

Fantasy is combined with humour in The eight canine heroes of the house of Satomi, c.1851–53, by Kunisada . It is based on a kabuki play that was inspired by a novel written by Takizawa Bakin (1767–1848) and published in parts between 1814 and 1841. 

During the Tempo Reforms of 1842, the government strictly enforced laws for the control of actors, confining them to their assigned quarters. When they did go out of their quarters, they were required to hide their faces by wearing woven hats made of sedge grass, the same type of hat worn by outcasts and by criminals under arrest. Ukiyo actor and courtesan prints were banned at this time. In theatrical prints this restriction was soon circumvented in a variety of ingenious ways. From 1842 to 1862, actors’ names no longer appeared on the prints.

Landscape prints first came into vogue in the 1820s, with the lifting of travel restrictions so that it became easier to obtain permits to travel within Japan. This led to a demand for mementoes of journeys, and landscape prints became a novelty for travellers and armchair travellers. The banning of actor and courtesan prints from 1842 also had an impact on the popular demand for travel prints. 

The enjoyment of nature by the urban middle class is recorded in Yashima Gakutei’s series of six prints depicting the famous views of Mt Tempo. Mt Tempo was an island amusement park that had been created from the silt dredged from the tributaries of the Aji River. It was landscaped with pavilions, bridges, tea-houses and a lighthouse. 

A popular legend associated with magic is exploited in Taira no Kiyomori stopping the descent of the sun, c.1876, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi . The magical episode illustrated here has all the extravagance and drama of the kabuki theatre. Taira (Sokoku) no Kiyomori (1118–1181) was born into the imperial Taira clan. He became governor of Iga province and, through political and military successes, the virtual master of Japan by 1167

In addition to being subject to the restrictions ushered in by the Tempo Reforms, artists were forbidden by the Tokugawa government from making any reference to the shogunate or to current events. Comments on contemporary events and personalities were therefore disguised by being placed in the context of the past. But after the restoration of the Emperor in 1868 it was permitted to report on contemporary events, as is shown in The death of the rebel leaders in the Battle of the Kumamoto Uprising, 1876, by Yoshitoshi 

Mae Anna Pang, Senior Curator of Asian Art, National Gallery of Victoria (in 1994).