In the midst of the Superpowers and the Third World, a new vision is emerging of a Fourth World, encompassing small communities as an alternative to the notion that “bigger is better.” Returning power to a personal level is one of the goals and Papworth provides some useful ways to meet the challenge he so eloquently describes.

This is the first of a three-volume anthology of Edo- and Meiji-era urban literature that includes An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850 and A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Modern Metropolis, 1850–1920. The present work focuses on the years in which bourgeois culture first emerged in Japan, telling the story of the rising commoner arts of Kamigata, or the “Upper Regions” of Kyoto and Osaka, which harkened back to Japan’s middle ages eve...