The gokan is a medium of pre-modern Japanese literature where the story is told through a mixture of text and image on every page, with the narrative and dialogue of the story surrounding the image illustrations on all sides. The Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (A Rustic Genji by a Fake Murasaki, 1829-42), written by Ryutei Tanehiko (1783-1842) and illustrated by Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), was one of the most popular gokan of the Edo Period (1605-1868) and has been republished approximately twenty-four times from the end of the nineteenth century until today. By examining how these works handle text and image, this thesis seeks to gain a deeper understanding about how image functions in the gokan genre. When text must be translated and the image altered from the original layout to make it comprehensible to modern readers, the resulting text and image combinations, or lack of image, offer insight into the importance of the role of image in gokan.

This thesis deals with popular paraphrases of classical Japanese literature in the Edo period (1600- 1868). It analyses creative rewritings of a famous Heian tale Genji monogatari by popular authors of the Edo period, primarily Nise Murasaki inaka Genji by Ryūtei Tanehiko (1783-1842), which is one of the most successful works of Japanese early modern literature. The aim of this thesis is, utilizing elements of narrative analysis, to identify and interpret creative strategies applied by Tanehiko and his predecessors (Kogame Masuhide, Miyako no Nishiki and Okumura Masanobu) in works based on Genji monogatari and to find out what the relation was between their works and their Heian model, and if and to what extent Tanehiko's work was a unique occurrence between popular paraphrases of classical Japanese literature.