Ihara Saikaku keenly noticed new features of human characters that were being formed in his time. Dexterity, ingenuity, and enterprise helped to climb the social ladder. The development of such traits in women was especially striking. Saikaku creates a type of enterprising inhabitant of the “fun quarters”, which can be compared with the image of Molly Flanders from Deveaux’s novel of the same name. Saikaku reveals - for the first time in Japanese literature - the inner world of a hetaera, her thoughts and feelings, and depicts her fate.