Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693), who began his creative career as the creator of innovative comic poems, was the founder of a new direction in narrative prose - ukiyo-zoshi (books about the changing world). The Buddhist term "ukiyo", which previously meant the "sorrowful", "sinful", "fleeting" world, in the context of the culture of this time becomes a symbol of the intrinsic value of earthly existence. According to N. I. Conrad, the word “ukiyo” acquired a life-affirming and even hedonistic connotation: the world of grief and sadness turned for the people of the Saikaku era into a fleeting, but for this reason all the more attractive world of joy and pleasure, the masters of which they began to feel themselves.T . Redko-Dobrovolskaya