Explores the intersection of didacticism, Chinese vernacular scholarship, social criticism, and commercial storytelling in late Tokugawa Japan through an examination of a masterpiece of 19th century popular fiction: the novel Nanso Satomi hakkenden (The Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi of Southern Kazusa; serialized from 1814 to 1842 by Kyokutei Bakin (1767-1848).