Lit. "books of the floating world." Printed books containing illustrated prose stories which developed from the Kamigata 上方 (Osaka-Kyoto) region and flourished between the 1680s and 1770s. Ukiyo zōshi reflected the culture of the townspeople chōnin 町人, and the subject matter was their lives, romances, and pursuit of pleasure. The word ukiyo had a range of associations arising from the Buddhist sense of this transient world of sorrows.
In works by well-known writer Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴 (1642-93), this sense applied more particularly to what belonged to the present, and the varying manifestations of fleeting life in contemporary times. Saikaku also celebrated the human passion of sexual love kōshoku 好色 in his novels, beginning with his Kōshoku ichidai otoko 好色一代男 (Life of an Amorous Man; 1682). Ukiyo zōshi came in a variety of forms and styles, but there were certain categories established by Saikaku in his major works. These included kōshokumono 好色物, amorous pieces centering around the pleasure quarters, chōninmono 町人物, which dealt with the economic lives of townsmen, and setsuwamono 説話物, which included tales of curious happenings gathered from legends and folklore. A fourth category dealt with bukemono 武家物, aspects of the lives of samurai 侍. At the time Saikaku was writing, popular fiction in an easily read script was referred to as *kana zōshi 仮名草子, and it was not until about 1710 that the term ukiyo zōshi was mentioned as a genre. Even then, it referred to the amorous fiction earlier known as kōshokubon 好色本. It was later, during the Meiji period, that these Edo period novels describing the tribulations of this world were called ukiyo zōshi.
The printed books generally came out in sets of five or six fascicles of hanshibon 半紙本, that is, books made from *hanshi 半紙 paper, folded in half and trimmed. The dimensions of these books could vary but were approximately 165 x 235 mm. Nishizawa Ippū 西沢一風 (1665-1731) produced many ukiyo zōshi inspired by Saikaku as well as historical romances such as Gozen gikeiki 御前義経記 (Yoshitsune's Story Told Before His Excellency; 1700).
Ejima Kiseki 江島其磧 (1666-1735), author of Keiseiiro jamisen 傾城色三味線 (The Courtesan's Amorous Shamisen; 1701), wrote books for the important Kyoto publishing house, Hachimonjiya 八文字屋. Kiseki and the bookseller Hachimonjiya Jishō 八文字屋自笑 (d. 1745) as a team produced numerous ukiyo zōshi which were known as *hachimonjiyabon 八文字屋本 and served to make the genre more popular and accessible. Kiseki also developed a type of ukiyo zōshi known as katagimono 気質物, which consisted of sketches of townspeople and their doings.
Designers of the illustrations in these books included the authors themselves, such as Saikaku, as well as prominent *ukiyo-e 浮世絵 artists. Nishikawa Sukenobu 西川祐信 (1671-1751), Kawashima Nobukiyo 川島叙清 (fl. 1711-36), and Yoshida Hanbei 吉田半兵衛 (fl. ca. 1660-92) were well-known illustrators for these books in the Kamigata region. In Edo, Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣 (ca. 1618-94), Furuyama Moroshige 古山師重 (fl. 1678-89), Sugimura Jihei 杉村治兵衛 (fl. ca. 1680-98), and Okumura Masanobu 奥村政信 (1686-1764), all produced illustrations for ukiyo zōshi.
In around 1766, however, after the deaths of Kiseki and Hachimonjiya Jishō, the Hachimonjiya publishing house in Kyoto was sold, and ukiyo zōshi as a literary form was almost extinguished, although a few books of this type continued to be produced.