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Among various moral codes of societies, adultery has always been a topic discussed in literature. Japan was no exception; Ihara Saikaku portrayed the tragic suicide and execution of false wives in the Edo period in Five Women Who Loved Love (1686), where illicit intercourse with a married woman was considered a grave offense that deserved the death penalty.
This paper aims to examine modern fluctuations in the notion of “adultery” in the beginning of the twentieth century, focusing on the reception of the episode of Paolo and Francesca in Dante’s Divine Comedy (c. 1308- 1321). Although the Japanese modern penal code of 1880 considered criminal conversation punishable by a sentence of major imprisonment, the literary world was transgressing the bounds of decency, influenced by this work of the Western literary canon and its romantic revival in the nineteenth century.
Japanese reception of The Comedy owes much to European literary trends of the day. Rediscovered by the romantic artists, the Paolo and Francesca episode attracted attention in nineteenth century Europe, and was sought after as a motif in painting and writing. Adopting this stance, Ueda Bin, an important figure in introducing and translating Western literature, stated the tragic love of Francesca as one of the “two masterpieces of the Inferno” in Dante the Great Poet (1901). The analysis of the works of the Japanese literati clarifies that the romantic reception of the episode glorifies adultery in the name of true love. It is also noteworthy that it especially encouraged emerging female writers who sought autonomy in love.