Commonplaces on the samurai circulating in the Edo period show some discrepancy from the image of the hero represented by the contemporary rhetoric of bushidō. This paper seeks to analyse these commonplaces by investigating a set of witty stories set in Edo brothels, written mainly in dialogic form and published in the kohon ‘little book’ format between the 1750s and the end of the Eighteenth Century. These short stories, known as (kaiwatai-)sharebon, had cliché plots that usually included a contraposition between different stereotyped visitors of the pleasure quarters. A part of these customers were samurai. They were virtually subdivided into two categories, giving shape to two different stereotyped depictions of the warriors. One mocked the country samurai and those coming from the lowest echelons of the warrior class, one fiercely caricaturised those from Edo. During the ’80s, another tendency emerged within the poetics of kaiwatai sharebon, particularly in the works of Santō Kyōden (1761-1816): satire against the new ideal, endorsed by Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758-1829), of the moderate warrior, devoting himself to the weapons and the arts.

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