Hi! Does anyone know where I could find primary sources from the Edo? I have had such a hard time trying to find any primary sources. Preferably translated into English because my Japanese isn’t good enough yet.

by Embarrassed_Bus7946
mpitelka

One of the best recent collections of translated primary sources is Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life During the Age of the Shoguns, ed. Constantine Nomikos Vaporis (ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2012).

Another great source is Early Modern Japanese Literature, ed. Haruo Shirane (Columbia University Press, 2002).

Also great: Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1600 to 2000, second edition, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, and Ryusaku Tsunoda (Columbia University Press, 2005).

This one is useful in my research on the moment right before the Edo period: The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga (English; printed and digital), by Ota Gyuichi, translated and edited by J.S.A. Elisonas and J.P. Lamers (Brill, 2011).

One single huge primary source: Lust, commerce, and corruption: an account of what I have seen and heard, by an Edo Samurai; translated by Mark Teeuwen, Kate Wildman Nakai, Miyazaki Fumiko, Anne Walthall, and John Breen; edited and with an introduction by Mark Teeuwen and Kate Wildman Nakai (Columbia University Press, 2014).

And this one is by a European observer, but is incredibly helpful: Kaempfer's Japan : Tokugawa culture observed, by Engelbert Kaempfer; edited, translated, and annotated by Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999). I recently had a student put together a great research project using this source.