author
Yoritomo-Tashi
d. 1940
A mysterious name in early self-help publishing, this author was long presented as a wise Japanese philosopher. Modern scholarship suggests the books were actually shaped by the French writer Berthe Blanchard, which makes the story behind them almost as interesting as the advice itself.
1 Audiobook
Common sense, how to exercise it
by Yoritomo-Tashi
About the author
Early English editions of books such as Common Sense, How to Exercise It, Influence, How to Exert It, and Timidity, How to Overcome It presented Yoritomo-Tashi as a Japanese thinker, often with notes credited to the pseudonymous editor B. Dangennes. Those books became part of the popular self-improvement tradition of the early 1900s and stayed in circulation for decades.
More recent research has questioned whether Yoritomo-Tashi was a real historical author at all. A scholarly study of the figure’s reception describes Yoritomo-Tashi as a supposed Japanese philosopher introduced through the editorial work of B. Dangennes, identified as a pseudonym of the French self-help writer Berthe Blanchard, who died in 1940.
So readers usually meet this name in two ways at once: as the credited voice behind concise advice on judgment, confidence, and personal influence, and as part of a fascinating literary puzzle from the history of popular psychology and self-help publishing.