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Hi I recently bought a beautifully carved printing block and have since printed off onto paper, can anyone translate it please?
Thank you

I can't help with the translation. It's from a book, which could be a novel or some other text. It is actually page 5, or what should perhaps be more correctly called 'sheet' 5.

Bound into the book, this sheet would be folded in half, with the printed side on the outside, and the crease running in the middle of the empty column in the centre.

This sheet would then have been collated with the other sheets, then bound between a paper cover and stitched in a traditional pattern like the book below.

As the book opens left to right, the right hand 'page' of your sheet is to be read first.

Sorry, I confused myself. Of course, the left hand page would be read first.

Japanese, if you are not already aware of this. The script seems of fairly low quality, perhaps it is reproducing a manuscript? There is a date at the top of the second column from the left, so presumably the book and your woodblock dates from some point afterward. Unfortunately the date refers to an event in the 10th century, so I'm afraid that gets you pretty much nowhere. I find it strange however that the kanji (the Chinese characters adopted by the Japanese) are each accompanied by furigana (the pronunciation of the kanji written in hiragana as an aid). Usually that is done for children's books; furigana usually only appears in adult reading materials to help with a particularly obscure character (which is not the case here).

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