Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku 2017011863, 2017028875, 9789004344310, 9789004343054

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Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku

Brill’s Japanese Studies Library Edited by Joshua Mostow (Managing Editor) Caroline Rose Kate Wildman Nakai

Volume 58

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bjsl

Parody, Irony and Ideology in the Fiction of Ihara Saikaku By

David J. Gundry

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Little Yonosuke uses his telescope. Waseda University Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gundry, David J. author. Title: Parody, irony and ideology in the fiction of Ihara Saikaku / by David  J. Gundry. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Brill’s Japanese  studies library ; volume 58 | Includes bibliographical references and  index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017011863 (print) | LCCN 2017028875 (ebook) | ISBN  9789004344310 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004343054 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ihara, Saikaku, 1642–1693—Criticism and interpretation. |  Parody. | Irony in literature. Classification: LCC PL794.Z5 (ebook) | LCC PL794.Z5 G86 2017 (print) | DDC  895.63/32—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011863

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0925-6512 isbn 978-90-04-34305-4 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34431-0 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

For Conán Dean Carey

⸪

Contents Acknowledgments xi List of Illustrations xiv Introduction 1 The Dawn of Publishing in Tokugawa Japan 4 Literary Precedents 4 Literary Career, Reception 5 Translations and Scholarship 8 Aims of This Study 12 Setting the Scene: Preliminary Observations 14 Social Hierarchy, Censorship and Sumptuary Edicts 14 Defining (Saikaku’s) Parody 20 Parody, Paradox, Sexuality and Non-Duality 26 Buddhism and “Floating World” Aesthetics 30 The Way of Youths 37 1 Aspirations Above Their Station: The Life of an Amorous Man 40 Introduction 40 Part 1: Haikai, Parody and Social Mobility 45 “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” 45 “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket” 53 “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” 58 “Fresh as First-Picked Tea” 62 Part 2: Brothels High and Low 75 “They Couldn’t Recognize a Stylish Man” 75 “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction” 78 Part 3: A Love with Illustrious Precedents: Shudō in Amorous Man 84 “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower” 85 “The Bedding in a Clay Hut” 91 “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream” 96 Part 4: The Plight of Women and of (Male and Female) Prostitutes 99 The Roving Libertine 99 “A Secret Stash of Cash” 103 “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am’ ” 108

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Part 5: Sailing Out 110 “Dolls from the Capital” 110 The Enlightened Libertine 115

2 Chōnin High and Low: Five Women Who Loved Love 117 Introduction 117 “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji” 118 “The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love” 129 “What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker” 135 “The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love” 145 “Gengobei, the Mountain of Love” 150 3 Paragons of Wickedness: Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan 159 Introduction 159 Brothel Quarter Wastrels 165 A Serial Divorcée: “Her Trousseau Held in a Battered Trunk” 167 Charismatic Villains 171 “A Fine Kettle of Fish” 171 “I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk” 178 The Duty to Procreate 183 “Girls and Cherry Blossoms Fallen in Their Prime” 183 “Competitive Storytelling Was His New Amusement” 187 “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength” 190 4 The Brave, the Bad and the Ridiculous: Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior 197 Introduction 197 Part 1: Samurai Behaving Badly 203 “Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion” 203 “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer” 208 “A Swordsman Struck Down with Poisoned Saké” 213 “He Took Her, Sight Unseen, Then Ran Amok on Their Wedding Night” 216 “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand” 219 Part 2: Shudō High and Low 225 “Women Who Played the Bamboo Flute with Secret Intent” 225 “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa” 231

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“Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar” 238 “A Youth in His Prime, Splendid as the Bush Clover in Miyagino” 242 “ ’Tis Pity His Forelocks Have Scattered before the Wind off Mt. Hakone” 244 “Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One Would Expect to Hear the Pounding of a Stone Mortar Instead” 246 “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love” 250 “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama” 256 Samurai and Chōnin 261

Afterword 263 Bibliography 269 Index 278

Acknowledgments The research that became the foundation of this book was conducted with support from Stanford University, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Japan Foundation and the US Department of Education. I am deeply thankful to all of these organizations for their assistance, as well as to Harvard University’s College Fellows Program and Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, which provided me with a congenial and stimulating environment in which to conduct research during my first year after graduation, and to the University of California, Davis, which has granted funds enabling me to further develop research begun in graduate school. Moreover, I am greatly indebted to William Fleming and Yale’s Council on East Asian Studies, Brenda Deen Schildgen and the Reception Studies Working Group at UC Davis, Alan Templeton, sponsor of UC Davis’s Templeton Colloquium in Art History, Katharine P. Burnett and UC Davis’s East Asian Studies Program, Steven D. Carter and Stanford’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Homi K. Bhabha and the Humanities Center at Harvard, as well as the organizers of the Asian Studies Conference Japan, the Early Modern Japan Network, the International Conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies, and the Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Conference in East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield for providing me with forums in which to present and discuss my research. I would also like to offer heartfelt thanks to my dissertation advisor at Stanford, Steven D. Carter, my research advisor at Waseda University, the late Taniwaki Masachika, and my project advisor at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, Ōtake Hiroko, for being so generous toward me with their wisdom and their time, as well as to the members of my dissertation committee James Reichert, Indra Levy, Yoshiko Matsumoto and Carl W. Bielefeldt for their thoughtful comments on my writing. In addition to intellectual companionship and numerous kindnesses over the years, Stanford and Berkeley friends Ian MacDonald, Sujatha Meegama, Molly Vallor and Nikhil Kamat all gave me indispensable help during the final phase of my dissertation project, for which I am profoundly grateful, as I am to Edwin A. Cranston, Brenda Deen Schildgen, Chia-ning Chang, Katharine P. Burnett, Yuming He, Chunjie Zhang and Cory Blandford for advice and moral support since graduation. Nakajima Takashi, who kindly provided me with guidance and instruction during my days as a visiting researcher at Waseda, has since then as well shown me great hospitality that has helped me continue to think of Waseda as my academic home in Japan. The warm welcome given me by Carl Freire, Mohan

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Nadig and Max Neoustroev during my research trips back to Tokyo has also helped make these excursions both pleasant and productive. The evident esprit de corps of the graduate students in Stanford’s Japanese program was a key factor in my decision to join their ranks, and they have shown me kindnesses too numerous to mention both during my doctoral studies and since. In addition to the Cardinals mentioned above, Andre Haag and Roberta Strippoli stand out for providing me with incisive commentary on, respectively, portions of this book and grant applications that proved pivotal in the pursuit of this project. It was thanks to the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program and the Ōtsu City Board of Education that I was first able to study Japanese language and culture in depth, and I am very grateful to these organizations and their members for their hospitality and guidance during my three years on JET. I also wish to express my thanks to the faculty and staff of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at UC Santa Barbara, especially to John Nathan and Hsiao-jung Yu and above all to my thesis advisor, Robert Backus, who counseled me on fine points of semantics and argumentation and tirelessly led me through the intricacies of various forms of classical Japanese and kanbun. The Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies provided training essential to the completion of this book; long may the IUC prosper! I also greatly appreciate the research help I have received from Daniel Goldstein, Adam Siegel and Elmyra Appel of the UC Davis Library, and from Toshie Marra and Sachiko Iwabuchi of UC Berkeley’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library. A version of parts of the Introduction and Chapter 1 is featured in my article “Hierarchy, Hubris, and Parody in Ihara Saikaku’s Kōshoku ichidai otoko,” published in The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer 2017). An earlier version of portions of the Introduction and of Chapter 4 appeared in “Samurai Lovers, ‘Samurai Beasts’: Warriors and Commoners in Ihara Saikaku’s Way of the Warrior Tales,” in Japanese Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2 (September 2015), pp. 151–68. I greatly appreciate the editorial services provided by David Kelly for both the JS article and this book; he has always demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of the subject area and a keen sense for le mot juste. I continue to marvel at the benevolence shown me by Stanford, which is extraordinarily generous to its doctoral students and allows them remarkable freedom, and by Waseda, whose generosity and hospitality toward visiting researchers is known far and wide. 早稲田幸せだ。 Die Luft der Freiheit weht. I am especially grateful to the staffs of Waseda’s International Office, of Waseda STEP 21 and of the Japan Foundation’s offices in Tokyo, who quickly made me

Acknowledgments

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feel at home in that enormous city, as well as to Stanford’s Louise Freeman and Connie Chin for their able management of the logistical issues involved in doctoral studies split between the Stanford campus and host institutions in Japan, Taiwan and Germany. Last but not least I wish to thank my parents, Patricia Smith Gundry and Stanley N. Gundry, for their support as I have worked on this project and for the combined wisdom of these two accomplished writers and publishing industry veterans, which I have continuously drawn upon while writing this book.

List of Illustrations 1 “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket” 55 2 “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction” 80 3 “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower” 86 4 “The Bedding in a Clay Hut” 93 5 “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream” 97 6 “Her Water-Comb a Memento” 101 7 “A Secret Stash of Cash” 105 8 “Dolls from the Capital” 114 9 Lion dance, “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji” 126 10 Osen’s hair comes undone 133 11 Moemon and Osan’s boat ride 140 12 Buntazaemon attacked by wild dogs 166 13 Goemon and son boiled in oil 176 14 Kogin murders her mistress 180 15 “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength” 193 16 “Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion” 206 17 “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer” 209 18 Zuimu prepares to kill Ichihashi 222 19 Muranosuke meets Kogō 226 20 Ganmu serenaded 234 21 “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama” 258

Introduction The history of popular fiction in early-modern Japan begins with the development of a publishing industry to serve the new readership formed by the bourgeoisie1 and samurai of Japan’s major cities during the period of rapid urban growth that followed the year 1600, when the Tokugawa shogunate brought a decisive end to nearly a century and a half of intermittent civil war. Commercial printing of texts such as Heian-period aristocratic fiction and essays, anthologies of court poetry, nō dramas, warrior epics and folk tales that had thitherto been copied by hand now became widely available to those with money to pay for them. This paved the way for parodies of works in various genres, which soon constituted a key product of the new book trade.2 During the same period, composition and reading of haikai no renga, a linked-verse genre that both appropriates the tropes and devices of Japanese court poetry and flouts its genteel rules of diction, became a popular pastime among both samurai and educated commoners. In 1682 a leading haikai poet of the Danrin school, Ihara Saikaku3 (1642–1693), based in Osaka, turned his attention to fiction and wrote the bestselling4 Kōshoku ichidai otoko5 (The Life of an Amorous Man), which literary scholars later posited as the founding work of the ukiyozōshi or “floating world fiction” genre, a category encompassing 1  For the sake of comparison, alongside the Japan-specific “chōnin” I also use the transnational terms “bourgeois” and “bourgeoisie” to refer to prosperous chōnin. (See Howard Hibbett, The Floating World in Japanese Fiction [New York: Oxford University Press, 1959], pp. 10, 27, 48; Richard Lane, “Saikaku and Boccaccio: The Novella in Japan and Italy,” Monumenta Nippo­ nica, Vol. 15, No. 1/2 [April–July 1959], pp. 93–94; Gary P. Leupp, Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], pp. 58– 60; Paul Varley, Japanese Culture [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000], pp. 164–204.) 2   Hasegawa Tsuyoshi, “Kinsei shōsetsu no tenkai: Kanazōshi kara Saikaku tōjō made,” Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshō, Vol. 58, No. 8 (1993), pp. 18–19. 3  The pen name of Hirayama Tōgo. 4  Donald Keene writes, “The Life of an Amorous Man […] sold about one thousand copies in its first printing, a best seller for those days” (Donald Keene, World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600–1867 [New York: Columbia University Press, 1999], p. 173). We do not have sales figures for the book during the decades after it was first published, but it merited repeated print runs into the eighteenth century in both Edo and the Kyoto-Osaka region. As for the sales of Saikaku’s works in general, a major bookshop in Osaka that stayed in business into the nineteenth century first came to thrive by producing and selling Saikaku’s works alone (Nakajima Takashi, Saikaku to Genroku media: Sono sen­ ryaku to tenkai [Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 2011], pp. 144–45). 5  “Ichidai” (“一代”) refers to the fact that the title character leaves no (unabandoned) progeny.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004344310_002

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Introduction

the bulk of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Japanese fiction.6 An episodic novel7 recounting the erotic adventures of the scion of a wealthy 6  Regarding Saikaku’s reasons for venturing into fiction writing, Robert Lyons Danly writes, “Scholars generally agree that Saikaku had taken his brand of haikai about as far as it could go. He was stymied.” He also speculates that disarray in the Danrin school after the death of its leader, Nishiyama Sōin (1605–1682), may have contributed to Saikaku’s decision, and presents Saikaku’s long, solo haikai linked-verse compositions as a sort of transition between haikai poetry he wrote for linked-verse sequences composed in a group and Saikaku’s haikaiesque fiction. Sasaki Akio perceives in Saikaku’s move from group composition of haikai linked verse to individual composition (dokugin) of the same as rooted in a desire for greater freedom to express himself and to depict the world in all its diversity, and remarks that Saikaku subsequently chose to write fiction in order to focus more directly and exclusively on “the world of human beings.”  In contrast, noting that in 1682 Saikaku’s poetic career was going strong, and that for the rest of his life he took pride in his status as a haikai master, Nakajima Takashi states that we do not know why he chose at that time to expand his activities into another field. However, after quoting Taniwaki Masachika’s assertion that Saikaku had no intention of bidding farewell to haikai, made no conscious effort to overcome its formal restrictions by a shift to prose, and began writing The Life of an Amorous Man “in a very carefree manner,” Nakajima states that whatever his motive for writing Amorous Man, Saikaku possessed a thorough knowledge of Osaka’s publishing media and approached the book’s publication with careful deliberation. (Robert Lyons Danly, In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life and Writings of Higuchi Ichiyō, A Woman of Letters in Meiji Japan [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981], pp. 113–18; Sasaki Akio, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu: Saikaku to Akinari [Tokyo: Kanrin Shobō, 2014], pp. 71–72; Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 114–15.) 7  I use the word “novel” as applying to any long, fictional narrative written at least largely in prose. First of all, I apply the term to Saikaku’s longer narratives to facilitate comparison with early bourgeois fiction in other cultures and to avoid the ex post facto kanazōshi/ukiyozōshi distinction that Laura Moretti rightly calls into question. I do not use the term in order to locate Saikaku’s fiction in the sort of teleological narrative of Japanese literary development toward the novel or novelness that Moretti seeks to undo. (Laura Moretti, “Kanazōshi Revisited: The Beginnings of Japanese Popular Literature in Print,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 65, No. 2 [2010], pp. 297–356; see also Keene, World Within Walls, p. 149.)  M. M. Bakhtin writes, “[…] The experts have not managed to isolate a single definite, stable characteristic of the novel–without adding a reservation, which immediately disqualifies it altogether as a generic characteristic.” Indeed, different scholars and writers working in European languages choose different qualities as the sine qua non of novelness. Significantly for this study, key novelistic qualities privileged by Bakhtin and Milan Kundera, both of whose work I engage with, are present in Saikaku’s fiction. However, both Bakhtin and Kundera present the novel as a distinctly European phenomenon. One of the goals of this study is to demonstrate that in important ways their models of novelistic discourse apply to the works of at least one early-modern author writing well outside of the European cultural sphere, but also under socio-historical circumstances that had important points in common

Introduction

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merchant family, The Life of an Amorous Man deftly blends realistic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the metropolitan and provincial scenes with quotations drawn from nō dramas and Japanese court poetry as well as parodic allusions to the classics of courtly romance Tales of Ise and The Tale of Genji. This and other Saikaku works differ from Japanese fiction written earlier in his century in their narrative complexity and virtuoso wordplay,8 and his subsequent fictional works explore a wide range of contemporary topics and social contexts. The goal of this study is to examine the peculiar mixtures of subject matter, of narrative voices and of styles that make up the texture of Saikaku’s fiction, as well as its relation to a socio-historical context characterized by great de facto social mobility and cultural ferment at odds with a legally imposed system of hereditary status categories. To that end I focus on a selection of works that reflects the broad scope of Saikaku’s œuvre, highlighting commonalities among them while simultaneously striving to capture their diversity. Chief among the commonalities I explore are a dialogic quality involving both the blending of the elements listed above and the existence within individual texts of competing ethical stances. From this mixture of voices emerges a prevailing ethos that privileges the period’s de facto money-based social hierarchy, in which commoners could rank high, over the Tokugawa shogunate’s official social order based on hereditary status-group, according to which, in theory, the wealthiest chōnin (urban commoner) owed utter deference to even the poorest samurai. with those that Bakhtin links to the emergence of the European novel. (I should note here that despite the cultural and geographic perimeter that Bakhtin draws around the novel, he adopts a broader definition of the genre than many others do: whereas some Western scholars place its origin in Golden-Age Spain, Bakhtin, with some reservations, refers to the Greek romances and Roman adventure narratives of late antiquity, as well as medieval European chivalric romances, as novels.) Accordingly, in addition to the reasons given above, I find it useful to adopt a broad definition of the novel that includes Saikaku’s longer works of fiction in order to provide a common frame of reference with Bakhtin and Kundera, and because I aim to counter discourses of European and Japanese exceptionalism (including this aspect of Bakhtin’s and Kundera’s arguments). (Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” pp. 4–11, 20–24, 38–40; “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,” pp. 55, 60–70, 76–78, 82; “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel,” pp. 86–158; “Discourse in the Novel,” pp. 261–64, 272–73, 291, 301, 366–67, 410, 414–15, 418, all in M. M. Bakhtin, trans. Caryl Emerson, Michael Holquist, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981]; Milan Kundera, L’art du roman [Paris: Gallimard, 1986], pp. 16–18, 25; Milan Kundera, trans. Linda Asher, The Art of the Novel [New York: Grove Press, 1986], pp. 6–7, 13–14.) 8  Haruo Shirane, ed., introductions, and commentary, Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 43.

4

Introduction

The Dawn of Publishing in Tokugawa Japan

The emergence of commercial publishing in Japan coincides closely with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. Kyoto was the first center of the book trade, with the name of the first identifiable commercial publisher in Japan recorded in a book published there in 1608. From Kyoto the industry spread to Edo, by at least the 1660s, and to Osaka; the earliest book definitely known to have been produced there was a collection of haikai poetry published in 1671. Most publishers were also involved in the retail aspect of the trade, engaging in the sale and lending of books through both shops and peddlers. The extent to which books were available outside of the urban areas centered on early-Tokugawa Japan’s three great cities is unclear, but the diary of a resident of Wakayama9 covering the years 1642–1697 indicates that at least in that castle town there were several booksellers by the 1660s, as well as visits by booksellers from Kyoto and Osaka.10 Whatever the level of book distribution in the provinces, by the mid-seventeenth century, residents of Edo and the Kamigata11 cities had access to an unprecedented selection of books,12 a state of affairs that provided the widelyread public necessary for the commercial success of highly allusive fiction like Ihara Saikaku’s. Furthermore, the apparent concentration of paying readers in these three urban centers helps to explain the regional biases of Saikaku’s narratives, in which people and places far removed from the three great metropolitan areas are frequently portrayed as backward yokels.

Literary Precedents

Despite the modern convention of treating Amorous Man as representing a radical break from fiction produced up to that time, from early in the seventeenth century fictional works were written that in one way or another prefigured the content and style of Saikaku’s stories and novels, such as the mixing 9  A castle town southwest of Osaka, capital of the Kii domain during the Tokugawa period. 10  Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001), pp. 173–75, 197, 200; Kira Sueo, “Haikaishi to shite no Saikaku,” Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshō, Vol. 58, No. 8 (1993), p. 27. 11  The Kyoto-Osaka region. 12  Kornicki, The Book in Japan, p. 175; for an overview of early-Tokugawa book publishing, see also Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 33–35.

Introduction

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of language drawn from earlier literature, as in the pastiche of Tales of Ise, The Tale of the Heike and other Heian-period and medieval texts in Usuyuki mono­ gatari (The Tale of Usuyuki, c. 1615),13 or the parodying of literary classics, as in Nise monogatari (Fake Tales, c. 1639), a sendup of Tales of Ise.14 Travel literature combining guidebook-like descriptions with a fictional framework, such as Asai Ryōi’s Tōkaidō meishoki (Famous Sights of the Tōkaidō, 1659),15 may have served as a model for the many travelogue-like sequences in Saikaku’s fiction, such as the accounts of Yonosuke’s incessant wanderings in Amorous Man.

Literary Career, Reception

As stated earlier, it was in haikai poetry rather than fiction that Saikaku first made a name for himself. Born into an affluent merchant family in Osaka in 1642, he began composing haikai at the age of fifteen, such that the portion of his literary career in which he was known solely as a poet was far longer than that during which he published fiction, which began with the publication of Amorous Man in 1682 and lasted until Saikaku’s death in 1693. Saikaku’s wife died when he was twenty-five, upon which he took the tonsure, retired from managing his family’s business and devoted himself to literary pursuits.16 Associated first with the Teimon school of haikai and subsequently with the rival, stylistically more adventurous Danrin school, he gained renown through high-speed virtuoso performances of on-the-spot composition, starting in 1666 with a sequence of one thousand verses composed in about twelve hours in the form of a requiem for his recently deceased wife, and working up to a

13   Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 150–52; Joshua S. Mostow, “The Tale of Light Snow: pastiche, epistolary fiction and narrativity verbal and visual,” Japan Forum, Vol. 21, No. 3 (2009), p. 364. 14  Howard Hibbett, “Saikaku and Burlesque Fiction,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1/2 (1957), pp. 55–56; Shinoda Jun’ichi, Nise monogatari e: E to bun • bun to e (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1995), pp. 6–11; Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 22–26; Suematsu Masako, “Nise monogatari kō—tenkyo o motsu shōdan o itoguchi to shite,” Yamaguchi kokubun, Vol. 28 (2005), pp. 1–10. 15  Keene, World Within Walls, p. 153. 16  Chris Drake, “Introduction,” in Ihara Saikaku, trans. Chris Drake, John Solt, Lucy North, Excerpts from Life of a Sensuous Man, An Episodic Festschrift for Howard Hibbett, Epi­ sode 25 (Hollywood: Highmoonoon, 2010), pp. 22–23.

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Introduction

session lasting one day and one night in 1677 during which he produced sixteen thousand verses.17 The commercial success of the fiction Saikaku wrote in the last eleven years of his life is attested to by the fact that five volumes of stories attributed to him were published with titles beginning with his name (one during his lifetime and four posthumously, with parts of the latter of uncertain authorship),18 presumably to use Saikaku’s popularity to boost sales. His prolific fictional output is nowadays usually divided into kōshokumono (erotic tales), chōninmono (townsman tales), in which the economic aspect of urban commoners’ lives receives special emphasis, bukemono (warrior tales) and miscellaneous fiction. These categories are problematic due to their ex post facto nature, the diversity of works within individual categories, and the thematic and stylistic overlaps among them. For example, the love affairs of samurai characters figure prominently in works assigned to both the bukemono and kōshokumono categories, and both the generally carefree Amorous Man and the much darker Kōshoku gonin onna (Five Women Who Loved Love, 1686) are put in the latter category. For this reason I have focused on the specific qualities of the works themselves rather than on conventions of categorization in selecting a group of texts I deem illustrative of the great variety in Saikaku’s fiction. After enjoying great popularity during Saikaku’s lifetime and serving as a model to Japanese fiction writers for decades thereafter,19 Saikaku’s fiction appears to have fallen from favor with readers in the late Tokugawa period,20 only to be resurrected in the late 1880s by Japanese writers and intellectuals looking for a homegrown “realist” author they could hold up as a peer to the European

17  Munemasa Isō, “Haikaishi kara ukiyozōshi sakusha e,” in Asano Akira, Kira Sueo, Taniwaki Masachika, Hara Michio, Munemasa Isō, eds., Genroku bungaku no kaika I: Saikaku to Genroku no shōsetsu (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1992), pp. 55–57; Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 43–45; Earl Miner, Hiroko Odagiri, Robert E. Morrell, The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 167–68. 18  Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 205, 211; Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, p. 159. 19  Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 3, 144–47, 180–84; Nakajima Takashi, “Saikaku to ‘kōshokubon’ no bibincho,” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Vol. 4 (November 2010), pp. 148–50; Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 211–28. 20  Haruo Shirane, “Curriculum and Competing Canons,” in Haruo Shirane, Tomi Suzuki, eds., Inventing the Classics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 245. For a discussion of one piece of anecdotal evidence of this decline in popularity, see Jonathan Zwicker, Practices of the Sentimental Imagination: Melodrama, the Novel and the Social Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), p. 163.

Introduction

7

novelists who made such a splash in this milieu during the Meiji period.21 At this time Saikaku’s works were again taken as models, by fiction writers such as Higuchi Ichiyō, the members of the Ken’yūsha coterie, and those associated with Japanese Naturalism.22 Those who did not have access to Edo-period editions of Saikaku’s stories and novels had to contend with the censorship to which they were subjected from the Meiji period until the end of World War II.23 Postwar high school textbooks avoid Saikaku’s racier fare, but contain ample selections from more chaste works such as Saikaku shokokubanashi (Tales from the Provinces, 1685), and the chōninmono Nippon eitaigura (The Eternal Storehouse of Japan, 1688) and Seken mune san’yō (Worldly Mental Calculations, 1692).24 One could speculate that this emphasis in postwar school curricula on the latter two works, which depict a civilian, commerce-driven milieu rather than the world of samurai portrayed in works such as Budō denraiki (Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior, 1687) and Buke giri monogatari (Tales of Samurai Honor, 1688), is in part due to a perception that they accord more closely with the ethos of the new demilitarized, consumerist Japan. In criticism 21  Brian C. Dowdle has recently problematized narratives characterizing the Meiji-period revival in interest in Saikaku’s writings as a nationalist reaction to Westernization (Brian C. Dowdle, “Why Saikaku Was Memorable but Bakin Was Unforgettable,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1 [Winter 2016], pp. 91–121). 22  Haruo Shirane, “Issues in Canon Formation,” in Shirane, Suzuki, Inventing the Classics, p. 7; Shirane, “Curriculum and Competing Canons,” p. 245. Richard Lane also writes of Saikaku’s fiction as realistic (Lane, “Saikaku and Boccaccio,” pp. 89, 111). Someya Tomoyuki argues that this latter-day conception of Saikaku as a realist has distorted critical perceptions of Saikaku’s œuvre ever since by causing a neglect of aspects of his fictional works at odds with this characterization, such as their typically idealistic portrayal of erotic relationships between males (Someya Tomoyuki, Saikaku shōsetsu ron: Taishōteki kōzō to “Higashi Ajia” e no shikai [Tokyo: Kanrin Shobō, 2005], pp. 9–14. The coexistence of idealistic and realistic elements in Saikaku’s fiction will be addressed in the afterword to this study. 23  Based on a comment by Taniwaki Masachika, demonstrated to me by Prof. Taniwaki with editions from the period in question, one of which he kindly gave me: Saikaku meisaku shū, Vol. 1–2 (Tokyo: Nihon Meicho Shū Kankō Kai, 1929). In it entire blocks of text are simply left blank, eliminating such passages as that describing the courtesan Yoshino’s seduction of a bashful customer in Kōshoku ichidai otoko (Vol. 1, page 76 in this edition). The punctuation is left in, however, apparently as a guide to those who would fill in the missing pieces, which in some cases could be obtained separately, as demonstrated to me by Prof. Taniwaki with a book into which slips of paper bearing censored lines had been pasted. Illustrations were also censored. 24  Shirane, “Curriculum and Competing Canons,” pp. 245–46.

8

Introduction

and scholarship as well, Ihara Saikaku has mainly been associated with chōnin culture, and those of his tales focusing on samurai characters have received less critical attention and favor than the rest of his œuvre.25

Translations and Scholarship

From the 1970s up to today a tremendous amount of philological work on Saikaku’s voluminous and notoriously difficult fiction has been done by Japanese scholars. Amorous Man, widely acknowledged as the most chal­lenging Saikaku text, is nearly incomprehensible without annotations, which explain vocabulary particular to its time as well as the densely packed, often parodic literary allusions that are sometimes the entire point of an otherwise unremarkable passage. In the past few decades prominent Saikaku scholars such as, to name just a few, Taniwaki Masachika, Maeda Kingorō, Matsuda Osamu, and Teruoka Yasutaka have divided their efforts between annotative and critical work. Taniwaki uses a historicist approach that often involves inferring authorial intent by considering biographical, historical, and literary-historical factors, such as in his persuasive argument that in Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Saikaku wrote of contemporary conditions but set his stories in the earlier Sengoku period in order to avoid the wrath of the Tokugawa authorities, and that he also deliberately left in anachronisms that would let readers know what he was up to.26 I have depended heavily on Maeda Kingorō’s massively annotated editions of Amorous Man27 and Five Women,28 in which he collects commentaries on specific words and passages by a number of scholars as well as his own, supplementing them with essays analyzing the works within their historical and literary-historical contexts. Matsuda Osamu wrote a large number of reflective short essays on a wide variety of pre- and early-modern cultural topics ranging from junshi (committing ritual suicide to follow one’s lord in death) to tattooing, including many on Saikaku’s fiction. In addition to his critical and annotative work, Teruoka Yasutaka published a complete set

25  Keene, World Within Walls, p. 190; Fujie Mineo, “Buke giri monogatari,” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Vol. 1 (June 2006), p. 192; Miner, Odagiri, Morrell, Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature, pp. 167–68; Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 12–14. 26  Taniwaki Masachika, “Saikaku no jishu kisei to kamufurāju: Ichiō no sōkatsu to kongo no kadai,” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Vol. 1 (June 2006), pp. 117–31. 27  Maeda Kingorō, Kōshoku ichidai otoko zen chūshaku (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1981). 28  Maeda Kingorō, Kōshoku gonin onna zen chūshaku (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1992).

Introduction

9

of modern Japanese translations of Saikaku’s fiction,29 adding to an already considerable number of such translations. To give just a sampling of critical writing on Saikaku’s fiction published since the turn of the millennium, Nakajima Takashi has used a Media Studies approach, seeking to analyze texts by Saikaku and other early-Tokugawa writers in the context of the period’s developments in communications ­technology.30 Someya Tomoyuki’s sweeping Saikaku shōsetsu ron: Taishōteki kōzō to “Higashi Ajia” e no shikai (Saikaku’s Fiction: Contrasting Structures and a View Toward “East Asia”) examines Saikaku’s fictional œuvre in the context of roughly contemporaneous fiction produced in Korea and China, seeks to rehabilitate the reputation of Saikaku’s samurai-focused stories, and redresses the longstanding perception of Saikaku’s fiction as “realist” by emphasizing its idealistic and romantic aspects. Criticism of Saikaku’s fiction by Sasaki Akio uses a Comparative Literature approach, analyzing, for example, the depiction of erotic love in Saikaku alongside that of seventeenth-century French ­literature.31 Sugimoto Tsutomu has produced a close examination of Saikaku’s prose style, focusing on its blend of linguistic registers, its particular vocabulary, and its use of literary allusion.32 Beginning with William Theodore de Bary’s 1956 translation of Kōshoku gonin onna (1686) as Five Women Who Loved Love,33 nine major fictional works by Saikaku have been translated into English, the remainder being Nippon eitaigura (1688) by G. W. Sargent as The Japanese Family Storehouse (1959),34 Kōshoku ichidai onna (1686) by Ivan Morris as The Life of an Amorous Woman (1963),35 Kōshoku ichidai otoko (1682) by Kengi Hamada as The Life of an Amorous Man (1963),36 Seken mune san’yō (1692) by Masanori Takatsuka and David C. Stubbs as This Scheming World (1965),37 and by Ben Befu as Worldly 29  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Teruoka Yasutaka, Gendaigoyaku Saikaku zenshū (Tokyo: Shōga­ kukan, 1976–1977). 30  Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media. 31  Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 49–70. 32  Sugimoto Tsutomu, Ihara Saikaku to Nihongo no sekai (Tokyo: Sairyūsha, 2012). 33  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Wm. Theodore de Bary, Five Women Who Loved Love (Rutland: Tuttle, 1956). 34  Ihara Saikaku, trans. G. W. Sargent, The Japanese Family Storehouse (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959). 35  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Ivan Morris, The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings (New York: New Directions, 1963). 36  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Kengi Hamada, The Life of an Amorous Man (Rutland: Tuttle, 1963). 37  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Masanori Takatsuka, David C. Stubbs, This Scheming World (Rutland: Tuttle, 1965).

10

Introduction

Mental Calculations (1976),38 Saikaku okimiyage (1693) partially translated by Robert Leutner as “Saikaku’s Parting Gift” (in Monumenta Nipponica, 1975),39 Saikaku oridome (1694) by Peter Nosco as Some Final Words of Advice (1980),40 Buke giri monogatari (1688) by Caryl Ann Callahan as Tales of Samurai Honor (1981),41 and Nanshoku ōkagami (1687) by Paul Gordon Schalow as The Great Mirror of Male Love (1990).42 Hamada’s translation of Amorous Man, while highly readable, is abridged, very free, and (perhaps necessarily so at the time of publication) expurgated, so it is of limited use for students of Japanese literature. Chris Drake’s translations of three chapters from the novel, included in Haruo Shirane’s Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 along with other selections from Saikaku’s œuvre, are a better place to start for those interested in Saikaku’s first work of fiction.43 In contrast to this wealth of translations, Western scholarship on Saikaku’s fiction is surprisingly scarce. Richard Lane’s 1957 dissertation “Saikaku: Novelist of the Japanese Renaissance” chronologically treats the full range of Saikaku’s works using a combination of biographical, humanist and aesthetic-critical approaches. His assessment of Saikaku’s fictional œuvre, including his portrayals of samurai, is high, and he goes so far as to refer to Saikaku as a “philosophic novelist.” As its title implies, Lane’s study links Saikaku and his fiction to Western authors, ranking him alongside Boccaccio, Rabelais and Defoe, and describes the Genroku period, during which Saikaku wrote, as a sort of truncated Renaissance. He also attributes an individualist and egalitarian sensibility to the author.44

38  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Ben Befu, Worldly Mental Calculations: An Annotated Translation of Ihara Saikaku’s Seken munezan’yō (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976). 39   Robert Leutner, “Saikaku’s Parting Gift: Translations from Saikaku’s Okimiyage,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 30 (1975), pp. 357–91. 40  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Peter Nosco, Some Final Words of Advice (Rutland: Tuttle, 1980). 41  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Caryl Ann Callahan, Tales of Samurai Honor (Tokyo: Monumenta Nipponica Monograph, 1981). 42  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Paul Gordon Schalow, The Great Mirror of Male Love (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). 43  Ihara Saikaku, trans. Chris Drake, Life of a Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 45–57; see also the excerpts translated in Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, as well as Gérard Siary’s full French translation (Ihara Saikaku, trans. Gérard Siary [with the collaboration of Mieko Nakajima-Siary], L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer [Arles: Éditions Philippe Picquier, 2015]). 44  Richard Douglas Lane, “Saikaku: Novelist of the Japanese Renaissance” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1957), pp. 347–48. See also Lane, “Saikaku and Boccaccio,” pp. 111–18.

Introduction

11

In addition to translations of excerpts from Saikaku’s Kōshoku ichidai onna (here translated as “The Woman Who Spent Her Life in Love”), Howard Hibbett’s The Floating World in Japanese Fiction (1959) devotes a chapter to those fictional works of Saikaku that deal primarily with chōnin life and/or the pleasure quarters, and gives these works high marks as representing a fresh departure from the tired formulas of their recent predecessors.45 Donald Keene also dedicates a chapter to Saikaku’s fiction in World Within Walls (1999), where he provides both a concise overview of the full range of these works and evaluations of their literary merit.46 These range from fulsome praise for Five Women, in which he perceives relative emotional depth, to his characterization of Amorous Man as stylistically brilliant but “judged purely in literary terms […] a failure.”47 His overall assessment is that despite its stylistic verve, Saikaku’s fiction lacks the depth he ascribes to the works of the great European novelists, as well as the fully-drawn characterizations of Murasaki Shikibu.48 Jeffrey Johnson’s 1994 dissertation “Novelness in Comical Edo Fiction: A Carnivalesque Reading of Ihara Saikaku’s Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko” draws on a wide range of Western cultural theory, but as the title suggests the theoretical concept around which his study is built is Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque, which Johnson sums up with quotations from Peter Stallybrass: “[The] carnivalesque is a potent, populist, critical inversion of all official words and hierarchies […] Carnival, for Bakhtin, is both a populist utopian vision of the world seen from below and a festive critique, through the inversion of hierarchy, of high culture.”49 With this as a starting point Johnson characterizes Amorous Man, both in its narrative content and its parodic stylistic features, as an egalitarian, iconoclastic, hierarchy-leveling work, and extends this characterization to the rest of Saikaku’s fiction. He covers much of the same ground in his article “Saikaku and the Narrative Turnabout”50 and an essay in Bakhtinian Theory in Japanese Studies, emphasizing what he posits as an anti-hierarchical and comical bent pervasive in Saikaku’s fiction, writing of Saikaku’s fictional

45  Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 36–49. 46  Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 167–215. 47  Keene, World Within Walls, p. 170. 48  Keene, World Within Walls, p. 211. 49  Jeffrey Johnson, “Novelness in Comical Edo Fiction: A Carnivalesque Reading of Ihara Saikaku’s Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko” (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1994), pp. 117–18. 50  Jeffrey Johnson, “Saikaku and the Narrative Turnabout,” The Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2 (2001), pp. 323–45.

12

Introduction

œuvre in general that “his aims were comical,”51 that his “objective is a festive critique,”52 and that he “clearly delighted in overturning all hierarchies, whether the order be that of the quarters or Tokugawa officialdom, received texts or reviews of courtesans.”53 As far as I am aware, Daniel Struve’s Ihara Saikaku: Un romancier japonais du XVIIe siècle (Ihara Saikaku: A Japanese Novelist of the Seventeenth Century, 2001) has until now been the only book-length scholarly publication published in the West that is exclusively devoted to Ihara Saikaku’s fiction. Struve’s book extensively examines the influence of haikai on Saikaku’s fiction, as well as that of the theater. In his account of the development of both haikai and Saikaku’s fiction he places great importance on the concept of gūgen, taken from the Zhuangzi, translatable as “parable” and used in Japan to defend imaginative, non-didactic literature.54 The book’s final section deals with Saikaku’s fiction’s mixing of styles and points of view under the rubric of “the polyphonic novel,” one aspect of which Struve terms a “dialogue of ideologies,” referring to Japan’s multiple, overlapping religious traditions and the respective ideologies of the samurai and the chōnin.

Aims of This Study

In my own study of Saikaku’s fiction I will seek to strike a balance between depth and breadth by providing detailed analyses of four Saikaku texts representing the wide range of subject matter that his works encompass. Amorous Man provides a particularly rich trove of examples of the sorts of wordplay, literary allusions and blending of styles and genres that are also featured, at lesser densities, in the other works. Moreover, it furnishes plentiful examples of narratorial moralizing rendered ironic by the surrounding narrative, which also figures in stories of the other books on which this study focuses. Five Women contains five novellas, each depicting a transgressive love affair involving one of the women in question. As in Amorous Man, eros predominates, with the key difference that these tales are told predominantly from Saikaku’s version of a female point of view, in this case specifically that of chōnin women 51   Jeffrey Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” in Jeffrey Johnson, ed., Bakhtinian Theory in Japanese Studies (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2001), p. 41. 52  Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 42. 53  Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 43. 54  Daniel Struve, Ihara Saikaku: Un romancier japonais du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001).

Introduction

13

who do not work as prostitutes. Pleasure-quarter erotic connoisseurship, and suspicion regarding prostitutes’ sincerity, which are major themes in Amorous Man, are, after the brothel scenes opening Five Women’s first tale, supplanted in importance by the glorification of four of its five heroines as contemporary chōnin heiresses to refined sensibilities rooted in Heian-period court culture, as well as by the question of what consequences erotic assertiveness on the part of “amateur” women will bring. Honchō nijū fukō (Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan, 1686), arguably the most atypical Saikaku text of these four, consists of twenty stories regarding violations, of varying extremes, of the Confucian ethic of filial piety. Stylistically simpler than the other works analyzed here, this collection of ostensibly didactic tales nonetheless features in some of its stories a complex and disturbing moral ambiguity that resonates with similar features in the other three texts on which this study focuses. Budō denraiki (Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior, 1687), a collection of thirty-two samurai vendetta tales, provides particularly dramatic depictions of class conflict and of homosexual55 love affairs and desire; the latter theme figures in the other works examined as well. In addition to aiming for breadth of scope by focusing on these four works, I have chosen three of them partly in order to give exposure to texts for which there is still no English translation available or none that is useful in an academic context, the one exception to this being Five Women. I focus on one work per chapter, highlighting common traits that link these widely divergent texts. Chief among them is a dialogic quality that includes the chōnin, samurai and 55  In this study I apply “homosexual” (adj.) and “homosexuality” to behaviors and their associated sentiments, rather than to persons, a social identity, a psychological condition or a state of being. Gregory Pflugfelder employs the term “male-male sexuality” in order, among other reasons, to avoid bringing modern, Western sexual taxonomies and their conceptual baggage to the premodern Japanese context (Gregory M. Pflugfelder, Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600–1950 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999], pp. 5, 23, 27, 60). For reasons of euphony I follow the lead of those who apply “homosexuality” to shudō while making clear the differences between it and contemporary conceptions of “homosexuality.” (Ihara, Schalow, Great Mirror, pp. 1–46; Leupp, Male Colors, pp. 7–9. For an eloquent defense of the use of the term in the context of late imperial China, see Giovanni Vitiello, The Libertine’s Friend: Homosexuality and Masculinity in Late Imperial China [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011], pp. 13–14.) I treat “homosexuality,” “pederasty”/“age-structured male homosexuality,” “shudō” and the adjectival forms of the first two as terms of ascending specificity all useful for referring to the relationships between males (primarily through pairings of men and youths) that form part of the wide range of erotic experience depicted in Saikaku’s fiction.

14

Introduction

divergent religious voices that Struve mentions, to which I add consideration of other, competing narrative strands, namely, those promoting moral absolutes or moral relativism, those depicting given characters in a positive or a negative light, those expressing the competing points of view of people linked in hierarchical relationships such as prostitutes and clients, and those expressing conflicting feelings of resentment, admiration and contempt on the part of chōnin toward the samurai. In doing so, my aim is to interrogate the claims made for Saikaku’s work as transgressive and iconoclastic, attempting to arrive at a more nuanced account of his place in the cultural discourse of his day. For while in Amorous Man and elsewhere in Saikaku’s fiction there are, to be sure, passages that feature the sort of hierarchy inversions and blurring of social categories to which Johnson refers as carnivalesque, I believe it is an exaggeration to say that either Amorous Man or the other texts I examine here provide evidence that Saikaku delighted in truly “overturning” all hierarchies. For example, the rigid and official hierarchy among the various ranks of prostitutes in the pleasure quarter is never overturned, symbolically or otherwise, or disapproved of by either Amorous Man’s protagonist or its narrator. Furthermore, comic contrasting of coarse provincial prostitutes and their elegant metropolitan counterparts, at the expense of the former, is a prominent feature of Amorous Man, and unflattering portrayals of provincials and rural folk as such are to be found in each of these texts. Moreover, the parody of elite genres that Johnson sees as iconoclastic has a dual function, in some cases symbolically tarnishing the originals, but also demonstrating the parodist’s erudition and flattering the reader who gets the joke, thus reconfirming the value of elite cultural forms. Furthermore, any analysis of Saikaku’s works needs to take into account that the haikai in whose stylistics his parody is rooted is a genre in which samurai were active before it became a chōnin pastime, and which brought members of both groups together, including Saikaku and his haikai master Nishiyama Sōin (1605–1682), who was a samurai.

Setting the Scene: Preliminary Observations

Social Hierarchy, Censorship and Sumptuary Edicts Saikaku’s fiction is noteworthy for the tension between its narrator’s moralistic pronouncements regarding characters’ transgressive behavior and sympathetic, even heroic portrayals of these same characters. The resulting ambiguity has led scholars to radically differing interpretations of the ideological stance of these texts. For example, as noted above, Jeffrey Johnson employs Bakhtin’s

Introduction

15

theory of the carnivalesque56 as he posits a socially egalitarian impulse behind57 and function of Saikaku’s fiction, whereas Howard Hibbett maintains, among other observations in a similar vein, that Saikaku “[did not] question the principle that crimes violating the feudal hierarchical system were especially heinous.”58 Portions of Amorous Man to be examined in Chapter 1 will shed light on the interpretation of this ambiguity in that they feature narrator­ial condemnations of hubristic behavior on the part of characters of commoner status that are undermined by parodic elements in the surrounding narrative that make these chapters guilty of the rhetorical equivalent of that which they condemn: the outrageous redeployment of artifacts of elite culture in ostensibly vulgar contexts. These passages have broad implications for the interpretation of the rest of the novel and other works by Saikaku. This study proposes that rather than evincing, as Hibbett suggests, contentment with or acquiescence to the social hierarchy imposed by the Tokugawa or, as Johnson suggests, an urge to overturn all hierarchy, the passages in question and much of the rest of Saikaku’s fiction partake of a parvenu sensibility informed by a desire to rise in society rather than either to level social distinctions or to seek contentment with one’s lot.59 To support this proposition this study will analyze other portions of Amorous Man and other Saikaku texts that foreground the role of money as a facilitator for the attainment by prosperous chōnin of a cultural sophistication that places them above less-moneyed commoners, as well as passages in which a new social hierarchy based on such sophistication is manifested in the contrasting of metropolitan chōnin refinement with rural or provincial crudity. Given the apparent popularity of Saikaku’s fictional works during and after his lifetime and the many imitations they spawned, their stance with regard to the Tokugawa social order has significance beyond the realm of literary analysis, and can be posited as reflective of a strain of commoner aspirations and

56  In this study I engage with Bakhtin’s essays regarding the role of dialogism, heteroglossia and parody in the development of the European novel, but not with his writings on the carnivalesque. 57  See also Lane, “Saikaku and Boccaccio,” pp. 111–18. 58  Johnson, “Turnabout,” pp. 326, 327, 329, 344; Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 43; Howard Hibbett, The Chrysanthemum and the Fish: Japanese Humor Since the Age of the Shoguns (New York: Kodansha International, 2002), pp. 67–68. 59  In an earlier work, Hibbett does present social climbing as a motivation behind chōnin efforts to become conversant in elite cultural forms, and remarks on the parvenu and arriviste nature of the high-chōnin culture of Saikaku’s day (Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 16–18, 41).

16

Introduction

sensibilities at the time they were first published and avidly read.60 Much of Saikaku’s fiction engages with the discrepancy between the Tokugawa regime’s official, hereditary status-group system and the era’s de facto, fluid status system, in which potentially acquirable advantages such as money and skill in the arts were decisive.61 This de facto status system and the high-chōnin culture it generated receive a generally positive depiction in Saikaku’s fictional works, such as in the passages just mentioned, but their approach to these features of Tokugawa-period society is complicated by occasional appearances of a sternly moralizing narrative voice that condemns, among other transgressions of law and official morality, characters’ attempts to symbolically rise above their status as commoners by means of inappropriately luxurious living and the sacrilegious use of elite cultural products. Saikaku was of course not free to write in a way that would directly challenge sumptuary laws and other official efforts to keep commoners in their place, so it is unsurprising that his fiction periodically pays lip service to the rules and moral underpinnings of the Tokugawa status-group system even as they are undermined elsewhere in the same text. Significantly, sumptuary regulations increased in number and specificity from the mid-seventeenth century. Doi Noritaka writes that the Tokugawa authorities deemed high living by wealthy chōnin not in accord with their status, and that the “thrift edicts” (ken’yakurei) of the shogunate were at first primarily focused on reinforcing the status-group system, evolving into a means of curbing consumer spending as a part of financial policy from the Kyōhō period (1716–1736). According to Doi, under Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (reigned 1680–1709), sumptuary edicts gained in specificity, with the suppression of luxurious clothing especially prominent among regulations aimed at chōnin, including an edict issued by the shogunate in the second month of 1682, the year in which Amorous Man was published, in reaction to the wearing of showy clothing among wealthy chōnin women. Furthermore, Donald Shively singles out the following year as

60  For an examination of the apparently wide and enduring popularity of Saikaku’s fiction in Tokugawa Japan, see Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 3, 144–47, 180–84. 61  In a study of Tokugawa popular culture that focuses primarily on the latter part of the period, Katsuya Hirano observes, “Money […] exerted a corrosive effect on the mechanisms of hierarchy by promoting the dynamic flow and uninhibited interaction of goods, ideas, knowledge, customs and people.” To this I would add that, as I have stated earlier, in Tokugawa Japan money also established a new hierarchy, which is much in evidence in Saikaku’s fiction. (Katsuya Hirano, The Politics of Dialogic Imagination [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014], p. 71.)

Introduction

17

a time of especially prolific legislation in this area, so the book was clearly published at a time of official concern over the ability of money to trump inherited status.62 As will be detailed in Chapter 1, in key passages of Amorous Man featuring descriptions of sumptuous clothing worn by commoners and other examples of extravagance, there is a dialogic tension between the moralizing narrative voice’s condemnations of chōnin hubris and countervailing elements of the narrative that undermine these so powerfully as to make them read as slyly ironic. These elements are manifested in parodic wordplay and literary allusions that recall the techniques of Danrin-school haikai poetry, which frequently transfers materials drawn from elite literature to a non-elite or vulgar context for comic effect, and through which, as noted above, Saikaku first won fame.63 Such passages in Amorous Man are emblematic of the tension between narratorial commentary and the surrounding narrative contents in Saikaku’s fiction, for they establish a pattern of seemingly deliberate equivocation continued in his later works that must have skirted the era’s bounds of acceptable literary discourse.64 62  Donald H. Shively, “Sumptuary Regulation and Status in Early Tokugawa Japan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 25 (1964–1965), pp. 123–64; Doi Noritaka, “Shashi kinshi to ken’yakurei,” Nihon rekishi, Vol. 526 (March 1992), pp. 61–63. See also Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 4, 6–7, 25; Keene, World Within Walls, p. 200; Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 136–37, 245.  As Shively points out, there is a passage in The Eternal Storehouse of Japan expressing approval of sumptuary regulations aimed at preventing commoners from wearing flashy or luxurious clothing (Shively, “Sumptuary Regulation,” pp. 124–27). True to the pattern of equivocation in Saikaku’s fiction, the story, with its meticulous descriptions of various offending garments, reads like an overly detailed condemnation of pornography by someone too interested in that which he condemns. This takes on added significance when one considers the role of fashion in Saikaku’s erotically-themed fiction, in which descriptions of characters of both sexes presented as paragons of attractiveness devote far more attention to clothing and accessories (as well as hair) than to faces or bodies (Ihara Saikaku, Nippon eitaigura, in Taniwaki Masachika, Teruoka Yasutaka, Jinbō Kazuya, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 68: Ihara Saikaku shū 3 [Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996], pp. 39–43; Ihara, Sargent, Family Storehouse, pp. 26–29). A story in Twenty Cases examined in Chapter 3 mentions, without commentary, sumptuary regulation regarding the wearing of dyed cloth (Ihara Saikaku, Honchō nijū fukō, in Munemasa Isō, Teruoka Yasutaka, Matsuda Osamu, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 67: Ihara Saikaku shū 2 [Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996], p. 172). 63  Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, p. 123. 64  Taniwaki, “Saikaku no jishu kisei to kamufurāju,” pp. 117–31; Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 175–80; Hatanaka Chiaki, “Warera wa nanshoku no michi o wakete: ‘Enshutsu’

18

Introduction

Regarding Saikaku’s fiction in general, Jeffrey Johnson insightfully remarks, “A consistent pattern in his work is that the ‘moral’ of a given line, paragraph, or tale is often inverted in the next line, paragraph or tale,” and later in the same essay observes, “The contrast between the focus of the narration itself and the posturing of the narrative voice renders the didactic and moral comments laughable.”65 As for the predominant tone of Amorous Man in particular, Someya Tomoyuki contrasts it with the roughly contemporaneous Korean love narrative A Nine Cloud Dream, which he posits as reflecting the influence of the “rigoristic” Neo-Confucianism that then held sway in Korea, observing that “[…] newness and change, which are the polar opposites of solidity and order, pervade the essence of The Life of an Amorous Man.”66 The qualities Someya observes in Amorous Man further undermine the heavy-handed narratorial moralizing in two key passages from the novel that Chapter 1 will examine closely. One’s take on the moral and social purport of Saikaku’s complexly equivocal fictional works depends largely on the relative importance one perceives in their conflicting elements; I assign great weight to those that, subtle or infrequent as they may be in a given text, seem critical of the samurai, feudal67 de yomu Nanshoku ōkagami,” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Vol. 4 (November 2010), p. 96. Conspicuous examples of tension between narratorial commentary and narrative contents can also be found in Five Women, particularly in its first, third and fifth stories, as well as in Great Mirror of Male Love, as pointed out by Hatanaka in the article cited here. 65  Johnson, “Turnabout,” pp. 336, 341. In a similar vein, regarding Saikaku, Ejima Kiseki and other authors of Genroku fiction, Howard Hibbett finds “their moralizing superficial at best.” He later comments of their works, “While extolling every Confucian virtue, they display hedonistic, materialistic attitudes,” and that they “seldom preach[…] without implying parody, and a bright satirical sketch is often enclosed in a thick Chinese border of Confucian moralizing” (Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 3, 18, 19–22). 66  Kim Man-jung, trans. Richard Rutt, A Nine Cloud Dream, in Richard Rutt, Kim Chong-un, trans., Virtuous Women: Three Classic Korean Novels (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, 1974), pp. 1–171; Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 89. All translations from the Japanese in this study are my own, except in cases where issues regarding others’ translations are discussed. 67  Ōguchi Yūjirō asserts that the power of the shogunate over Japan as a whole compromises the applicability of the term “feudalism” to the political structures of the Tokugawa era. (Ōguchi Yūjirō, “Foreword to the Volume,” in Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Gregory Smits, eds., Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan [Leiden: Brill, 2010], pp. xiii–xiv.) While conceding that there were great differences between the political structures of early-modern Japan and medieval Europe (as there were between various “feudal” societies within Europe), I find the term useful for encapsulating various aspects of the Tokugawa sociopolitical structure, namely, the existence of hereditary status-groups, the inheritance of

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institutions, and Confucian orthodoxy, for their inclusion must have involved some risk to author, printer, and bookseller, and making them more overt or numerous would presumably have carried the danger of upsetting the Tokugawa authorities. Peter Kornicki writes that although book censorship in Tokugawa Japan was not systematized until the 1720s, censorship edicts (which were primarily aimed at guiding the self-censorship of booksellers’ guilds) survive from as early as the 1670s, and the earliest known case of censorship in the period involved a text published in 1649. Kornicki views the public posting in 1682 (the year Amorous Man was published) of a prohibition on “dealing in new books that are unsound” as evidence that by then the Tokugawa authorities “had become sufficiently aware of the power of publishing.”68 Although I agree with Jeffrey Johnson’s perception of irony in much of the narratorial moralizing in Saikaku’s fiction, one of the ostensible aims of which, as adumbrated earlier, is to enforce officially prescribed hierarchies, in contrast to Johnson’s emphasis on the overturning of hierarchies in Saikaku’s fiction, my focus is on its establishment of new hierarchies based on wealth and personal cultivation, as delineated above. A central assertion of this study is that the reigning sensibility of the works it examines is not iconoclastic or egalitarian but rather that of the ambitious and assertive bourgeois who is concerned with social self-advancement rather than with leveling social distinctions. Amorous Man and Saikaku’s subsequent fiction valorize the milieus in which this sensibility reigns, in part by means of references to elite literature that occupy a range of positions on the continuum between obviously comical parody and straightforward allusion, and many of which have the effect of transferring samurai or aristocratic cachet to chōnin social spaces.69 The fact that such literary references become markedly less concentrated in Saikaku’s

rank within the ruling (samurai) status-group, the existence of domains not directly controlled by the shogunate, the emphasis on personal bonds between lord and vassal, and the apparently greater importance of loyalty to one’s immediate superiors than loyalty to a centralized state. 68  Kornicki, The Book in Japan, pp. 331–35. See also Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 19–22; Taniwaki, “Saikaku no jishu kisei to kamufurāju,” p. 117. 69  Taniwaki Masachika writes of how a process of simultaneous “vulgarization of the classical” and “classicization of the vulgar” serves in parts of Amorous Man as a source of comedy, and leaves open the question of whether this constitutes parody (Taniwaki Masachika, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu [Tokyo: Shintensha, 1981], p. 90). See also Struve, Ihara Saikaku, p. 98.

20

Introduction

works after Amorous Man70 bespeaks a growing confidence that commoner characters and milieus are worthy of literary portrayal in their own right.71 Defining (Saikaku’s) Parody In addition to treating the issues introduced above, this study examines the interface between social history and genre development in early-Tokugawa Japan, with a view toward contributing to a broadened understanding of how this process works across cultures. It will do so by focusing on a moment in Japan’s literary history when, as Bakhtin adumbrated with regard to European literature, parody of aristocratic genres morphs into a new form of fiction that both borrows from elite literature and deems commoners and commoner milieus fitting subjects for literary depiction.72 This section will briefly examine Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and its relevance to, to borrow Struve’s term, Saikaku’s polyphonic style. It will then seek parallels between Bakhtin’s account of the function of parody in the development of the European novel and the role of parody in the literary history of early-Tokugawa Japan, before engaging with theoretical works by Linda Hutcheon and Tzvetana Kristeva in the process of settling on a definition of parody that suits the context of Saikaku’s fiction. It will propose, and portions of the rest of this study will confirm, that the functions of parody and other forms of allusion in Amorous Man and other works of fiction by Saikaku include the implicit elevation of wealthy commoner characters and milieus by linking them to the elite characters and 70  Maeda Kingorō, Kinsei bungaku zakkō (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2006), p. 225. 71  Of Saikaku’s fiction, Howard Hibbett remarks, “For the first time townsmen could see themselves, in their intense pursuit of happiness, through the lens of artistic fiction” (Hibbett, Floating World, p. 39). Someya Tomoyuki observes that Saikaku performed a role of pan-East Asian significance by exploring the potentialities of people in the warrior and merchant milieus despised by Confucianism, which he characterizes as accomplishing an “overturning and relativization” of hegemonic Confucian culture and thought not attained in Chinese popular fiction exploring these same milieus (Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 36–38). Given the attention paid to warriors in earlier Japanese texts such as The Tale of the Heike, the Taiheiki and various nō dramas, in the Japanese context Saikaku’s explorations of bourgeois life seem more groundbreaking than his samurai tales. 72  Howard Hibbett writes of the whole of Saikaku’s fictional œuvre in terms of elements of burlesque, which he characterizes as an “embarrassingly hazy literary term.” He distinguishes burlesque from strict parody, describing the former as “a more independent genre, free from the requirement of close formal resemblance, and inclined to mock the spirit and aim, rather than the form, of another work.” However, he also writes of parody as “one of the many resources of the burlesque writer” (Hibbett, “Saikaku and Burlesque Fiction,” pp. 53–54).

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social settings portrayed in literary classics such as nō dramas, waka and The Tale of Genji, the flattering of readers of commoner status by providing them with evidence of their own erudition when they get the joke, and veiled resistance to the attempts of the Tokugawa regime to keep wealthy commoners in their place through sumptuary regulations.73 As we shall see in Chapter 1, in Amorous Man this last feature of Saikaku’s fiction is embedded in the novel’s broader problematization of what Jonathan Zwicker has called the Tokugawa period’s “great social contradiction and great symbolic lie,” namely, the discrepancy between, on the one hand, the Tokugawa regime’s status-group system, according to whose tatemae74 birth counted for everything and wealth acquired through commerce for nothing, and, on the other hand, the era’s actual, commerce-driven state of affairs.75 In essays collected in The Dialogic Imagination,76 Bakhtin elaborates a theory of dialogism (which he views as a defining feature of the early European novel) that resonates with the competing voices and stylistic registers featured in Saikaku’s fiction. I do, however, have reservations about Bakhtin’s optimism regarding the supposedly egalitarian nature of the type of fiction he describes as dialogic. In The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture, Franco Moretti expresses similar reservations, in this case specifically related to Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia, a juxtaposition of regional and class dialects, professional jargons and speech registers that Bakhtin posits as a component of dialogic fiction: [Heteroglossia’s] most typical habitat is, symptomatically, traditional societies, “status” societies—those rigidly classified worlds that generate all sorts of local and professional jargons, of almost sumptuary distinctions and nuances, of expressive idiosyncrasies and arcana of communications […]. Heteroglossia here flourishes because such worlds do not tolerate dialogue, which by nature is anticlassificatory, as it implies equality, spiritual mobility, interchangeability of positions. […] Precisely because people talk to one another and understand one another, heteroglossia tends

73  Although I prefer to term this “resistance” rather than an “attack,” in discerning the former I do differ from Donald Keene when he categorically asserts that Amorous Man “in no way suggests […] a veiled attack on the regime” (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 173). 74  A Japanese term designating a polite fiction for public consumption. 75  Zwicker, Sentimental Imagination, p. 105. See also Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 4, 6–7, 9, 23. 76  Bakhtin, Emerson, Holquist, Dialogic Imagination.

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Introduction

to disappear, and instead we find an “average” linguistic tone potentially accessible to all.77 Since juxtapositions of different types of speech (as opposed to juxtapositions of literary styles, of vernacular and literary language, or of different modes of behavior or styles of dress) are a rarity in the Saikaku works I examine, the issue here is different. However, I shall seek to demonstrate that in general, despite mostly conforming to Bakhtin’s definition of dialogic fiction, these four texts, and especially Amorous Man, which contains the most heterogeneous blend of linguistic styles and narrative modes, embody not an egalitarian worldview but rather a bourgeois will to make hierarchy depend on potentially acquirable assets such as money and cultural sophistication, rather than depending on birth, thus replacing a hereditary status system with a fluid hierarchy, a sort of meritocracy of the marketplace. The issue of Amorous Man’s treatment of social and aesthetic hierarchies is linked to the question of what function parody performs in Saikaku’s haikailike prose and in haikai poetry itself, which derives its verse structure from waka and frequently alludes to the waka canon but also ostentatiously flouts its genteel rules of topic choice and diction. Here a comparison with the history of parodic literature in Europe is instructive. The following description by Bakhtin of the role of parody in the formation of the European novel could just as easily apply to the role of haikai no renga and other parodic literary forms in the emergence of Saikaku’s fiction: Parodic stylizations of canonized genres and styles occupy an essential place in the novel. In the era of the novel’s creative ascendancy—and even more so in the periods of preparation preceding this era—literature was flooded with parodies and travesties of all the high genres (parodies precisely of genres, and not of individual authors or schools)—parodies that are the precursors, “companions” to the novel, in their own way studies for it.78 In the decades before Ihara Saikaku wrote Amorous Man, individual works were parodied in early-Tokugawa texts such as Fake Tales, a line-by-line parody

77  Franco Moretti, trans. Albert Sbragia, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (New York: Verso, 2000), p. 195. 78  Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” p. 6.

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of Tales of Ise,79 and Inu hyakunin isshu (The Mock One Hundred Poets, 1669), a parody of Ogura hyakunin isshu (A Hundred Poems from a Hundred Poets).80 Taken as wholes, haikai and kyōka parodied waka as a genre, the former laying the groundwork, as in Bakhtin’s model, for Saikaku’s fiction. There would be problems of course in positing a narrowly defined “novel” as arising independently in both Japan and Europe in precisely the same way. I have used the term “novel” simply to designate a long prose narrative, a category that does not exclude, for example, The Tale of Genji. Bringing Bakhtin into the discussion here is chiefly of use because one of the phenomena he describes closely parallels developments in early-Tokugawa Japan, namely, the parodying of elite genres that largely or wholly ignore bourgeois life preceding the emergence of prose fiction giving it ample attention, fiction that includes in its purview matters such as the prices of things that were shunned by, for example, Heian-period aristocratic narrative. However, applying Bakhtin’s model to the Japanese context does not result in a perfect fit. Earlier in the essay I have cited Bakhtin writes, “The novel parodies other genres (precisely in their role as genres); it exposes the conventionality of their forms and their language.”81 Here the word “exposes” implies the revelation of something undesirable and not immediately apparent, and betrays the modern, avant-garde European intellectual’s bias against conventionality and in favor of boundary-pushing innovation. What would it have meant to “expose conventionality” in the cultural context of late-medieval and earlymodern Japan, where an exacting conventionality was the sine qua non of the high literary genres, and of high culture in general? Waka especially is the conventional genre par excellence, and much of its aesthetic appeal derives from the tension between extremely restrictive rules governing diction and topic on the one hand and the need to produce poetry somehow distinguishable from its predecessors, a task ever more difficult to perform as over the course of centuries the number of possible new combinations from waka’s narrowly circumscribed palette of elements dwindled. The ascendency of haikai poetry, with its much greater freedom in diction and topic choice, accompanied an 79  Hibbett, “Saikaku and Burlesque Fiction,” pp. 55–56; Shinoda, Nise monogatari e, pp. 6–11; Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 24–26; Suematsu, “Nise monogatari kō,” pp. 1–10. 80  Ian MacDonald, “The Mock One Hundred Poets in Word and Image: Parody, Satire and Mitate in Seventeenth-Century Comic Poetry (Kyōka)” (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 2004); Yoshikai Naoto, Hyakunin isshu e no shōtai (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2013), pp. 164–65. 81  Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” p. 6.

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Introduction

exhaustion of the possibilities of the waka genre rather than any loss of waka’s prestige. The same is true of the emergence of Saikaku’s fiction and the fortunes of the objects of its parody, which, unlike pastoral and chivalric romance in post-Quijote Europe, retained their status and much of their currency.82 Accordingly, the term “parody,” with its implications of comedy at the expense of the work parodied, requires clarification when applied to haikai and to Saikaku’s fiction. For one thing, their use of the forms of elite genres with language and in contexts that violate their rules of decorum does not always have the comic effect that the word usually entails. Despite the surrounding context of hardship in the hinterlands, the horse urinating near Bashō’s pillow in The Narrow Road to Oku easily reads as comical; Bashō’s crow on a bare branch does not,83 but both follow haikai’s defining pattern of violating waka’s rules of decorum in diction and topic in a verse format derived from waka. As witnessed by his haikai requiem for his beloved wife, Saikaku was also perfectly capable of producing serious haikai.84 Likewise, many apparently non-comical passages in Saikaku’s fiction use the same haikai-like recontextualization techniques as the apparently comical passages, and there are many passages employing these techniques in Saikaku’s fiction where it is hard to tell whether or not one is meant to laugh. Furthermore, in both haikai and Saikaku’s fiction it is typically far from clear that these techniques constitute an attack on the prestige of the source texts. These are issues with other early-modern and modern Japanese cultural products as well, such that Tzvetana Kristeva, following the lead of Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Parody, focuses her introduction to Parodi to Nihon 82  Here I concur with Linda Hutcheon when she writes, “To adopt slavishly Bakhtin’s specific statements about parody (that is, to imitate his practice) is to fall victim to the arbitrary and monolithic, not to say monologic, in those statements; to adapt, on the other hand, is to open up one of the most suggestive Pandora’s boxes this century has produced” (Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000], p. 70). 83  Matsuo Bashō, Oku no hosomichi, in Hisatomi Tetsuo, Imoto Nōichi, Muramatsu Tomotsugu, Horikiri Minoru, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 71: Matsuo Bashō shū 2 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1997), p. 101; Matsuo Bashō, trans. Donald Keene, The Narrow Road to Oku (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1996), p. 88; Matsuo Bashō, Matsuo Bashō zen hokku, in Hori Nobuo, Imoto Nōichi, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 70: Matsuo Bashō shū 1 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1995), p. 70; Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 349 (poem 815). 84  Christopher Drake, “Saikaku’s Haikai Requiem: A Thousand Haikai Alone in a Single Day, The First Hundred Verses,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 52, No. 2 (December 1991), pp. 481–588.

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bunka (Parody and Japanese Culture) on establishing a definition of parody broad enough to include works that do not “ ‘ridicule, satirize or criticize’ ” the objects of their parody.85 Kristeva writes of the “possibility of parody already latent in” the venerable Japanese poetic device of honkadori (allusive variation), a potentiality that “gradually comes to the surface and increases its power as [Japanese] literature develops.” She then cites fiction modeled on The Tale of Genji, starting with medieval giko monogatari and continuing with the earlyTokugawa Amorous Man and the late-Tokugawa Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (The Rustic Genji, 1829–1842), as following the same developmental pattern as honkadori, and comments that “Each of these expresses the ways of thinking and values of a new age, but that does not mean that they make Genji their ‘victim.’ Rather, one could say that … they heightened its popularity.” Suematsu Masako and Yoshikai Naoto make similar observations about, respectively, Fake Tales and parodies of A Hundred Poems from a Hundred Poets, such as A Mock One Hundred Poets. Suematsu calls into question the dichotomy between “classical elegance” and “early-modern vulgarity” upon which have rested characterizations of Fake Tales as a coarse “negation” or “overturning” of Ise. Listing some of the numerous parodies of A Hundred Poems produced throughout the Tokugawa period and beyond, Yoshikai writes that these both depended on and maintained the fame of their source text. Kristeva continues the fine-tuning of her definition of parody by observing that the examples she has given demonstrate that there is not always a correspondence between the objects of laughter and those of parody, notes the difficulty of determining what to interpret as comical in works of another age, and concludes by cautioning against viewing laughter as an indispensable element of parody.86 Linda Hutcheon, for her part, in a work focused primarily but not exclusively on twentieth-century art, provides a definition of parody useful for analysis of Saikaku’s fiction and other Tokugawa-period literature when she terms it “a form of repetition with ironic critical distance, marking difference rather than similarity.” However, in the context of some of Saikaku’s fiction, specifically in passages that appear to posit the bourgeois culture of its day as a successor to the aesthetic achievements of the Heian-period aristocracy, I would modify 85  In this regard Hutcheon writes, for example, “It is the difference between parodic foreground and parodied background that is ironically played upon in works like these. Double-directed irony seems to have been substituted for the traditional mockery or ridicule of the ‘target’ text” (Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, pp. 31–32). 86  Tzvetana I. Kristeva, “ ‘Hajime ni’ ni kaete—hatashite ‘parodi’ to wa?,” in Tzvetana I. Kristeva, ed., Parodi to Nihon bunka (Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 2014), pp. 13–14, 17; Suematsu, “Nise monogatari kō,” pp. 1–2, 8–9; Yoshikai, Hyakunin isshu e no shōtai, pp. 164–65.

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Hutcheon’s definition by changing “rather than” to “both … and,” for here it is with this double emphasis that we see realized what Hutcheon terms a tension between “the potentially conservative effect of repetition”—in this case the transmission of aristocratic or high-samurai aesthetics and their ideological concomitants, and “the potentially revolutionary impact of difference,” i.e., the implicit supplanting of heredity by money as a determiner of social status, with all this entails for maintenance of the social order the Tokugawa were desperately trying to reinforce with ever more sumptuary laws.87 Parody, Paradox, Sexuality and Non-Duality Saikaku’s fiction frequently references, both directly and indirectly, Buddhist teachings and practices in a manner that has met with widely varying scholarly interpretation, particularly in the case of Amorous Man. The inclusion of such references in a novel largely dealing with prostitution and traditionally interpreted as predominantly comical has given rise to a debate as to whether or not one should view it as attacking Buddhism through parody or satire. Briefly touching upon Saikaku’s fiction in his examination of Buddhist topoi in pre-modern and early-modern Japanese literature, William R. LaFleur characterizes the courtesans of Saikaku’s fiction as “articulator[s] of mujō [impermanence]” in the same Buddhist tradition as the medieval literature on which his commentary has focused to that point. Incorporating observations by Saikaku translator Wm. Theodore de Bary regarding the Buddhist content of Saikaku’s fiction, LaFleur further writes that “Saikaku and his world represent no radical departure from the structure implicit in earlier works.”88 In his Amorous Manfocused dissertation, Jeffrey Johnson takes exception to this position, writing of the “world of pleasure” treated by Saikaku’s fiction as “diametrically opposed to the absolutism inherent in Buddhism,” and characterizes Yonosuke’s promiscuity as violating “the transcendental code of Buddhist morality,” citing along the way Paul Schalow: “In Buddhism, all sexuality was evil; sexual desire represented delusion of the sensual realm, and was incompatible with enlightenment and spiritual knowledge.”89 In an analysis of a passage in Amorous 87  Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody, p. xii. Regarding the conservative aspect of the spread of elite culture to the ranks of commoners, see also Hibbett, Floating World, p. 17. 88  William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 77–78; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 15–16 (translator’s introduction). The subtitle of LaFleur’s book gives as the object of its scrutiny Japan’s “medieval” literature, but its temporal scope extends into the early 1700s. 89  Johnson, “Novelness,” pp. 120–23; Paul Gordon Schalow, “Literature and Legitimacy: Uses of Irony and Humor in 17th-Century Japanese Depictions of Male Love,” in Wimal

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Man that he typifies as a “burlesque” of Buddhist doctrine, Johnson goes on to write that “any observer of Saikaku’s treatment of Buddhism—unless they fall for the moralizing extradiegetic voice—would have to conclude that Saikaku is very far indeed from the position to which LaFleur relegates him.”90 In a later work focusing on hierarchy-upending “turnabouts”91 in Saikaku’s œuvre, Johnson softens this position, finding satire of Buddhism both in Saikaku’s hai­ kai poetry and his fiction, adding that Saikaku’s satire “focuses on the human tendency to err” but, unlike satire as usually conceived of in the West, lacks a “will to correct.”92 In the same text Johnson writes that Saikaku demonstrates that the turnabouts in his works “oddly resonate with the Buddhist notion of transience, an ephemerality of meaning.”93 This last assertion is on the right track, apparently referencing Mahayana Buddhism’s capacity to generate and accommodate paradoxes, which Johnson’s earlier position does not take into account. It resonates with various scholars’ observations regarding the tendency of Saikaku’s fiction to appear to take two (or more) sides regarding the issues it confronts. As noted earlier, Daniel Struve writes of Saikaku’s fiction as presenting us with a “dialogue of ideologies.”94 Someya Tomoyuki asserts that it is enriched by a multiplicity of points of view that leaves one with an impression not of fragmentation but rather of overall coherence despite internal contradictions.95 Sasaki Akio rates Saikaku’s Way of the Warrior particularly highly precisely because of its diversity of value judgments regarding its subject, and lauds such breadth of vision as a hallmark of the best of Saikaku’s fiction.96 My concurrence with each of these characterizations of Saikaku’s fiction is one reason I do not see its occasional inclusion of potentially comical recontextualizations of Buddhist topoi as incompatible with a Buddhistic worldview. Another is that, as detailed above, Saikaku’s fiction arose in a medieval and early-modern Japanese tradition of literary works

Dissanayake, Steven Bradbury, eds., Literary History, Narrative and Culture: Selected Conference Papers (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1989), Vol. 2, p. 54. Schalow immediately qualifies this assertion, continuing, “Because all sexuality was suspect, except in the Tantric and Esoteric schools … ” 90  Johnson, “Novelness,” p. 214. 91  A term borrowed from Bakhtin (Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 19). 92  Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 37. 93  Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 43. 94  Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 218–45. 95  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 460. 96  Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 72–74.

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that, to paraphrase Tzvetana Kristeva, do not “victimize” the objects of their imitation and parody.97 Mahayana Buddhism’s comfortable relationship with paradox (and perhaps, ultimately, that of Saikaku’s fiction) is rooted in its doctrine of non-duality. Relating it to the Buddhist concept of “emptiness,” i.e., the non-independent arising of all phenomena, Burton Watson elucidates this doctrine in an introduction to his translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra: Because of its underlying unity, all things in [this world of emptiness] interpenetrate with one another and share one another’s identity, which leads the Mahayana proponents to assert that all beings partake of the Buddha nature and hence have the potential to attain Buddhahood. And the same reasoning leads them to proclaim that earthly desires are none other than bodhi or the state of enlightenment, and that samsara, the ordinary world of suffering, is none other than nirvana.98 In an examination of some of the more extreme manifestations of this doctrine, Bernard Faure writes, “The logic of transcendence that characterizes Buddhist concentration and wisdom implies, in its very principle, a transgression of all fixed rules.”99 Faure then goes on to observe, “A paradoxical justification for Buddhist transgression appears in some Buddhist texts: one may kill, steal and have sex to the extent that one realizes that everything is empty.”100 The doctrine of non-duality is also expressed in the familiar Mahayana Buddhist formula “the passions are enlightenment,” recorded in The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch101 and various other Chan texts,102 and referenced, significantly, in the famous defense of fiction by the title character of that great novel of erotic intrigue and source of numerous allusions in Amorous Man, The Tale of Genji, a passage that also posits fiction (like the intricate love story one is reading, which features characters who are tormented by desire and eventually grasp its futility) as an example of the “expedient means” defended in the Lotus 97  Kristeva, “ ‘Hajime ni’ ni kaete,” pp. 13–14, 17; Hutcheon, A Theory of Parody. 98  Burton Watson, “Introduction,” in Kumarajiva, trans. Burton Watson, The Vimalakirti Sutra (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 11. 99  Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 99. 100  Faure, Red Thread, p. 100. 101  Philip B. Yampolsky, trans., The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 148. 102  Yampolsky, Platform Sutra, p. 148, note 120.

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Sutra, i.e., narratives that are not, strictly speaking, factually true, but that lead their audiences toward enlightenment.103 One possible interpretation of this formula is that the pursuit of the passions can prove a means to enlightenment, as occurs in medieval narratives of pederastic love among Buddhist monks that have come to be designated chigo monogatari (acolyte tales), such as Aki no yo no nagamonogatari (A Long Tale for an Autumn Night, 1300s), in which, as is typical of this genre, love for a doomed young boy leads the monk protagonist to enlightenment.104 (As we shall see, the story is directly, albeit jokingly, referenced in Amorous Man,105 and resonates with two tragic episodes in the final story of Five Women.106) Giving as an example the nō drama Eguchi (1300s), in which a courtesan 103  Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari 3, in Abe Akio, Imai Gen’e, Akiyama Ken, Suzuki Hideo, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 22 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996), pp. 210–14; Murasaki Shikibu, trans. Royall Tyler, The Tale of Genji (New York: Penguin, 2003), pp. 460–62; Burton Watson, trans., The Lotus Sutra (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 56–79. 104   Aki no yo no nagamonogatari, in Nakayama Yasumasa, ed., Kōchū Nihon bungaku taikei, Vol. 19 (Tokyo: Seibundō, 1932), pp. 693–717. Margaret Childs has included a translation of the tale in “Chigo Monogatari: Love Stories or Buddhist Sermons?” (Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 35, No. 2 [Summer 1980], pp. 132–51). Childs has pointed out the problems with the retroactively applied genre label of chigo monogatari (“Chigo Monogatari,” pp. 130–31). For more on such narratives, see Paul S. Atkins, “Chigo in the Japanese Imagination,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 67, No. 3 (August 2008), pp. 947–70; Childs, “Chigo Monogatari,” pp. 127–51; Margaret Helen Childs, Rethinking Sorrow: Revelatory Tales of Late Medieval Japan (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1991), pp. 15, 26–27, 31–52, 145–46; Leupp, Male Colors, p. 40; Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 46, 74–75; Paul Gordon Schalow, “Introduction,” in Stephen D. Miller, ed., Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature (San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1996), p. 14; Sachi Schmidt-Hori, “The Boy Who Lived: The Transfigurations of Chigo in the Medieval Japanese Short Story Ashibiki,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 75, No. 2 (December 2015), pp. 299–329; Sachi Schmidt-Hori, “The New Lady-in-Waiting Is a Chigo: Sexual Fluidity and Dual Transvestism in a Medieval Buddhist Acolyte Tale,” Japanese Language and Literature, Vol. 43, No. 2 (October 2009), pp. 383–423. Childs’s Rethinking Sorrow contains a translation of Genmu monogatari (The Tale of Genmu, 1400s, pp. 31–52); the latter translation is also included in Partings at Dawn (pp. 36–54) along with her translation of Chigo Kannon engi (The Story of Kannon’s Manifestation as a Youth, early 1300s, pp. 31–35). Schmidt-Hori’s JLL article includes a translation of Chigo imamairi (The New Lady-in-Waiting is a Chigo) (Schmidt-Hori, “Lady-in-Waiting,” pp. 393–411). 105  Ihara Saikaku, Kōshoku ichidai otoko, in Higashi Akimasa, Teruoka Yasutaka, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 66: Ihara Saikaku shū 1 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996), p. 32. 106  Ihara Saikaku, Kōshoku gonin onna, in Higashi, Teruoka, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bun­ gaku zenshū, Vol. 66, pp. 368–77; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 195–211.

30

Introduction

dispensing Buddhist doctrine is revealed to be a manifestation of the bodhisattva Fugen (Samantabhadra), as well as the legend and poetic exchange on which the drama is based, LaFleur writes of how in medieval Japanese literature “the prostitute increasingly takes on the role of tutor of men—particularly for the Buddhist teaching of mujō [impermanence].”107 Also invoking Eguchi, Someya Tomoyuki constructs a longer narrative of the evolution of this topos, seeing its origins in a passage in the Lotus Sutra regarding the many non-sacred and even demonic forms the bodhisattva Kannon (Avalokiteśvara) takes to save sentient beings, and linking it ultimately to the Edo-period phenomenon of ukiyobikuni (floating world nuns), women who dressed as Buddhist nuns and sold sexual services under the pretext of raising funds for temples, a practice that he speculates arose due not just to economic factors but also to the by then well-established tradition of positing desire as a means toward salvation.108 For all of these reasons I am not inclined to see the often (but certainly not always) joyful treatment of sex in Saikaku’s fiction as antithetical to a Buddhistic worldview, even when it is tied to seemingly parodic references to Buddhist texts or practices, and in some cases find that the portrayal of sexuality in Saikaku serves to propagate Buddhist teachings. Furthermore, the aesthetics and eroticism of these works bear the mark of Buddhist origins. Buddhism and “Floating World” Aesthetics Pace those who posit what Ōshiki Zuike refers to as a “thoroughly atrophied” Buddhism at that time,109 Saikaku’s fiction was written near the close of a first Tokugawa century that also produced many popular narratives featuring prominent Buddhist elements, such as the Grand Guignol-like puppet dramas analyzed and translated in Keller Kimbrough’s Wondrous Brutal Fictions and the Buddhist “didactic question-and-answer fiction” that Wada Yasuyuki, perhaps rebutting Ōshiki et al., describes as having “sold surprisingly well.”110 (Someya Tomoyuki, for his part, asserts that important popular-Buddhist influences on Saikaku’s writings and other Genroku-period literature have gotten 107  LaFleur, Karma of Words, pp. 71–74. 108  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 127–28. 109  Ōshiki Zuike, Kinsei no bungaku, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1997), p. 6. 110  R. Keller Kimbrough, trans., introduction, Wondrous Brutal Fictions: Eight Buddhist Tales from the Early Japanese Puppet Theater (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); Wada Yasuyuki, “Kanazōshi to Bukkyō,” in Kusumoto Mutsuo, ed., Edo bungaku kara no kake­ hashi: Cha • sho • bijutsu • Bukkyō (Tokyo: Chikurinsha, 2009), pp. 363–65. Regarding the popularity of Buddhism-related books and those comparing Buddhism and other religious traditions, see also Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, p. 14.

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short shrift from other scholars.111) The mass audience for which Saikaku’s books were published would thus have been accustomed to seeking and finding Buddhist content in their entertainment. Despite the fact that like these predecessors they did not enjoy a high status at the time they were first published and read,112 Saikaku’s fiction is today generally recognized as more sophisticated than the commercial fiction produced in Tokugawa Japan up to that point.113 Moreover, I contend that his fictional works are inscribed in a subtly Buddhism-informed elite Japanese aesthetic tradition extending at least as far back as aristocratic Heian-period poetry and narrative purveying an aestheticized impermanence,114 and continuing with the medieval literature that LaFleur characterizes as wedding unobtrusive (Buddhist) didacticism to “splendid verbal combinations.”115 After acknowledging Heian-period poetry’s debt to Chinese poetry, especially to the Buddhist- and Daoist-influenced poetry of the Six Dynasties period, Helen Craig McCullough remarks that “an unusual preoccupation with the concept of impermanence in nature and in human affairs” distinguishes the Buddhism of Heian-period Japan from that of Six Dynasties and early Tang China, and posits this idiosyncrasy as a key factor in the distinctive qualities of Heian culture and Japanese court poetry.116 The artistic strategy 111  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 141–42. 112  Someya Tomoyuki attributes the fact that Saikaku affixed his name seal to few of his fictional works to the low status of books of this type (sōshi) in his day (Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 250). 113  See, for example, Wada, “Kanazōshi to Bukkyō,” p. 362. 114  This includes an element of aestheticization of impermanence and instability in the erotic love portrayed in texts like Genji, Tales of Ise, Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book, and waka. When Saikaku’s depictions of prostitution employ a similar aesthetic, one key factor distinguishing them from these predecessors is that whereas in their Heian antecedents male fickleness is the primary source of instability/impermanence, in Saikaku’s pleasurequarter narratives false, or potentially false, declarations of love on the part of (prostituted) women play a major role in this regard. 115  LaFleur, Karma of Words, p. 79. 116  Helen Craig McCullough, trans., introduction, notes, Tales of Ise: Lyrical Episodes from Tenth-Century Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), pp. 18–25 (translator’s introduction). See also Helen Craig McCullough, Brocade by Night: ‘Kokin Wakashū’ and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), pp. 15, 20–21, 24, 32–33, 35, 71–72, 94–95, 142, 148, 150–51, 171, 512, 519. My own familiarity with impermanence-related topoi in the famed eighteenth-century Chinese novel The Story of the Stone (also known as The Dream of the Red Chamber) makes me wish for a parallel study of the development of these topoi in the literature and art of China and Japan up to the modern period.

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of portraying the knowledge of an object’s evanescent (i.e., conspicuously impermanent) nature and anticipation of its disappearance or transformation as intensifying an aesthetic experience is familiar to anyone who has read a smattering of Japanese court poetry on cherry blossoms or autumn leaves. As an examination of the Japanese Buddhist tradition of poetry (in Chinese and Japanese) and gruesome images on the subject of the “Nine Stages of Death” (or more specifically, of bodily decay after death) would confirm,117 delicate poems on the inevitable scattering of cherry blossom petals or crimson maple leaves were neither the only nor the most obvious artistic vehicle for Buddhist doctrine regarding impermanence, i.e., that all phenomena are transient and therefore attachment to anything or anyone will inevitably cause suffering. Although the prettier approach to impermanence is featured in some poems of the Man’yōshū (compiled 759 or later) as well,118 it gained in importance in the context of the stringent rules of decorum determining acceptable vocabulary and topics that, by the time of the compilation of the first imperially commissioned Japanese poetry anthology, the Kokin waka shū,119 in the early 900s, governed the production of Japanese-language poetry by aristocrats of the imperial court, rules that are not embodied in the poetry of the Man’yōshū.120 These rules acted as a filter refining and aestheticizing the treatment of impermanence in court poetry; mention of something no more indelicate than a crow or a cow would have violated them, let alone the descriptions of rotting corpses one is subjected to in Buddhist “Nine Stages of Death” poetry.121 In contrast, poems on blossoms and leaves falling (or bound to fall) from the branch, beads of morning dew not long for this world glistening jewel-like on a fragile spider’s web, or wispy clouds dissolving into nothingness evoked impermanence, and thus served a didactic purpose, while preserving decorum

117  James H. Sanford, “The Nine Faces of Death: ‘Su Tung-po’s’ Kuzō-shi,” The Eastern Buddhist, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1988), pp. 54–77. 118  See, for example, McCullough, Brocade by Night, pp. 142, 148. 119  Henceforth referred to by the shortened form of its title, Kokinshū. 120  See, for example, Edwin A. Cranston, A Waka Anthology, Volume 1: The Gem-Glistening Cup (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 354–56, 359–63. 121  Significantly, as Sanford notes, in the cycle of Chinese and Japanese poems regarding bodily disintegration after death on which his article focuses, the Japanese poems are more restrained in their depictions thereof than either the Chinese poems or the illustrations (Sanford, “Nine Faces of Death,” pp. 63–75). Further study might determine if this can be attributed to an influence of the rules of decorum of Japanese court poetry on this decidedly indecorous genre of religious poetry when the poem in question was written in Japanese.

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and calling to mind lovely images to boot.122 The resulting positive aesthetic valuation of evanescence in such contexts is made explicit in the latter entry in the following poetic exchange from the eighty-second chapter of that classic of Heian-period romance and primer in aristocratic sensibility Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise, 900s): Yo no naka ni taete sakura no nakariseba haru no kokoro wa nodokekaramashi If in all the world there were no cherry blossoms what tranquility the heart would surely know whenever springtime comes. Chireba koso itodo sakura wa medetakere ukiyo ni nanika hisashikarubeki Precisely because the cherry blossoms scatter do we prize them so; nothing in this wretched world can be counted on to last. In addition to positing evanescence as an aesthetic desideratum, the latter poem also contains an expression that, famously, undergoes a similar revaluation: “ukiyo,” which, depending on the manner in which its first two syllables are written, can, if one or another Chinese character is used, designate the “wretched world” (憂世) of Buddhist pessimism, an equally Buddhistic but less

122  For listings of various more or less attractive signifiers for impermanence, see Haruo Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 43, 80, 124, 134, 152, 180.

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unambiguously negative “floating world” (浮世) of unstable phenomena,123 or, if at least the first part of the compound is written in phonetic script, both. Hashimoto Mineo, having asserted that rather than deriving from (imported) Buddhist scriptures or commentary, the term was the invention of Japanese familiar with Buddhist thought, remarks that the poem, written no later than 872, probably contains the first use of “ukiyo” on record. Citing a poem in Chapter 157 of Yamato monogatari (Tales of Yamato, mid 900s) in which both meanings of “ukiyo” apply, Hashimoto further speculates that the “wretched/ floating” duality of the word pertained from the start, or at the latest by the early Heian period, and that the aquatic metaphor inherent to “floating world” caused the expression to become associated with the idea of “traversing” (i.e., navigating) this life from birth to death.124 Indeed, in the second poem quoted above, the reason why it is “precisely because” they scatter that one prizes cherry blossoms becomes clearer if one replaces “wretched” with “floating” (i.e., unstable, impermanent125); this aids one in interpreting the poem as positing the experience of contemplating cherry blossoms as deepened by the fact that anticipation of their scattering functions as a reminder of a fundamental Buddhist truth. In his thorough and complex examination of the evolution of what he terms “ukiyo thought,” Hashimoto posits Yoshida Kenkō’s (c. 1283–c. 1350) collection of miscellaneous observations and primer in good taste Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness, c. 1330–1331) as a further milestone in the emergence of a world-affirming take on the instability of this world. Hashimoto places special emphasis on the seventh chapter of Essays in Idleness, which contains an ambiguously worded sentence that asserts, “It is precisely the impermanence/ 123  The term also has a Daoist connection; Hashimoto Mineo writes that in China “浮世,” the pairing of characters later used, with a Japanese reading, to designate “ukiyo” in its latter, “floating world” sense, occurs in the Zhuangzi (late Warring States Period [475–221 BCE]), and then in Tang-period (618–907) poetry (Hashimoto Mineo, Ukiyo no shisō [Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1975], p. 21). 124  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 40–42, 45–46, 94–95. 125  William R. LaFleur points out that spatial instability comes to be included under the (Buddhist) rubric of temporal impermanence, and posits the twelfth century as the point by which this conflation becomes established (LaFleur, Karma of Words, p. 61). I believe that this inclusion is evident as early as the time of composition of the poem being discussed here, at least if, as seems plausible, one accepts, as Hashimoto suggests, that the “wretched/floating” duality of “ukiyo” already applies. In any case, as cherry blossoms famously do not wither before falling, the sudden disintegration at a predictable point in time of each blossom as a unified whole is synonymous with the manifestation of the spatial instability of its component petals, which are still intact as such.

Introduction

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instability/uncertainty (定めなき) of the world/life (世) that makes it wonderful.”126 Hashimoto quotes Nagazumi Yasuaki along the way as he alludes to the fact that impermanence also includes the arising of phenomena, not just their extinction, implying that this aspect of impermanence contributed to a positive revaluation of it.127 By the Tokugawa period it is with the relatively (but not unambiguously) positively valued “floating” meaning that “ukiyo” eventually becomes associated with the popular culture of that era, forming part of the genre designations “ukiyoe” (floating world pictures, a term first occurring in print in Amorous Man, writes Hashimoto128)—woodblock prints that focused largely on the world of prostitution and entertainment, and “ukiyozōshi” (floating world fiction), applied after the fact to the stories of Ihara Saikaku and his imitators, which often treated the same themes as ukiyoe. Buddhism was originally an elite phenomenon in Japan, one among many continental Asian imports adopted by the imperial court aristocracy, and took centuries to become firmly established at the base of the social pyramid. Likening the two takes on “ukiyo” to both sides of a single sheet of paper, each visible through the other, Hashimoto Mineo links the shift in emphasis over time from its negative “wretched world” side to its more life-affirming “floating world” aspect to a process of “commonerization and layification” of Japanese Buddhism, seeing here parallels to cultural changes associated with the Protestant Reformation in Europe, which occurred at about the same time.129 He also writes of an aristocratic mentality according to which one should enjoy this world precisely because it is all a dream as evolving into the Edo-period ukiyo mentality as it spread to the mass of commoners, and implies that the spread of salvific schools of Buddhism contributed to sexual hedonism during the early Tokugawa period by assuring believers that faith would guarantee them a favorable rebirth, freeing them to pursue pleasure in this life.130 Earlier in the same work he writes of the mindset reflected in the term “ukiyo” as evidence of Buddhism’s naturalization in Japan: “I think that it is precisely the permeation of the word ‘ukiyo’ into the Japanese consciousness that 126  Yasura Okakō, Tsurezuregusa zen chūshaku, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1976), pp. 42–43; Yoshida Kenkō, trans. G. B. Sansom, Essays in Idleness (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005), p. 5. 127  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, p. 79. In contrast to Hashimoto, Howard Hibbett dates positive valuations of the term “ukiyo” to the early seventeenth century (Hibbett, Floating World, p. 11). 128  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, p. 109. 129  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 94–95. 130  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 98, 103–4.

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constitutes the most striking sign that Buddhism has taken root in our country and become an integral part of it.”131 Rather than focus on the deployment of the aesthetics of impermanence in Saikaku’s fiction, in his brief examination of “ukiyo thought” as reflected in Saikaku’s œuvre Hashimoto concentrates on its espousal of a balance between earning money and spending it on earthly pleasures, and on Buddhist belief in an afterlife as providing reassurance needed for the lighthearted enjoyment of a world in which both economic forces and sources of pleasure are unstable.132 In this study I shall take a different approach, asserting that as a purveyor of an evolved and extended ukiyo sensibility, Saikaku’s fiction both continues an expansion of the Buddhist concept of impermanence that characterizes earlier Japanese literature133 and applies the investment of impermanence with aesthetic value to subjects outside the purview of the aristocratic literature in which it initially developed: commercialized sex, love affairs among commoners and samurai, the vicissitudes of the marketplace.134 In so doing, Saikaku’s 131  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 15, 21–22. As part of a critique of scholars who he thinks underestimate the importance of Buddhism in Saikaku’s fiction and the commoner milieus it portrays, Hashimoto also writes that the Buddhist practice in evidence in these texts demonstrates that Buddhism’s role in the formation of the commoner ethos cannot be ignored (p. 31). 132  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 104–10. 133  LaFleur, Karma of Words, p. 61. 134  In a passage invoking ukiyo and replete with Buddhist references, Kuki Shūzō posits an element of resignation toward suffering and illusion, based on serene detachment (“恬淡 [tentan]”), as a distinguishing characteristic of iki (pleasure-quarter elegance and its concomitant sensibility). However, as detailed in Chapter 1, note 11, Kuki bases his model of iki on examples drawn from late-Tokugawa Edo, and contrasts it with a Kamigatacentered, early-Tokugawa aesthetic evident in Saikaku’s fiction, so although one may discern elements and origins common to Saikaku’s pleasure-quarter sensibility and iki as described by Kuki, one should not (or at least not automatically) treat them as one and the same. (Kuki Shūzō, parallel translation by Hiroshi Nara, Iki no kōzō/The Structure of Iki [Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2008], pp. 44–55, 106–11, 132–33, 140–45, 152–53, 162–63; Leslie Pincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996], pp. 124, 134–35, 226.) Daniel Struve describes detachment as an element of sui, the term for pleasure-quarter connoisseurship of Saikaku’s time, but does not directly link it to Buddhism in this context or write in terms of the aestheticization of impermanence. However, he later writes of a Buddhist-derived detachment as an element of kōshoku, the eroticism of Saikaku’s voluptuaries both within and outside the pleasure quarters and the initial word in the original titles of Amorous Man, Five Women and Amorous Woman. (Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 74, 82.)

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fiction adheres to its wider pattern of adapting and transforming the topoi and techniques of aristocratic and high-samurai literature of ages past to the context of early-modern Japan’s burgeoning, commerce-driven cities and the life of the prosperous commoners who dwelt there and formed the bulk of its readership, and whose demand for commercially produced reading materials fueled the growth of Japan’s recently emerged publishing industry.135 This aspect of Saikaku’s fiction thus holds great significance both for specialists in Japan and East Asia and for anyone interested in the ways in which commercial fiction for a largely bourgeois audience employed and reconfigured the form and content of elite literary genres in various early-modern societies, as well as for students of Buddhism and its cultural influence in the societies in which it has been practiced. The Way of Youths Portions of each of the Saikaku texts focused on in this study deal with another cultural phenomenon with Buddhist associations: shudō, as the age-structured male homosexuality136 of medieval and early-modern Japan was known. Sexual relations between males were apparently not widely stigmatized in Japan during this period, nor were they legally punished per se, but textual evidence indicates that a fairly strict set of social conventions surrounded such practices. Although there are some Edo-period texts and images in which males pursuing or involved in sexual relationships with other males are portrayed as effeminate,137 in many other texts both from the Tokugawa period and as late as Mori Ōgai’s 1909 novel Vita Sexualis, sexual interest in other males is depicted as linked to rough-and-ready masculinity.138 Furthermore, although there are portrayals in Edo-period texts of men known as onnagirai (“womanhaters”) who are interested only in other males, male same-sex desire is not portrayed as inherently precluding or even antagonistic to sexual interest in and marriage to women.139 Shudō is portrayed in texts of the time as most closely linked to three separate milieus: those of the samurai, the Buddhist clergy and kabuki actors 135  Kornicki, The Book in Japan, pp. 170–205. 136  See note 55 for an explanation for my use of this term. 137  Leupp, Colors, pp. 104–7. 138  Jim Reichert, In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 17–35, 69–98, 199–266. 139  Ihara, Schalow, Male Love, pp. 4–5; Leupp, Colors, pp. 102–4; Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 38–40. For an examination of the complementarity of male homosexuality and heterosexuality in Saikaku’s fiction, see Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 427–44.

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Introduction

who doubled as prostitutes. Gary P. Leupp demonstrates that the samurai associations of male homosexual behavior were at times used to lend it prestige and legitimacy,140 but later notes that it was also closely associated with ­violence.141 Someya Tomoyuki observes that since unlike females, male youths were creatures of the public sphere, the public setting of love affairs between males caused them to attract jealousy from third parties.142 As we shall see in Chapter 4, Way of the Warrior features both of these aspects of Edo-period discourse on male homosexuality. Stories in the collection portray same-sex attraction between males as occasioning both lofty sentiment and all-corrupting jealousy, with the former leading to laudable acts of bravery and self-sacrifice and the latter to treachery, deceit, cruelty and abuse of power. Male homosexual passion in these narratives thus results in both legitimate and illegitimate violence, both of which are, inevitably, overarching themes of a collection devoted to the depiction of samurai vendettas, and which surely constituted one of Way of the Warrior’s principal selling points for an audience accustomed to the gory thrills offered by such fare as the popular sekkyō and kojōruri puppet theater genres.143 According to the conventions of the time, sexual relationships between males were socially acceptable when they involved a youth who had not yet come of age and an older male who already had officially entered adulthood.144 In Saikaku’s fiction the younger partner is typically, but not always, in his teens and of an age at which female characters in the same texts get married. As in the age-structured male homosexuality of ancient Greece, the older partner was supposed to take the initiative in starting such a relationship, and was thus referred to as the “nenja” (念者), roughly translatable as “he who desires,” which serves in turn as a direct translation for the corresponding Greek term “erastēs,” whose youthful love object was the “erōmenos” or “one desired.” In Japan the younger partner was referred to simply as a “wakashu” (若衆) or “youth.” Furthermore, when penetrative sex was involved, convention demanded that it be the older partner who took the penetrative role. The conventions, mutual obligations, etiquette and connoisseurship surrounding such relationships were conceived of as constituting a “way” or discipline, indicated by the suffix “dō” (道). Likewise, tea ceremony is known as 140  Leupp, Colors, p. 61. 141  Leupp, Colors, pp. 164–67. 142  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 446–49. 143  Kimbrough, Wondrous, pp. 2–3, 16–18, 232–48. 144  For this brief explanation of shudō I have drawn on Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 23–145, and Ihara, Schalow, Male Love, 1–46 (translator’s introduction).

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the way of tea (sadō/茶道), and the way of the warrior is referred to in the title of the work examined in Chapter 4 as “budō” (武道). Age-structured male homosexuality was referred to as “shudō” (衆道) or “the way of youths,” meaning more specifically the way of pursuing erotic relationships with youths. In Bonds of Civility Eiko Ikegami demonstrates how various aesthetic disciplines such as the “way of tea” and the composition of haikai linked verse provided a social forum in which prosperous commoners could hobnob with samurai.145 Anna Beerens has made similar findings regarding late-eighteenth-century Japanese intellectuals,146 as has Takeshi Moriyama in his examination of the life and literary career of the wealthy farmer-merchant Suzuki Bokushi (1770– 1842).147 In Saikaku’s fiction “the way of youths” performs a function similar to that of the various artistic, literary and scholarly disciplines that served as a bridge between commoners and samurai over the course of the Tokugawa period. This is the case in pivotal episodes in Amorous Man, for although Saikaku’s first novel primarily focuses on its protagonist’s heterosexual adventures, as we shall soon see, the object of Yonosuke’s first successful seduction is in fact a samurai man. 145  Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 146  Anna Beerens, Friends, Acquaintances, Pupils, and Patrons: Japanese intellectual life in the late eighteenth century: a prosopographical approach (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2006). 147  Takeshi Moriyama, Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society: Suzuki Bokushi, a Rural Elite Commoner (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

CHAPTER 1

Aspirations Above Their Station: The Life of an Amorous Man Introduction In highly-wrought prose shifting occasionally into verse and saturated with allusions to and quotations from literary classics such as Tales of Ise, The Tale of Genji, Chinese and Japanese poetry and numerous nō dramas, Ihara Saikaku’s Kōshoku ichidai otoko (The Life of an Amorous Man, 1682) chronicles a life devoted to erotic pursuits from its protagonist Yonosuke’s birth until his sixtieth year (he has sex with 3,742 females and 725 male youths by age fifty-four1). It combines literary parody, absurdist comedy and minute, realistic descriptions of social practices and material culture,2 and many of its characters are identifiably based on actual persons, largely prostitutes, kabuki actors and other figures of the urban entertainment districts, who are usually referred to by their actual names. Its structure is highly episodic, and its tone predominantly but not exclusively comical. Yonosuke is born to a wealthy voluptuary and one of the former prostitutes the latter has taken as a concubine, and his childhood and youth are spent mostly in the Kamigata region centered on Kyoto and Osaka. He is sexually precocious in the extreme: at age seven3 he propositions one of his family’s maidservants, at nine he uses a telescope to spy on the maidservant of 1  The first figure appears to be related to legends about the number of women bedded by Heian-period aristocrat and presumed protagonist of the bulk of Tales of Ise Ariwara no Narihira (825–880). However, it seems that from the medieval period onward the standard figure for Narihira’s conquests was 3,733. Maeda Kingorō comments that it is unknown whether Saikaku intentionally diverged from this figure or based it on a particular source citing the same total given in Amorous Man (Maeda Kingorō, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 1, p. 45). (See also Asano Akira, Saikaku tenbō [Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2000], p. 165; Drake, “Introduction,” Sensuous Man, p. 6.) 2  Howard Hibbett describes the last of these as a characteristic of ukiyozōshi in general (Hibbett, Floating World, p. 18). 3  All ages are given according to the traditional, inclusive East Asian count, whereby people are one year old at the time of birth and add a year to their age at the beginning of each calendar year, such that in most cases age seven would correspond to age six by the Western count.

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a neighboring household as she bathes and (apparently) masturbates, then unsuccessfully attempts to blackmail her into having sex with him. The first account of a successful sexual conquest by Yonosuke details how at age ten he pursues and eventually, it is implied, has sex with an adult male. When he is eleven years old he purchases the services of a female prostitute. At fourteen he assumes the penetrative, adult role4 in an encounter with a male prostitute who turns out to be ten years older than he is. When he is fifteen he has an affair with a young widow, gets her pregnant and eventually abandons their child. At nineteen, while on a trip to Edo on behalf of his family’s business, Yonosuke at last so thoroughly neglects his duties and wastes so much time and money on prostitutes that his parents disown him, not coincidentally at the same age as that at which the historical Buddha left his parents’ house and went out into the world.5 He is set up as a monk, but his unabated interest in sex soon causes him to leave the Buddhist path. For years he wanders the provinces, supporting himself as a fish salesman, a door-to-door nō chanter, a (bad) kabuki actor, an itinerant Shinto priest and soothsayer, and a guide and traveling companion to a rich provincial playboy who likes to watch women wrestle clad only in transparent loincloths. All the while he continues to indulge in both free and purchased sex with an extensive array of partners in a wide variety of situations. At age twenty-seven he takes up with a “rice polisher,” one of a number of types of unlicensed prostitute in the book who sell their favors in tandem with pursuit of another trade. When she becomes pregnant he abandons her as well and again hits the road. He subsequently falls in love with a married shrine priestess, tries to seduce her and attempts rape when she turns him down. The chain of events thus set into motion eventually leads to a period in jail, where he falls in love with a runaway wife in the adjoining cell. Freed in a general amnesty, the two take off together, but the woman’s brothers eventually track her down and kill her as a punishment for the trouble she has brought her family. At age thirty Yonosuke visits the man he seduced at age ten, a samurai now down on his luck and languishing in provincial obscurity. In his former lover’s house Yonosuke is assaulted by grotesque apparitions caused, in the manner of Lady Rokujō’s astral projections in Genji, by the resentment of women whom he has seduced and abandoned over the years. When he is thirty-four, after a shipwreck resembling that which landed Genji at Akashi in that both precede the protagonist’s return to grace in the 4  I.e., according to the conventions of shudō. 5  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 47, note 11.

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capital, Yonosuke learns that his father has died and that he has inherited his family’s enormous wealth. In the ensuing second half of the novel,6 much of which is written in imitation of hyōbanki, a contemporaneous genre of prostitute evaluation book,7 Yonosuke devotes himself and his fortune to amorous pursuits in and out of the prostitution and theater districts of Kyoto, Osaka and Edo, now and then sampling the pleasures on offer in provincial brothels and snickering at their lack of refinement. At age sixty, childless, wifeless, decrepit and sated by worldly pleasures, Yonosuke gives away or spends the bulk of his fortune and buries most of the rest. Finally, he stocks a ship with aphrodisiacs, sex toys, pornography, abortifacients and baby clothes, then sets sail with six like-minded companions in search of the legendary Island of Women, disappearing from the records after a landfall in Izu province. As Ihara Saikaku’s first published work of fiction, Amorous Man represents a shift in the focus of his literary endeavors from haikai no renga, linked verse in which the forms of court poetry are appropriated and its rules of diction and acceptable subject matter deliberately violated, the genre in which Saikaku, as a member of the Danrin school, had first won fame.8 Amorous Man is also the most haikai-influenced of the works examined in this study, in terms of the sheer volume of its parodic allusions and quotations, its sudden shifts in tone and narrative trajectory and its references to haikai poetry itself. If, as Bakhtin said, parodic references to the texts of elite genres “bring low” these esteemed literary precedents,9 in the case of Saikaku’s fiction and especially Amorous Man they also elevate the subject matter at hand by linking it to that of elite texts and, in the manner of a particularly difficult crossword puzzle, flatter the bourgeois reader who understands the references to works produced by and/ or for his social “betters.” Its predominant sensibility reflects an ethos that is not iconoclastic or egalitarian; it is that of the ambitious and assertive bourgeois who hopes to rise in society rather than to eliminate social distinctions. In accordance with this sensibility, Amorous Man depicts the glamorous new chōnin culture centered in the theater districts and licensed prostitution quarters of Kyoto, Osaka and Edo as having an aesthetic value comparable to that of

6  See Introduction, note 7 for clarification of my use of the term “novel.” 7  Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 42–43. 8  For an overview of Saikaku’s haikai career, see Kira, “Haikaishi to shite no Saikaku,” pp. 26–33. Kira writes that the first anthology of Saikaku’s haikai poetry was published in Osaka in 1673, and that “about” twenty books containing his poetic compositions were published between that year and 1691 (p. 27). 9  Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” p. 21.

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the cultures of high-ranking samurai, the imperial courts of Japan and China, and Chinese literati.10 To quote a key line from a story in Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior examined in Chapter 4, in this milieu “there is no barrier between high and low” to the extent that status is changeable and hierarchies may occasionally be reversed or violated. But Amorous Man never calls hierarchy as such into question; for example the standardized system of dividing prostitutes into ranks is strictly observed in the action of the novel and both protagonist and narrator clearly prize the sophistication and savoir-faire of those at the top of the scale and scorn the relative coarseness of their inferiors. The same distinction holds true for depictions of sophisticated and doltish clients, as well as for metropolitan sophisticates and the cruder residents of the countryside and provincial towns.11 The pleasure quarter hierarchy portrayed and indeed celebrated by Amorous Man is in fact a microcosm of the de facto hierarchy of the new commercial society of the early Tokugawa period, in which ambition 10  For an overview of high-chōnin culture, see Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 6–7, 12–18, 23–35. 11  The contrasting of pleasure-quarter sophisticates (designated at first by the Kamigata term “sui” [粋] and later by “tsū” [通], originating in Edo) and boors (“yabo” [野暮]) is also an important theme in cultural products produced later in the Tokugawa period and beyond. Perhaps the best-known treatment of the subject of connoisseurship in the realm of prostitutes and geisha is Kuki Shūzō’s The Structure of Iki (cited in Introduction, note 134) with iki denoting the particular aesthetic sensibility in evidence among the best of its professionals and establishments. However, the work is of limited use for understanding the pleasure-quarter aesthetic of Saikaku’s early-Tokugawa, Kamigata-centric fiction as Kuki focuses on the late Tokugawa period and the city of Edo, and in fact mentions the aesthetics of Saikaku’s fiction, of the Kamigata pleasure quarters and of the late seventeenth century only as a flashy, abundance-prizing foil (the West, Russia and China provide similar counterexamples) against which to define a sparer, subtler, more refined iki aesthetic he presents as typical of such circles in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Edo (see note 70; see also Hibbett, Floating World, p. 18). He also emphasizes from early on in the work that iki arises from the dualistic nature of interactions between men and women, and thus implicitly excludes connoisseurship associated with shudō, which features in some of Saikaku’s fiction, from partaking of the iki aesthetic. (Kuki, Nara, Structure of Iki, pp. 40–41, 68, 76–77, 104–17, 130–45, 148–57; Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. Gerald Groemer, Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868 [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997], pp. 42, 44, 53–63, 73, 168, 227; Pincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan, pp. 2, 42, 122–23, 129, 206–7; Miner, Odagiri, Morrell, Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature, pp. 278, 300, 301, 303; Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 8, 20, 46, 632–33, 636 [trans. Herschel Miller], 656–57, 674, 675 [trans. James Araki], 681 [trans. Araki], 687, 689 [trans. Chris Drake], 696 [trans. Drake], 732, 761, 764; Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 72–75, 137.)

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and self-cultivation made possible upward mobility within the ranks of urban commoners, a fluid status system that existed alongside the official, hereditary status-group system dictated by the Tokugawa shogunate. As an artificial paradise whose resident angels are also its prisoners and the illusion of love is for sale, in Amorous Man the licensed prostitution quarters of the three great metropolises of Kyoto, Osaka and Edo (in the provinces only the pleasure quarter of Nagasaki is shown as equaling their high standard) also serve as a Buddhistic metaphor for the illusory and transient nature of all pleasures and all phenomena.12 For example, much of the book implicitly or explicitly turns on questions regarding the degree of sincerity of prostitutes’ professions of love for favored clients. The most convincing evidence of disinterested passion is the bestowal of favors free of charge, which the handsome and skilled lover Yonosuke wins from many prostitutes. He is also shown as able to enjoy expressions of feeling whether they be genuine, questionable, or an artfully executed trick of the trade, but in some passages, concentrated in the latter volumes, where he is older, Yonosuke appears preoccupied by the likelihood that at least some of the time he is wanted for his money alone. The final chapter of Amorous Man is shot through with Buddhist terminology, and in the end Yonosuke attains a sort of enlightenment, a deepened awareness of impermanence brought on by a thorough, lifelong immersion in the pleasures of the flesh and of the eye. But unlike chigo monogatari, in which the death of a beloved boy typically leads his lover to an enlightenment characterized by a renunciation of eros,13 just when the reader expects Yonosuke to make a similar renunciation or else be punished for his intransigence, he cheerfully sets off in his love boat for the Island of Women with a cargo of aphrodisiacs to stoke his waning lust. Although this chapter will close with an analysis of the two final chapters of Amorous Man, its examinations of a selection of chapters in the novel are arranged primarily according to theme rather than chronologically. Part 1 focuses on chapters prominently featuring haikai no renga-like parody, wordplay or narrative shifts, or direct references to the practice of haikai, elucidating their significance with regard to the spirit of the shogunate’s sumptuary regulations and the cultural and social aspirations of prosperous chōnin; it also brings two relevant stories from The Eternal Storehouse of Japan into the discussion. Part 2 examines depictions of the realm of prostitution as a scene of both cultural refinement and coarseness, which include a contrasting of metropolitan chōnin sophistication and provincial crudity. Erotic relationships 12  In Chapter 2 we shall see the same topos at work in the first story of Five Women. 13  See Introduction, note 104.

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between males both in and out of the context of prostitution are the unifying theme of the chapters dealt with in Part 3, in which the age-related conventions of shudō, the cultural cachet inherent in its samurai associations, and the great emotional depth attributed to shudō relationships receive attention. Part 4 examines the plight of prostitutes, both male and female, and of women in general, for whom Yonosuke’s feelings, we will have learned, are less durable than those for his first, male lover. This section will also feature continued examination of the intriguing and ambivalent figure of the deceitful prostitute, which also appears in Parts 1 and 3. In Part 5 a Yonosuke physically weakened but also seemingly enlightened by a life spent pursuing sexual pleasure explores new horizons, sailing first to an exotic and sophisticated Nagasaki, then later for the Island of Women. Because of the difficulty of Amorous Man in the original and the lack of a full, accurate English translation, among Western students of Japanese culture it is more read about than read. In the process of examining the issues delineated above through the luxuriant tangle of irony and equivocation that is an integral component of the novel’s brilliant, dense prose, this chapter will help bridge that knowledge gap by providing an introduction to the stylistic features that made Amorous Man famous, which are precisely those that elude translation and, even when one reads the original, cannot be fully understood without thorough perusal of scholarly annotations and the plethora of literary texts to which even a very brief passage may allude.

Part 1: Haikai, Parody and Social Mobility

“The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” A chapter of Amorous Man set when its libertine hero Yonosuke is forty-two, entitled “Zensei kashobaori” (The Sumptuous Poem-Coat),14 engages in a rhetorically complex and ingeniously equivocal manner with the spirit of the Tokugawa sumptuary regulations that, as detailed in the introduction to this study, proliferated around the time the novel was published. In so doing, it 14  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 190–94; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 171–81 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 309–13. This chapter is not included in Hamada’s abridged English translation. In Siary’s French translation the age of Yonosuke has been emended from forty-two to forty-eight; in the original there is discontinuity between the ages given in the table of contents of Volume 6, which this story closes, and those given in the tables of contents of Volumes 5 and 7. (See Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 165, note 1.)

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both encapsulates the novel’s Danrin haikai-like parodic aspects and features the undermined voice of morality that is a key focus of this study, manifested here through a condemnation of commoner hubris that is sabotaged by passages on either side of it. The chapter opens with the narrator deploring the gaudy pleasure-quarter fashions of years past and the extravagant spending of today’s quarter habitués. This introductory section makes mention of the current fashions for ink paintings of scenes from The Tale of Genji and for the Genji-esque pastime of incense comparison. The passage also contains allusions to a poem by the esteemed Tang-period Chinese poet Bai Juyi (772–846) and to Kan’yōkyū (Xianyang Palace), a nō drama about the first Qin emperor of China.15 All of this works to associate the contemporary culture of the pleasure quarters with the imperial court culture of Heian-period Japan and the court and literati cultures of ancient China, which were commonly held up as models of elegance and refinement, as well as with the samurai high culture of which nō is a major product. These cultural references call to mind positive depictions elsewhere in the novel of the pleasure quarter as a site of moneyfueled cultural sophistication, such as in the snow-viewing party episode examined below, thus undermining the narrator’s expression of disapproval of pleasure-quarter extravagance. The story then gets underway with a description of the chapter’s eponymous haori (a short coat worn over a kimono): On the morning of the first snow, Yonosuke wore a paper haori he had had pieced together from a book of calligraphy samples judged authentic by Kohitsu Ryōsa.16 There was poetry by Teika written in his own hand, a sheet with three poems from the ink brush of Yorimasa, a long poem by the monk Sosei and other pieces of writing by poets down through the ages. It was all an outrageous waste and proof that the wearer did not know his place.17 We then learn that a certain Denshichi, Yonosuke’s rival for the love of Noaki, a tayū (the highest rank of prostitute), has likewise had a haori made from written pledges of love from twenty-three courtesans, meant to demonstrate, presumably, his great desirability. 15  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 191, notes 24, 25, 27. 16  A famed appraiser of old calligraphy (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 191, note 28). 17  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 191; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 172–73 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 309–10. As in the rest of this study, all translations from the Japanese in this chapter are my own, except in cases where issues regarding others’ translations are discussed.

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As Maeda Kingorō indicates in his commentary on Amorous Man, paper haori normally were inexpensive garments worn by the poor, but by having one made from valuable samples of revered poets’ handwriting, Yonosuke has turned this humble item into a luxury product of great value.18 The narrator expresses outrage at this act, describing it as “mottainashi,” translatable as “wasteful” or “sacrilegious”; the word thus has a range of meaning that includes the high cost of the garment and the supposed misuse and consequent defilement of elite cultural products employed in its production, and constitutes an (ostensibly) respectful nod in the direction of the dual purpose of sumptuary laws: the prevention and punishment of both commoner hubris19 and potentially inflationary and bankrupting spending. This narratorial expression of disapproval continues with the comment that Yonosuke does not “know his place” (i.e., he is a commoner wearing on his back precious creations by famed aristocrats and high-ranking samurai that were never meant to be sewn together as clothing or displayed to all comers). However, the description of Yonosuke’s poem-haori in fact serves as a metaphor for what Danrin haikai,20 the chapter in which this description is found, and the whole of Amorous Man do with texts from elite genres: borrow their forms, subject matter, and their very words and “wastefully” or “sacrilegiously” reassemble them in texts supposedly inferior to the originals because they violate the originals’ rules of diction and decorum and portray non-elite characters and milieus.21 The chapter eventually closes by engaging in irreverent literary bricolage analogous to what it denounces at its beginning, describing a raucous bout of sex between a prostitute and her client with language drawn from two nō dramas, thus marking as ironic the narrator’s earlier expression of indignation at Yonosuke’s hubristic misuse of cultural treasures. The lead-up to this passage also provides a striking example of the precipitous, haikai no renga-like changes in narrative trajectory that typify Amorous Man. Noaki, the courtesan featured in this chapter, is fond of both Yonosuke and Denshichi, so she sees them on alternate days, assuring both in letters filled with equal measures of passion, “You two are the only ones for me.”22 The 18  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 1, p. 301. 19  As noted in the introduction to this study, according to Doi Noritaka, this was their primary purpose until the Kyōhō period (1716–1736) (Doi, “Shashi kinshi to ken’yakurei,” p. 62). 20  Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, p. 123. 21  For an examination of parodic allusions to Heian-period and medieval classics in Amorous Man, see Maeda, Kinsei bungaku, pp. 210–25. 22  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 191; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, p. 174 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 310.

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narrator intrusively expresses approval for Noaki’s savoir-faire, but notes that the arrangement caused tongues to wag. Eventually the two men run into each other while visiting Noaki and come to be on good terms with one another. They and Noaki then spend an amusing but chaste night together, an event, the narrator admiringly assures us, unprecedented in the annals of prostitution. We are then told that with money, freedom and looks, these two men cut the most glorious figures in the pleasure quarter, and cause all of the other customers there to abandon their extravagance (i.e., because they have no hope of competing with them).23 The story then makes a sudden shift of a sort characteristic of Amorous Man and attributable to the lingering effect on Saikaku’s prose of his experience as a composer of haikai linked verse. This shift occurs in a clause that one can either link with the preceding clause, which ends with a verb in the continuative form and refers to Yonosuke and his rival Denshichi, or interpret as referring to the tayū Noaki. It is immediately followed by a similar shift, which is marked by a kakekotoba (pivot word), a poetic device borrowed from Japanese poetry and nō that consists of a word or set of syllables that must be interpreted twice, here, as is typical, both as the end of one clause and the start of the succeeding clause. Here is the passage in question, with the kakekotoba in boldface, followed by a translation that preserves some of the ambiguity of the original (thus necessarily failing as graceful English), and in which the portions corresponding to the kakekotoba are in boldface as well: こ の 両 人 栄 花 を き は め 、 世 間 の 盛 を や め さ せ 、 い よ い よ 諸 わ け まさり 草・懐鑑にも、この女の事ありのまま書記す外に、あはねば知れぬよき事 ふたつあり。

These two men cut as fine a figure as anyone ever could, which made those around them give up their ostentation [since there was no hope of competing with them], and the two men’s/Noaki’s skills [in the ways of love] got better and better. In [the prostitute evaluation books] Masarigusa and Futokorokagami this woman is described in precise detail, but she has two good qualities that only those who meet with her can find out about.24

23   Chris Drake views the relationship between Yonosuke and Denshichi as evoking that between the friendly rivals Kaoru and Niou in the Uji Chapters of Genji (Drake, “Introduction,” Sensuous Man, p. 62). 24  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 193; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 177–78 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 312–13.

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We are then told of Noaki’s charms (beautiful, warm skin), her bedtime manner (she does not mind messing up her hair) and physical signs that are presented as evidence that she enjoys her work (she sweats, arches her back and curls her toes). There follows near the chapter’s end a passage noteworthy for its incongruous allusions to nō dramas in the form of wording that either duplicates phrases in the source texts or represents a playful variation thereof. In addition to its parodic recontextualization of this material, to paraphrase Bakhtin, this passage, like others in Amorous Man, parodies the nō genre precisely in its role as a genre,25 specifically by parodying nō’s reverent and extraordinarily frequent use of literary allusions and quotations, as well as of historical references. Following the original version of this passage I have provided a romanization and an English translation. In both the original and the translation, quotations and allusive variations of passages from nō are in boldface (English word order inevitably splits some of them up) and in the translation the source texts are indicated in parentheses. As passages of particular importance in Saikaku’s fiction often do, most of this sequence is divisible into the five- and sevensyllable grammatical units of Japanese poetry, with some containing the extra syllable permissible. This is also a feature of nō dramas, which, like haikai, have been cited as influences on Saikaku’s style, and on which, as exemplified here, Amorous Man frequently draws as a source of literary allusions or objects of parody.26 In the romanization of the passage, grammatical units conforming to the meter of Japanese poetry appear in italics and are followed by a syllable count in parentheses: まだ笑しきは、折々なく声鵺に似て、蚊屋の釣手も落つる所を、九度までと つてしめ、その好、いかな強蔵も、乱れ姿になつて、短夜の名残、さて火 をともしうつくしき顔をみるに、絵に書きし虞子君は物いはず、「さらば や」といふその物ごし、あれはどこから出る声ぞかし。 25  Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” p. 6. 26  In Ihara Saikaku to Nihongo no sekai, Sugimoto Tsutomu, who goes so far as to deny a fundamental distinction between poetry and prose in Japanese, writes that Saikaku’s fiction “does not diverge from the rhythms and conceptions of haikai” (p. 51) and features “a precision of eye and ear and [rhetorical] skill” trained in haikai, but diverges from its fixed form (p. 56). He also emphasizes the stylistic influence of nō on Saikaku’s fiction (pp. 54–55, 69), calling the language of nō the “key” to the style of Amorous Man (p. 55). He cites nō as the source of about forty percent of parodic literary allusions in Amorous Man and implies that the importance of Genji as an object of parody in the novel has been overstated (pp. 53–55). Nō was frequently used as a source of material by haikai poets, especially those of the Danrin school of which Saikaku was a leading practitioner (Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 43–44, 171).

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Mada okashiki wa (7), oriori naku (6) koe nue ni nite (7), kaya no tsurite mo (7) otsuru tokoro o (7), kokonotabi made (7) totteshime (5), sono suki, ikana tsuyozō mo (8), midaresugata ni (7) natte, mijika yo no nagori (8), sate hi o tomoshi (7) utsukushiki (5) kao o miru ni (6), e ni kakishi (5) Gushigimi wa (5) mono iwazu (5), “sarabaya” to (5) iu sono monogoshi (8), are wa doko kara (7) deru koe zokashi (7). Another funny thing is, her intermittent cries resemble those of a chimera (Nue [The Chimera, a nō play]). When both man and mosquito net fall [to the floor], they end up going for nine (Nue) rounds, and her insatiable desire will leave even the most energetic lover looking frazzled. After an all-too-short night with her you light a lamp to have a final look (Nue) at her lovely face, and whereas [mere] pictures of [the famed Chinese beauty] Yuji never speak (Matsuyama kagami [The Mirror of Matsuyama, a nō play]), our lady softly says “Goodbye,” and you wonder where that other voice came from.27 The reference to Yuji (Japanese pronunciation: “Gushi,” died 202 BCE), the beloved concubine of the third-century BCE Chinese general Xiang Yu (232–202 BCE),28 and whose name became a byword for feminine beauty, both clashes with the bawdiness of the passage and hints that classical beauty once reserved for the high and mighty of ancient China is now to be found in urban Japan’s commoner-frequented pleasure quarters. Furthermore, it is spliced into an allusive variation of a line from Matsuyama kagami, a nō drama whose subject matter is, as we shall see, starkly at odds with the brothel scene described here. The first nō play referenced in this passage, Nue, attributed, depending on the source, to both Zeami (1363?–1443?) and his father Kan’ami (1333–1384),29 features the resentful spirit of the monster that in the fifteenth chapter of the fourth volume of The Tale of the Heike torments Emperor Konoe (1139–1155, reigned 1141–1155) night after night until the renowned poet and military leader Minamoto no Yorimasa (1104–1180), source of one of the calligraphy samples 27  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 194; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 178–79 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 313. 28  A pair known today chiefly through the Chinese opera Bawang bie ji (Farewell My Concubine) and Chen Kaige’s 1993 film by the same name. 29   Nue, in Koyama Hiroshi, Satō Ken’ichirō, Satō Kikuo, eds., Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 34: Yōkyoku shū 2 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1989), pp. 392–403; Kenneth Yasuda, Masterworks of the Nō Theater (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 411–36.

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that make up Yonosuke’s paper haori, shoots it down with an arrow.30 In the nō drama this creature’s resentful spirit is successfully urged on toward enlightenment by a traveling Buddhist monk. The most outrageous use of material drawn from Nue occurs in the line describing the couple “going for nine rounds,” which is an allusive variation of lines in a passage of the play stating that the creature was stabbed nine times to finish it off after Yorimasa’s arrow struck it, causing it to fall to the ground, which thus suggests, to readers familiar with Nue, a coarse metaphor for sexual intercourse.31 The other nō drama alluded to here, Matsuyama kagami, is an anonymous play whose central figure is a girl whose filial piety brings about her late mother’s salvation. It features a blend of Confucian and Buddhist elements and makes reference to events in the imperial courts of both China and Japan in centuries past that parallel an important component of its plot: the appearance of the girl’s mother in a mirror the girl is holding. For our purposes the more relevant of these references occurs when the girl’s father recalls the story of the Chinese emperor Wu of Han (156–87 BCE), who, to assuage his grief over the death of his wife, Consort Li, had a picture of her drawn on the wall of his palace and looked at it constantly, only to grow sadder since “an image drawn in a picture doesn’t speak and doesn’t laugh.”32 It is this line that is reworked in “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” to frame the reference to the story of Yuji and Xiang Yu. Both Nue and Matsuyama kagami are products of high-samurai culture and solemn treatments of a religious theme, with Nue linked to events at the Japanese imperial court and Matsuyama kagami including references to the imperial courts of both China and Japan. By employing language drawn from these plays in a bawdy depiction of a prostitute performing her services, the closing passage of “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” flagrantly commits the very crime decried at the chapter’s beginning: that of “wasting” or desecrating the products of elite culture, and thus encourages an ironic reading of its condemnation of Yonosuke’s hubris in wearing his calligraphy-covered haori. In so doing it also undermines the narrator’s moralistic deploring of the extravagance of Yonosuke’s fellow visitors to the pleasure quarter at the start of the chapter, which is further undermined, as mentioned earlier and exemplified 30   Heike monogatari, in Ichiko Teiji, ed., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 45: Heike monogatari 1 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994), pp. 335–40; Royall Tyler, trans., The Tale of the Heike (New York: Viking Penguin, 2012), pp. 241–44. 31   Nue, pp. 398–99; Yasuda, Masterworks, p. 426. 32   Matsuyama kagami, in Sanari Kentarō, ed., Yōkyoku taikan, Vol. 5 (Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1931), p. 2874.

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later in this chapter, by positive depictions of high living in the pleasure quarters elsewhere in the novel. At the same time, commoners familiar enough with both plays alluded to in this passage to get the references and the joke must have been very pleased with their knowledge of this elite dramatic form.33 The appeal that nō held for chōnin is evinced by the fact that brothels housing tayū often had permanent nō stages on which prostitutes would perform dramas of this genre, as occurs in the lavish party Yonosuke attends in the Nagasaki pleasure quarter in the penultimate chapter of Amorous Man.34 The ambiguous clause and kakekotoba that mark the transition to the final section of the chapter illustrate another feature of Saikaku’s fiction attributable to the influence of haikai no renga: the sudden narrative shift. Some chapters and stories in his works are divisible into two or three parts of substantially different tone or content that are in some cases linked associatively rather than causally. As Steven Carter points out in The Road to Komatsubara, the rules of linked verse require frequent shifts in topic, which prevents a poetic sequence from developing into a coherent narrative.35 Kakekotoba and other sorts of semantic ambiguity are used to give a particular verse in a sequence one meaning when read along with the preceding verse and another when read together with its successor. (In the transition to the final segment of “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” we see this technique adapted to semi-poetic prose.) When reading a linked-verse sequence one is thus confronted with a shifting array of mini-narratives that keep morphing into something new. Sudden shifts in 33  Sugimoto Tsutomu believes that those of the social level who read Saikaku’s fiction knew certain nō dramas well enough to recite the lines (Sugimoto, Ihara Saikaku to Nihongo no sekai, p. 69). The second story of the first volume in The Eternal Storehouse of Japan refers to the popular pastime of nō chanting, which is how the story’s protagonist amuses himself in the evenings until he develops a ruinous taste for the services of prostitutes (Ihara, Eitaigura, p. 28; Ihara, Sargent, Family Storehouse, p. 17). Nō chanting as a pastime among commoners is mentioned again in Some Final Words of Advice in the second and fourth stories of its first volume (Ihara Saikaku, Saikaku oridome, in Fujimura Tsukuru, ed., Nihon koten zensho, Vol. 18, Pt. 3, Ihara Saikaku shū 3 [Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1949], pp. 272, 283; Ihara, Nosco, Some Final Words of Advice, pp. 51, 71). See also Drake, “Introduction,” Sensuous Man, p. 8; Hibbett, Floating World, p. 17. 34  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 244, note 12; pp. 244–45; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 227–29; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 374–76. As is the case with much of the Hamada translation, its version of the passage in question is more of an adaptation than a translation, and although certain ambiguities in the original are open to substantially differing interpretations, this rendering of the passage, if read as a translation, gives readers an inaccurate impression of the original. 35  Steven D. Carter, The Road to Komatsubara: A Classical Reading of the Renga Hyakuin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 4, 6. See also Taniwaki, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu, p. 154.

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Saikaku’s fiction may strike modern readers as a result of the apparent rapidity with which these texts were put together and their seeming lack of revision before publication (there are notable inconsistencies within narratives regarding such matters as ages and names, as well as inconsistencies between content and illustrations). This is especially true of translations of Saikaku’s fiction, as they inevitably elide the clever wordplay on which some of these shifts hinge. Viewed in the light of haikai linked verse some such narrative shifts appear to be there either by design or simply as a result of rhetorical habits learned in the production of linked verse,36 rather than purely as the result of hasty composition and publication. “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket” Another good example of a narrative featuring such transitions is “Kuchi soete sakakaruko” (A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket, age 54),37 the sixth chapter of the seventh volume of Life of an Amorous Man, which consists of three parts of substantially different tone and content linked associatively rather than causally. The chapter as a whole is also notable for its haikai-like wordplay and parodic take on a classical text. In the first part we are introduced to Azuma, a tayū who actually did work in Osaka’s Shinmachi pleasure quarter. Her bond is paid off by a wealthy man whose birth date is, according to Chinese Five Elements theory, associated with the element of metal (“kane,” also meaning “money”), which, we are told, makes him an infelicitous match for Azuma: There was a man of a metallic nature, and as the fortune-telling books predicted, with him love was good at first, then it turned bad. In his case the metal in question was three hundred ryō of gold.38 In clauses linked by a kakekotoba, we learn that after using this money to free Azuma, he “cannot wait” (“machikane” [continuative form]) to have sex39 with her and takes her to a village near the foot of Mt. Machikane, near Osaka, where the two live in the lap of luxury. However, having earlier exchanged pledges of love with Yonosuke, Azuma is not happy. She feels torn between 36  Taniwaki attributes the sudden narrative shifts of Amorous Man to its status as Saikaku’s first work of fiction after a long career as a haikai no renga poet (Taniwaki, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu, pp. 151–76). 37  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 220–24; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 344– 48. This chapter is not included in Hamada’s abridged English translation. 38  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 220; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 344. 39  Indicated here and elsewhere by the euphemistic and vague “首尾” (shubi), meaning among other things “outcome” and “positive turn of events.”

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her love for Yonosuke and her debt of gratitude to the man who has freed her from her contract, even though this was not something she had wanted him to do. At one point she writes a suicide note and picks up a razor, but ends up not using it. Still, she is afraid of being perceived by others as duplicitous because of her ties to both men, so she decides to stop taking liquids, “wilts like a flower” and dies. Azuma’s suicide by thirst recalls Ōigimi’s suicide by starvation in the fortyseventh chapter of The Tale of Genji, which, similarly, was caused by her distress over the outcome of Kaoru and Niou’s courtship of her and her sister. Puns do not always indicate a comical tone in Japanese literature, but in the context of an erotic relationship the chain of puns involving the word for “money” shows that uncourtly diction is being comically juxtaposed with the Genji allusion and its aristocratic overtones. This juxtaposition undercuts the aestheticized pathos encapsulated in the “wilting flower” metaphor for Azuma’s death and provides the passage with an ironic distance from the events and characters described that may strike some modern readers as heartless.40 After the account of Azuma’s death the first of two narrative shifts in the chapter is marked by the phrase, “惜しやこの太夫は,” translatable as indicating either that “this tayū was sorely missed” for her good qualities and savoirfaire, which are then described, or that her qualities and manner of operating are themselves what people miss. There follows a description of Azuma’s exquisite good manners in the parlor-socializing that is a key part of the tayū’s job, which closes with an extended and comically detailed description of the extreme delicacy with which she would visit the privy when she was meeting a customer for the first time: If she had to excuse herself, she would go down into the garden and quietly view the bush clover hedge or whatever else presented itself. Then she would lift her skirts, moist from parting the dewy grass,41 and open the cedar-wood door without a sound. She never peeped out through the bamboo-lath window,42 and left behind a liberal covering of paper43 40  The citations from historical sources that Maeda includes in his annotations give no reason to believe that this chapter gives a factual account of the circumstances of Azuma’s death (Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, pp. 392–93). 41  A turn of phrase borrowed from waka (Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 395). 42  A place in a wall where the bamboo-lath substructure has not been plastered over, leaving a latticed opening (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 221, note 23). 43  Used to spare others who visited the privy the view of what one had left there (Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 396).

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Illustration 1 “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket.” Waseda University Library.

before she reemerged. Instead of going straight back to the parlor, she would gaze meaningfully at the artificial hill in the garden, then after a while she went to wash her hands, after which she would scent her skirts with incense smoke before returning to her seat. This is precisely how a tayū should conduct herself.44 Further description of Azuma’s great propriety follows. Because of her generally impeccable behavior, we are told, “[People] thought there was no way that she would see a man on the side, but …” This clause marks the chapter’s second radical narrative shift, and we are treated to the story of Yonosuke’s illicit (because he does not pay) affair with Azuma. It begins when, with the help of an intermediary, Yonosuke spies on Azuma at her bath, then rushes into the bathroom for a quick tryst. From then on the two meet regularly, and Yonosuke now thinks that men who pay for sex are fools.

44  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 221; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 345.

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The chapter’s final scene, the source of its title, occurs one winter evening when Yonosuke, having been told by Azuma that her customer for the day is expected to go home early, goes to the ageya (an inn where prostitutes entertained clients, as opposed to jorōya, at which they were based) where she is working and hides in the garden to wait until Azuma is alone, as she has instructed. From his hiding place Yonosuke watches Azuma and her client in a room on the second story. To Yonosuke’s vexation he observes the client leave behind, with instructions to keep Azuma company, a zatō, a member of a guild of blind men who, like Buddhist monks, shaved their heads, and who worked as itinerant entertainers, masseurs and acupuncturists. The zatō appears to be auditorily keeping track of those who enter and leave the room. As Yonosuke waits for a chance to meet Azuma, the night grows cold, so a frustrated Azuma tears up some old letters, twists them together to make paper twine, then fashions one end of the twine into a simple basket. She places a cup in the basket, fills it with hot saké, puts the cup to her lips and lowers it to Yonosuke. Another tayū, Nagatsu, who has been cooperating in the lovers’ efforts to meet because, the narrator tells us, of her “deep knowledge of love,”45 gives Yonosuke some Japanese pepper preserved in salt to eat with his saké. Nagatsu then takes Yonosuke upstairs and sets to work distracting the zatō so he will not notice Yonosuke’s presence. “Dear, sweet monk,” she begins, “I feel a tightness in my chest. Massage it.” She places his hand against her, then instructs, “There, lower, lower still …,” until his hand approaches her “vital area.”46 As the zatō’s heart flutters with excitement, Azuma and Yonosuke take advantage of his lack of vigilance and make love. The narrator applauds the cleverness of Nagatsu’s stratagem. “They say that he who doesn’t know enjoys the bliss of a Buddha,”47 the text continues, “and this was precisely the case with this blind man.”48 The zatō then says or, more plausibly thinks,49 “Ah, what wonderful golden skin this tayū has,” describing Nagatsu’s skin in terms originally applied to the skin of the Buddha and later used to praise that of a beautiful woman.50 Then his 45  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 223; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 347. 46  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 224; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 348. 47  “しらぬが仏,” a set expression equivalent to “Ignorance is bliss.” 48  The tense is ambiguous in the original. Teruoka Yasutaka’s punctuation in the Shōgakukan edition attributes this to the thoughts or words of the zatō, Maeda’s does not. 49  The quotation is marked at its end by “to,” which by itself can indicate direct or indirect discourse or thoughts, and which in pre-modern Japanese texts (which did not originally use quotation marks) often leaves unanswered the question of where a quotation begins. 50  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 402.

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reverie (and presumably Azuma and Yonosuke’s lovemaking) is interrupted by an announcement indicating (indirectly; there is no anatomical pun or metaphor in the original) that those customers not planning to stay until morning should leave before the quarter is locked for the night. “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket” offers a triptych of three distinct narratives centered on the same character: first a mock tragedy reminiscent of the Uji chapters of Genji, then a mildly scatological comedy of pleasure-quarter manners with a mock-serious tone, and finally a bawdy comedy of pleasure-quarter trickery with gently joking Buddhist references at its close. The three narratives are linked haikai-fashion, with the first connecting phrase, “惜しや” (“How regrettable!”/“How [she/her qualities] will be missed!”), soon rendered laughable by the implication that a large part of the tragedy of Azuma’s death resides in the loss of a woman with excellent toilet manners. In a manner we shall see repeated elsewhere in Amorous Man, the same passage severely undercuts the tragic pathos of the first narrative, already undermined by repeated punning references to money. The passage makes the Genji allusions of the first narrative ridiculous as well, since the Genji does not treat readers to anything so visceral as descriptions of the toilet trips of the Shining Prince’s various ladies or of the Uji princesses. The third narrative then counters the second’s description of Azuma’s exemplary attention to propriety by describing her improper (in terms of the rules of her profession) affair with Yonosuke and a particularly improper episode in that relationship. (Both the chapter’s scatological humor and its level of bawdry are an uncommon occurrence in Amorous Man, in which clothing, accessories, utensils and interior decoration receive much more attention than bodies and their intimate functions.) Azuma and Nagatsu are examples of a recurrent figure in Amorous Man and other fiction by Saikaku: the deceitful prostitute, which we shall see again in both male and female form. In contrast to the callous dissembler who bilks two countrified customers while stepping out with Yonosuke in a chapter we shall examine later, the pair of deceitful tayū in “A Kiss in a Cup” are shown as possessing a heightened sensibility in matters of love, and their deceit adds a note of intrigue portrayed as heightening the emotional and sensual pleasure Yonosuke derives from the experience. Significantly, the chronology of Azuma’s life is reversed so that her tragic death comes first, allowing the chapter to end on a positive and lighthearted note with the account of her illicit tryst with Yonosuke. In this manner the emotional trajectory of the chapter mirrors that of the novel as a whole in that Yonosuke is over the years exposed to the falseness, suffering and cruelty involved in prostitution, but when he is a tired and more reflective old man whom one might expect to abandon his promiscuous ways, he instead sails off on a new sexual adventure.

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“ Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” “Massha rakuasobi” (Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down),51 a chapter in Amorous Man set when Yonosuke is fifty, repeats the theme of the hubristically art-appropriating (and thus Danrin haikai-like) garment introduced by “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat,” and as in that chapter, narratorial condemnation thereof is undermined by the manner in which literary allusion is used in an adjacent passage. The chapter also contains a novel description of groups of taikomochi52 (male entertainers hired to liven up a pleasure-quarter outing) occupying three neighboring establishments engaging in a wordless dialogue by thrusting out the window toward each other a series of objects linked by visual puns. This visual equivalent of haikai linked verse serves as a metaphor for the expansion of the sensibility and techniques of haikai beyond the borders of that genre, a phenomenon of which Amorous Man itself is a prime example. Furthermore, the final segment of the chapter, in which brothel operators scatter money in the street in an attempt to regain the attention of customers distracted by the antics of the taikomochi, obliquely addresses the role of money in the pleasure quarters, a central concern of the novel linked to its treatment of the “great social contradiction and great symbolic lie” of which Zwicker writes53 and which, as we shall see, is directly dealt with in the novel’s preceding chapter. “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” begins, like so many chapters and stories in Saikaku’s works, with a special rhetorical flourish, here reaching the level of a virtuoso performance. In a variation on patterns we have seen in “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat,” its opening line both implicitly elevates the pleasure-quarter milieu toward the level of the aristocratic milieu whose literature it alludes to, and hubristically recontextualizes this literature in a chōnindominated pleasure-quarter setting: 昔の人の袖のかほるより、今の太夫まさりて、 . . .

Mukashi no hito no sode no (k)Kaoru yori, ima no tayū masarite, …

51  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 202–6; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 185–90; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 322–26. 52  The word “massha” in the chapter’s title is a synonym for “taikomochi.” 53  Zwicker, Sentimental Imagination, p. 105.

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One could translate this, a bit freely, as “The current tayū of the Kaoru lineage is better than the Kaoru of the past.”54 The line can also be translated as, “The fragrance of the current tayū Kaoru’s sleeves is better than that of the sleeves of the Kaoru of the past.” The dual meaning is due to a kakekotoba: everything up to the “か” in “かほる” (whose polysemic nature means its initial consonant needs to be romanized in both upper and lower case) is a straight quotation of a celebrated poem anthologized in the Kokinshū, featured in the sixtieth chapter of Tales of Ise, and alluded to in both the eleventh chapter of The Tale of Genji and the diary attributed to the mid-Heian-period aristocrat and poetess Izumi Shikibu (976?–?):55 さつきまつ花たちばなの香をかげば昔の人の袖の香ぞする

Satsuki matsu hanatachibana no ka o kageba mukashi no hito no sode no ka zo suru Scenting the orange blossoms at last the fifth month has come, I catch perfume from the sleeves of one from the past.56 54  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 202; Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 328 (in the former, Teruoka Yasutaka punctuates this as part of a quotation, but Maeda Kingorō does not); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 322. Hamada’s translation of the chapter does not contain wording corresponding to this line. 55   Ise monogatari, in Fukui Teisuke, Katagiri Yōichi, Shimizu Yoshiko, Takahashi Shōji, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 12 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994), p. 162; McCullough, trans., Tales of Ise, pp. 108–9; Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari 2, in Abe Akio, Akiyama Ken, Imai Gen’e, Suzuki Hideo, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 21 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1995), pp. 156–57; Murasaki Shikibu, Tyler, Genji, p. 224; Izumi Shikibu, Izumi Shikibu nikki, in Fujioka Tadaharu, Inukai Kiyoshi, Ishii Fumio, Nakano Kōichi, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 26 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994), p. 18; Izumi Shikibu, trans. Earl Miner, The Diary of Izumi Shikibu, in Earl Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 96. 56   Kokin waka shū, in Arai Eizō, Kojima Noriyuki, eds., Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei, Vol. 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989), p. 57 (Poem 139).

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In the original poem the fragrance of tachibana orange blossoms reminds the poet of the scented sleeves of “a person from the past.”57 The Diary of Izumi Shikibu portrays an unnamed Prince Atsumichi (981–1007) silently referencing the poem by sending tachibana blossoms to Izumi Shikibu, who had taken as a lover his half-brother Prince Tametaka (977–1002), now dead and thus a “person of the past” dear to them both, whereupon the diarist, understanding the allusion, responds with a poem that makes use of it as well and expresses a romantic interest in the surviving brother, who himself will soon become her lover. “Kaoru,” which means “to be fragrant,” is the name of both the tayū in question and the hero of Genji’s Uji chapters. The opening line of “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” thus alludes to a classic of Heian-period court poetry, and to the various equally esteemed Heian-period aristocratic texts in which it appeared or was famously alluded to. Of these, Genji, Tales of Ise and The Diary of Izumi Shikibu are typified by the refined eroticism for which Heian-period aristocratic narrative is noted and to which Amorous Man frequently links its hero’s adventures with prostitutes. As with the nō allusions at the end of “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat,” the opening line of “Letting Their Hair Down” also serves the function of allowing members of an audience primarily consisting of commoners to feel pleased with themselves if they understand its allusions to elite (in this case Heian-period aristocratic) literature. As does “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat,” “Letting Their Hair Down” then goes on to decry that which it has itself just done and will continue to do, and what Amorous Man and Danrin haikai do throughout: to sully or “waste” the form and content of high culture by transferring them to a genre or a medium deemed inferior. Kaoru, we learn, has taken a quilted kimono of white velvet and had the female painter Kanō Yukinobu (1643?–1682) paint an autumn scene on it, and then has had eight nobles of the imperial court write suitable old poems on the garment as well. In her choice of a painter of the Kanō school, which was patronized by the elite of the samurai status-group, as well as in her engagement of aristocratic calligraphers to write classical poetry on her kimono, Kaoru has linked the garment to both of these hereditary elites and their respective cultural heritages. Like Yonosuke’s paper poem-haori, this is condemned58 as “mottainashi”: “wasteful” or “sacrilegious,” a word that, as noted before, covers both extravagance and hubris. However, this condemnation of Kaoru’s kimono 57  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 202, note 5. 58  Whether Kaoru’s kimono is condemned by the narrator or by persons in the anonymous Greek chorus of bystanders that occasionally comes up in Saikaku’s fiction is open to interpretation.

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has already been preemptively undermined in the chapter’s opening line by the narrator’s sacrilegious use of layered allusions to aristocratic literature in a sentence introducing a high-class prostitute. The narrator then comments that with each generation the clothing of brothel-quarter big spenders gets ever more extravagant. There follows a lengthy, detailed description of the standard outfit of such men, after which the narrator says that those who want to save their money should stay away from the pleasure quarters. “You’re going to die anyway; if you’ve got it, spend it!” Yonosuke is then quoted as saying or thinking, and we learn that he spends one bit of his immense fortune by renting out a bathhouse and inviting together a group of taikomochi. After a bath they all dress in light kimono bearing Yonosuke’s crest, leave their fundoshi (male undergarments) off and their hair untied, and file in a group of nine to the second floor of the Hachimonjiya, an ageya of the Shimabara licensed quarter in Kyoto, where their antics attract the attention of the whole neighborhood. The taikomochi at Yonosuke’s party and those in two neighboring establishments then conduct a sort of mute dialogue by thrusting objects out of their respective windows. The sequence of images thus presented and linked in a haikai no renga-like manner begins when a member of Yonosuke’s party displays a hemp-palm broom to which he has attached paper that he has cut into shide, zigzag paper streamers attached to sakaki branches to form tamagushi, which are given as offerings in Shinto ceremonies. In response, a taikomochi in another ageya holds out images of the gods of good fortune Daikoku and Ebisu, which implicitly “receive” the “offering” of the first taikomochi’s visual parody of a tamagushi. A third taikomochi in another ageya then displays salted sea bream, a fish associated with Ebisu and which was given as an offering to the deity on the ninth evening of the first month.59 The exchange among taikomochi at the three ageya continues in this vein for a total of twenty-one links in the chain of associated objects. Some of the conceptual connections between objects are quite arcane and there is disagreement among scholars as to what a number of them “mean” in this context, but similarly to the novel’s final chapter and, as we shall see, Saikaku’s Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan, there is repeated use of objects with religious significance. This performance draws the attention of all the people in the quarter, who are laughing uproariously by its end, and the taikomochi then go out in the street to tell off-the-cuff jokes. This comic distraction from the serious business of prostitution has the local businessmen worried, so someone gets the 59  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, pp. 340–41.

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idea of throwing money onto the street to turn the revelers’ attention away from this free entertainment, but none of them picks up the money and the money-throwers are laughed at to boot, so they lose heart and go back inside. Later, the cash is finally retrieved by mendicant Buddhist monks and paper scrap collectors. The scene offers a bizarre set of reversals and ironies; although the high-end prostitution business of the pleasure quarters takes extraordinary measures (tayū may not touch money and should not have sex on the first meeting with a customer) to create the illusion that relationships with prostitutes are not primarily, or at least not overwhelmingly, money-driven, when pleasure of a different sort (enjoying a comic performance) becomes available for free, it sends into a panic those whose job it is to obscure the mercantile nature of interactions with prostitutes, and the solution of the problem they perceive is to reverse the policy of discretion regarding money and expose naked cash on the street! Then it is the customers who follow the custom of tayū and hold themselves aloof from filthy lucre. In line with the definition of parody in Saikaku’s fiction outlined in the introduction to this study, I view the allusive sentence at the beginning of “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” introducing Kaoru (the objects of whose parody are less coarsely recontextualized than the nō lines at the end of “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat”) as well as Yonosuke’s poem-coat and Kaoru’s painting- and poem-decked kimono, primarily as emblematic of the cultural aspirations of the prosperous chōnin who frequented the pleasure quarters, rather than as an attack on elite culture. This interpretation is reinforced when these passages are read alongside the description of an elegant pleasure-quarter party in the chapter preceding “Letting Their Hair Down.” As mentioned earlier, that description also broaches the topic of concealment or exposure of money and its role in the pleasure quarter, which is of great significance when considering Amorous Man’s stance regarding the potential of money to fuel the development and spread of cultural forms and to supplant birth as a determiner of social standing, the latter potential being targeted by Tokugawa sumptuary laws and, ostensibly, by the narratorial criticism of chōnin hubris examined above. “Fresh as First-Picked Tea” Set when Yonosuke is forty-nine, “Sono sugata wa hatsu mukashi” (Fresh as First-Picked Tea)60 too is noteworthy for its direct references to the group 60  Ihara, Ichida otoko, pp. 198–202; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 183–93 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 179–85; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que

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composition of haikai. These are made in the context of a party that is the epitome of pleasure-quarter elegance in a manner that encourages one to interpret haikai-like parody of elite texts in Amorous Man more as a display of cultural sophistication (which implies some degree of subscribing to a cultural and aesthetic hierarchy) than as an egalitarian-oriented ridiculing of these texts and the social classes with which they are associated. The chapter directly addresses the quarter’s habitual masking of the financial transactions that fuel its refined entertainments and simulacra of love, and depicts its central female character, a tayū, as praiseworthy for publicly acknowledging and reconciling herself with the quarter’s money-driven nature. In so doing, it implicitly legitimizes, by extension, the new bourgeois culture in which money counts more than birth, and which thus by its very nature conflicts with the spirit and goals of the Tokugawa sumptuary laws, to which the narrator’s moralizing in “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” and “Letting Their Hair Down” pays lip service in statements, that, as we have seen, are flagrantly undermined by their immediate context. “Fresh as First-Picked Tea” exemplifies the blending of the elegant and the bawdy typical of Amorous Man and opens with a passage reminiscent (like the passages describing Noaki, cited earlier) of the hyōbanki genre of prostitute-evaluation books, describing the charms of the first tayū of the Takahashi lineage in the Shimabara pleasure quarter of Kyoto and including the slightly salacious remark that “Those who have loosened their obis and slept with her say she has other good points, too.”61 The narrative then shifts to an account of a party thrown by Takahashi to celebrate the first snowfall of winter, and lists in great detail the exquisite appointments and entertainments she provides her guests. At the party a blank sheet of paper is mysteriously displayed as a hanging scroll. The hostess breaks the seal on a container of last season’s new tea and serves teacakes on trays made for the annual Doll Festival. The brand-new teacups and mizukoboshi (a container for disposing of the water in which the pour aimer, pp. 317–21. The English title is my interpretive rendering of that given the chapter in the table of contents of the seventh volume of Amorous Man; the title used at the beginning of the chapter itself differs considerably and features untranslatable wordplay. 61  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 198; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, p. 184 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 179; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 317. I have made the source of the comment on Noaki’s hidden charms plural, whereas these translators have opted for the singular; the original Japanese is ambiguous. Hamada’s translation tones down the salaciousness of the original here.

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teacups have been rinsed) bear Takahashi’s tachibana crest, but are to be used only once and then discarded. A manservant arrives back from Uji, where he was sent to collect water from under the Uji Bridge between the second and third sets of pillars at its western end; Hideyoshi and his tea master, the great codifier of the tea ceremony Sen no Rikyū (1522–1591) were said to have esteemed this part of the Uji river as providing excellent “light” water for tea.62 Takahashi rubs out some ink on her inkstone and reveals that the blank sheet of paper she has hung on the wall will be filled with impromptu haikai verses that she and the guests are to compose on the subject of the snow, and we are told that the first five verses are especially fine. Here skill at haikai composition serves as one of several signs of the cultural sophistication of the gathering and its participants, reminding sufficiently cultivated readers of how skill at composing waka aids aristocratic characters in their competition for love and status in Genji and other Heian narratives alluded to in Amorous Man. The lively music of the lion dance is played on the shamisen. In the enclosure where the tea is served, empty bamboo flower vases have been set out, meant to imply, the narrator tells us, that no flowers could compete with the beauty of the women present. Takahashi’s layered garments include an underrobe the color of crimson plum blossoms, a white velvet kimono with an embroidered image of the nō character Sanbasō, and a spring-green light kimono with crimson tassels and a long-tailed rooster pattern. Her hair is worn up high in the chigomage style and adorned with gold-colored paper hair-ties. The narrator compares her look to that of “the younger sister of a heavenly maiden,” and says that her elegant manner of serving tea causes people to wonder if she is the reincarnation of Sen no Rikyū himself. After a while the mood becomes casual and those present begin drinking without the usual formalities. In his cups, Yonosuke scoops a large amount of gold and silver coins from his purse and commands the various tayū present to take them. Since tayū normally kept up the pretense of never touching money, there is an awkward moment in which no one takes the coins and the less experienced prostitutes present blush with embarrassment. Takahashi then laughs softly, saying, “I’ll sure take some,” and receives some of the money in a bowl. She then continues, “Whether one takes money from you face to face or secretly asks for it in a letter, it’s the same thing.” She then calls her kamuro (a girl serving as an assistant to a tayū or other high-ranking prostitute) and says of the money, “It’s something no one can do without. Take it.” Takahashi thus saves Yonosuke’s feelings by judiciously violating convention, and the narrator 62  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 199, note 18.

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judges her a tayū for the ages, gushing, “Could anyone possibly show such savoir-faire in future generations?”63 As in the section summarized above with its brief, vague reference to Takahashi’s hidden charms and its lengthy, detailed description of the décor and implements on display at her snow party, in Amorous Man most references to sexual activity and the lower anatomy are indirect and euphemistic,64 and risqué or coarse passages65 are far outweighed by descriptions of 63  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 199–200; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 187–88 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 181; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 319–20. Hamada’s translation diverges considerably from the original here. 64  In this regard Someya Tomoyuki contrasts Amorous Man and Saikaku’s other erotic fiction with the late Ming-period novel The Plum in the Golden Vase, which, as he points out, is far franker and more detailed in its depictions of sex, and writes of a Confucian-inflected conception of the immorality of its characters’ behavior evident in its narration, which he contrasts with what he posits as the cheerful and tolerant approach to sex typical of Saikaku’s works (Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 94–95). 65  In the fifty-four chapters of Amorous Man, the nine passages (with three more borderline cases) that, according to my admittedly arbitrary criteria, are characterized by a conspicuously coarse physicality feature, respectively, little Yonosuke urinating (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 21; Ihara Saikaku, trans. Chris Drake, Life of a Sensuous Man [selections], in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, p. 48; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 13; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 105), a reference to the copious amount of semen Yonosuke squanders over the years (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 23; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, p. 50; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 106; the line in question is omitted from Hamada’s translation), a servant woman (apparently) masturbating in the bath (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 27–28; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 19–22; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 111–14), a stinky fisherwoman hired for sex (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 37–38; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 29; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 124–25), a quest to replace a worn-out dildo (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 118–20; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 154–57 [trans. North]; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 109–10; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 225–27; Hamada’s translation diverges substantially from the original), straw matting apparently soaked with sexual fluids (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 121; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, p. 157 [trans. North]; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 227; Teruoka takes the tatami penetration to be liquid, Siary, mechanical; in Hamada’s version no sex occurs here), two wind-breaking prostitutes, one each in two separate chapters, the latter being the skilled haikai composer Yoshida (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 161–62, 188–90; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 156–57 [which diverges significantly from the original], 177– 79; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 274–75, 306–8, with Yonosuke’s age emended in the latter [see note 14]; the latter also is included in Ihara, Drake, Solt,

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pleasure-quarter manners (which reach a height of courtliness in the portrayal of Noaki, Denshichi and Yonosuke’s chaste night together in “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat,” a sequence that offsets the bawdiness of that chapter’s closing passage), of parlor amusements and artistic pursuits, as well as art objects, fine clothing, luxury goods and other artifacts of material culture. The latter fact can be obscured by plot synopses and selective quotations, which tend to skip over the tedious business of cataloguing unfamiliar fabrics, utensils and fixtures of a different era and place. Such omissions could lead one to misconstrue Amorous Man as predominantly “Rabelaisian”66 (i.e., coarse and earthy), and more importantly conceal one of its key functions: the cataloguing of the cultural attainments—as manifested in words, deeds and physical objects—of the upper levels of the chōnin, one of whose principal showcases was the milieu of high-end prostitution in the metropolitan licensed quarters. This cataloguing is achieved through passages such as the account of Takahashi’s party, which demonstrates the sophistication of the milieu and persons in question in a variety of ways. It describes a balance between opulence and suggestive restraint, the former embodied by clothing made of gorgeous fabrics and custom-made teaware used only once, the latter evident in the blank hanging scroll and empty flower vases. The hostess’s great knowledge of the way of tea earns her comparison with the most celebrated tea master of all time, and the guests show literary sophistication in composing excellent haikai poetry on the spot. Skill at haikai poetry composition is also referenced as a mark of cultivation elsewhere in Amorous Man when Yoshida, the real-life tayū of Edo’s Yoshiwara pleasure quarter who serves as the heroine of chapter six of volume six, entitled “Nioi wa kazukemono” (A Fragrant Gift, age 41), is praised by the narrator as a great beauty and an excellent conversationalist North, Sensuous Man, pp. 164–68 [trans. Drake]), and dildos’ reprise, with other sex toys, in the lading list of Yonosuke’s boat at the novel’s end (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 248; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, p. 56; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 379; omitted from Hamada’s translation). 66  Nakajima Takashi contrasts Saikaku’s fiction, in which sex is seldom directly described, with kōshokubon (erotic fiction) from the Genroku and Hōei periods (1688–1711) that he describes as much more sexually explicit and as lacking a sense of aesthetics, despite the fact that “at the time Saikaku’s Amorous Man was generally thought to be ‘the ancestor of kōshokubon.’ ” Nakajima does not contradict that characterization, stating that, with regard to the literary treatment of sex, the list of sex-related items carried by Yonosuke’s boat as it sails off to the Island of Women in the novel’s final chapter was “epoch-making,” but adds that after being liberated by Saikaku the depiction of sex (by other writers) “took on a life of its own,” and speculates that Saikaku would have disliked such books (Nakajima, “Saikaku to ‘kōshokubon’ no bibincho,” pp. 148–50).

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and calligrapher with a deep interest in poetry. An anecdote follows in which haikai master Shimada Hinyū (also an actual person)67 presents her with a hokku (an opening verse in a renga sequence) containing her name. Yoshida immediately follows this with an extremely clever verse containing a pun on Hinyū’s name, which the narrator puts forward as an example of the intelligence for which she is known far and wide.68 If one considers such displays of taste and sophistication in the metropolitan pleasure quarters in the context of the book as a whole, their distinction is highlighted through contrasting examples of inelegant behavior in provincial prostitution quarters and elsewhere in the hinterlands,69 examined below, thus confirming in a chōnin context the capital/provinces hierarchy Saikaku’s fiction has inherited from Heian-period aristocratic literature. As we shall later see, in the third chapter of Amorous Man’s seventh volume, this hierarchy is manifested in the metropolitan pleasure quarter itself through the portrayal of two comically clueless rubes whose gullibility is contrasted with Yonosuke’s shrewdness as they are bilked by an unscrupulous tayū. In “Fresh as First-Picked Tea,” the placing of Yonosuke’s drunken faux pas in the context of Takahashi’s display of exquisite taste and her reaction to it imbue it with special significance. Yonosuke violates one of several pleasurequarter customs meant to promote the illusion that a tayū bestows her favors out of desire for her client, which also include the tayū’s prerogative, in principle, of rejecting a new client, and the custom dictating that a tayū not have sex during the initial encounter with a client. By directly offering money to the tayū at Takahashi’s party, Yonosuke indelicately draws attention to the rather obvious fact that it is money that brings these women and their clients together and also, implicitly, to the fact that money enables the cultural sophistication on display on this occasion. To defuse the situation Takahashi drops all pretense of disinterestedness and cheerfully acknowledges money’s role in this milieu, thus winning the narrator’s praise.

67  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 286. 68  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 187; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, p. 162 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 175–76; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 304–5 (with Yonosuke’s age emended). 69  For prime examples of this see: Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 37–40, 90–98, 154–58; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 141–51 (the earlier of two chapters in the second stretch of text cited above); Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 28–32, 82–87 (the earlier of two chapters in the second stretch of text), 150–53; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 124–27, 192–201, 266–70.

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Takahashi’s reaction to Yonosuke’s pouring out of coins and the narrator’s praise thereof provide a distillation of the affirmative position of Amorous Man and other Saikaku texts vis-à-vis the power of money, which subverts the narratorial condemnation of commoner hubris in “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” and “Letting Their Hair Down,” and is nearly opposite to the late-Edo approach to the issue that Jonathan Zwicker describes in his analysis of nineteenthcentury pleasure-quarter fiction such as the novel Shunshoku umegoyomi (1832–1833), cited earlier.70 The role of money in Amorous Man also of course sets it off from the Heian-period aristocratic love narratives that provide the models for Yonosuke: the unnamed aristocrat in Tales of Ise assumed to be Ariwara no Narihira, and the title character of The Tale of Genji. As Someya Tomoyuki puts it, “In contrast to Genji and Ise, which are set in a world ruled by bloodlines and the authority that derives from them, money, which caused the utter collapse of such bloodlines and authority, and the money-ruled world of the pleasure quarters serve as the foundation of Amorous Man.”71 This new, money-based order and its significance to the sort of diffusion of elite culture we see at work in Takahashi’s party are summed up in “Namikaze shizuka ni Jinzūmaru” (Steady Trade Winds for the Good Ship Jinzū), the third story in the first volume of Saikaku’s Eternal Storehouse of Japan, when the narrator observes:

70  Zwicker, Sentimental Imagination, pp. 104–6, 121–22. The contrast here reminds one of Howard Hibbett’s positing of “an interesting, though arrested, development towards what we may call a modern culture” that reaches “an early climax in the Genroku period” (Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 9–10). Interestingly, Kuki Shūzō cites passages in works by this novel’s author (Tamenaga Shunsui [1790–1843]) and Bunka-Bunsei (early nineteenth century) culture in general as reflecting the subtle iki sensibility on which he expounds and which he contrasts, as noted earlier, with a showier aesthetic that he discerns in Saikaku’s fiction, Genroku culture and the Kamigata region. One is tempted to see a connection between the disavowal of the power of money that Zwicker perceives in Shunshoku umegoyomi and other nineteenth-century Japanese fiction and Kuki’s exclusion from his model of pleasure-quarter elegance of late seventeenth-century displays of wealth through flashy fashions and the abundant flesh of well-fed beauties (Kuki, Nara, Structure of Iki, pp. 106–11, 140–45, 152–53). However, Hiroshi Nara convincingly argues that Kuki’s vision of understated Bunka-Bunsei pleasure-quarter chic is based on a selective reading of the textual and pictorial evidence of the period, including that in Shunshoku umegoyomi (Hiroshi Nara, “Capturing the Shudders and Palpitations: Kuki’s Quest for a Philosophy of Life,” in Hiroshi Nara, ed., trans., The Structure of Detachment: The Aesthetic Vision of Kuki Shūzō [Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004], pp. 107–13). 71  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 54.

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In general, the well-off of Osaka do not come from families that have been wealthy for generations. Typically, Kichizō or Sansuke the manservant rises in the world and gets rich, and when his time comes, as naturally as can be he learns the arts of Japanese and Chinese poetry, kickball,72 short-bow archery, the koto, the flute, drumming, incense comparison and tea ceremony. As he associates with the better sort even his vulgar way of speaking fades away. In short, people change to fit their circumstances, and even the bastard child of a nobleman may end up making and selling artificial flowers.73 To the extent that the manservant rises in society and the offspring of a nobleman falls, the above scenario does depict an overturning of hierarchy of the sort that Jeffrey Johnson says Saikaku delighted in,74 but more than that, it describes the establishment of a new hierarchy in which aristocratic or samurai birth are de-emphasized but aristocratic and high-samurai culture are aspired to by newly rich commoners who, like the former manservant portrayed here, become well-versed in arts and pastimes associated with these hereditary elites. The type of parvenu described neither desires to eliminate social distinctions nor works to form a chōnin counterculture at variance with the aesthetic practices of the hereditary elites he cannot join; the radical new element here is that in the commercial capital of the newly commercialized Japan, money now provides access to these practices, a fact that is driven home by the contrasting of the nouveau-riche chōnin with the penniless scion of the court aristocracy. “Saikaku o kasa ni kiru Daikoku” (A Feather in Daikoku’s Cap), the third story of the second volume of The Eternal Storehouse of Japan, contains an even more impressive list of aesthetic accomplishments by a character apparently of chōnin origins, featuring arts and pastimes associated with the aristocracy, samurai and chōnin, including, significantly, haikai taught to him by Saikaku’s master and Danrin haikai founder Nishiyama Sōin, a samurai, as well as the arts of love learned in the arms of both the Kyoto tayū Takahashi (Taniwaki Masachika speculates that this refers to the second tayū of that lineage, whereas the first Takahashi throws the snow party described above)75 and the Osaka kabuki actor Suzuki Heihachi.76 Skill at haikai composition (the main activity 72  I.e., kemari. 73  Ihara, Eitaigura, pp. 35–36; Ihara, Sargent, Family Storehouse, pp. 23–24. 74  Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 43; Johnson, “Turnabout,” p. 344. 75  Ihara, Eitaigura, p. 68, note 23. 76  Ihara, Eitaigura, p. 68; Ihara, Sargent, Family Storehouse, pp. 47–48.

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in Takahashi I’s party) and erotic pursuits in the pleasure quarter and theatrical district (Yonosuke’s principal pastimes) are thus placed in the same category as elegant aristocratic- or samurai-associated pursuits such as composing poetry and prose in Chinese, tea ceremony and kemari (a form of kickball associated with the aristocracy, and which features in the first list as well). But the character in question, having attained a high level of sophistication, refinement, and, implicitly, social distinction through all of these pursuits, has neglected to learn and never been taught the skills necessary to acquire money, and so finds himself reduced to a most inelegant beggardom.77 With their descriptions of self-cultivation within contrasting rags-to-riches and riches-to-rags narratives, together these two anecdotes portray money as enabling cultural refinement that elevates one in society; remove it and the whole gorgeous edifice, along with one’s social position, comes crashing down. While expanding on Teruoka Yasutaka’s observations regarding Danrin haikai, in his analysis of parody in Saikaku’s fiction Jeffrey Johnson writes, “When one sets out to ridicule a received text, a privileged group behind that text is also the object of ridicule.”78 For a reader conditioned by the egalitarian sensibilities of the modern era it is tempting to view the parodic and haikailike elements in Saikaku’s prose and much of Edo-period haikai itself primarily in terms of the subversion of established literary forms and social structures by restive chōnin.79 However, a number of factors argue for an interpretation of both Saikaku’s fiction and chōnin-produced haikai, like Saikaku’s own, as efforts by ambitious chōnin to emulate their samurai betters and to partake of the classical literary tradition produced by the imperial court. Haikai linked verse has elite origins that predate the emergence of a large, literate urban middle class.80 The adoption of the genre by chōnin represented an immersion in a complexly coded discipline that required extensive knowledge of the aristocratic and samurai literary cultures, an effort that implies recognition of the value of these cultures and some degree of admiration for the social classes that produced them.81 Furthermore, as Eiko Ikegami demonstrates in Bonds of Civility, in which she describes the great popularity of haikai-related activities in Tokugawa Japan and explains the distinctively horizontal structure of haikai organizations, the social context in which haikai was produced offered 77  Ihara, Eitaigura, pp. 68–69; Ihara, Sargent, Family Storehouse, pp. 46–47. 78  Johnson, “Turnabout,” p. 335. 79  Johnson, “Turnabout,” p. 335. 80  Carter, The Road to Komatsubara, p. 90. 81  Eiko Ikegami posits haikai as both “subversive” and a conduit for the spread of imperial court culture (Ikegami, Bonds of Civility, pp. 173, 191–92).

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many educated commoners a chance to hobnob on a quasi-equal footing with samurai.82 (This was true of Saikaku; as noted earlier, Nishiyama Sōin, the founder of the Danrin school of haikai in which Saikaku was active, was himself a samurai.) Thus, the choice by chōnin to pursue haikai as a discipline and a collective pastime must in many cases have been at least partly motivated by a desire to engage in such inter-status-group socializing. So however much haikai thumbed its nose at the rules of classical poetic diction, it represented a trickling down of aristocratic and samurai values and cultural forms to the educated stratum of urban commoners,83 as well as a means for social selfadvancement. As we shall see, the latter function of artistic accomplishment in general is reflected in a chapter in Amorous Man that centers on the tayū Yoshino, whom Yonosuke marries, and who, maintaining an air of utmost humility toward his snobbish relatives, wins them over through a display of social graces and artistic skill in a passage that depicts not hierarchy-overturning but the successful effort of a socially disadvantaged party to adapt to hierarchy and thus rise within it.84 The socio-cultural context of early-Tokugawa haikai thus argues for an interpretation of the function of direct references to haikai and the haikai-like practices, including parodic elements, in Amorous Man primarily as a parvenu demonstration of cultural sophistication rather than primarily as a symbolic overturning of hierarchy. The passages in question are concentrated in volumes six and seven of the novel, in its second, hyōbanki-like half, when Yonosuke has already inherited his family’s fortune and loving descriptions of high living in the pleasure quarters where he spends it predominate. As we shall see, there are in this part of Amorous Man also episodes of slumming in provincial 82  Ikegami, Bonds of Civility, pp. 171–92. 83  The dynamic I posit here dovetails with Tzvetana Kristeva’s observations about the function in Japanese culture of parody in general: “ … In Japanese culture ‘parody’ is a means of transmitting tradition and of education that both stimulates the development of culture and has performed the important function of maintaining cultural continuity and identity” (Kristeva, “ ‘Hajime ni’ ni kaete,” p. 20). 84  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 136–40; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 50–55; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 125–30; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 243–47. Similarly, the hierarchy-overturning view of Saikaku’s fiction is further undermined by two stories in Way of the Warrior to be examined in Chapter 4 in which conflict between characters of widely varying social status is resolved with a show of benevolence by a virtuous individual among those of higher rank toward one or more of his social inferiors (Ihara Saikaku, Budō denraiki, in Fuji Akio, Hiroshima Susumu, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 69: Ihara Saikaku shū 4 [Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2000], pp. 120–27, 180–89).

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prostitution quarters85 that serve as a counterpoint to depictions of the sophistication of their metropolitan counterparts, and it is in scenes of the latter sort that we get references to haikai composition as a social activity, Yonosuke’s poem-haori, and Kaoru’s velvet kimono decorated with Kanō-school painting and poetic classics in the handwriting of imperial court aristocrats, as well as the taikomochi’s session of visual haikai. For this reason I view these as part of Amorous Man’s differentiation of high metropolitan chōnin culture from the culture of provincial towns, which, far from reflecting an egalitarian spirit, constitutes the construction of an aesthetic and cultural hierarchy that places affluent commoners of the era’s great cities above the chōnin of towns in the periphery, let alone peasants.86 Furthermore, these passages together posit high metropolitan chōnin culture as approaching its samurai and aristocratic counterparts in sophistication, an assertion of value that, as we shall see, becomes explicit when Yonosuke favorably compares the pleasures on offer in the commercial capital, Osaka, to those available in the imperial capital, Kyoto, and remarks that he would like to demonstrate this to the emperor himself.87 The question of whether to read the Danrin haikai-like parodic elements of Amorous Man and elsewhere in Saikaku’s fiction as evincing, as Johnson indicates, a desire for social leveling, or as I propose, a celebration of a new social mobility that results in a new and dynamic social, cultural and aesthetic hierarchy, is tied to the questions of the degree to which parody, in general and in individual cases, functions as either an hommage to its object, a degradation thereof, or both, and of whether in specific cases one can discern in the travestying of cultural forms and cultural products the intention or the effect of lessening their prestige. As delineated in the introduction to this study, in line with Linda Hutcheon’s writings on parody in twentieth-century art and Tzvetana Kristeva’s overview of parody, broadly defined, in medieval and early-modern Japan, I view Saikaku’s parody of elite literature in Amorous Man and, with few exceptions (i.e., some stories in Way of the Warrior, and even 85  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 37–40, 90–98, 154–58; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 141–51 (the earlier of two chapters in the second stretch of text cited above); Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 28–32, 82–87 (the earlier of two chapters in the second stretch of text), 150–53; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 124–27, 192– 201, 266–70. 86  See, for example, “A Secret Stash of Cash,” examined later in this chapter (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 206–10; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 327–32; omitted from Hamada’s translation). 87  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 159; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 155 (here the word designating “emperor” is translated as “the court ladies”); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 272 (with Yonosuke’s age emended).

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there ambiguously so), other works of fiction not as an attack on the prestige of its objects but rather as working to flatter the chōnin reader regarding his or her own cultural sophistication, and to implicitly lift both the text containing such allusions and the cultural milieu that produced it and is depicted by it toward the prestige level of the classical source and the milieu with which it is associated.88 In performing this last function, allusion (including parody) in Saikaku’s fiction runs counter to the spirit of sumptuary laws meant to keep chōnin in their place—symbolically, though not economically—of inferiority vis-à-vis the samurai, which, in “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” and “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down,” Amorous Man pretends to agree with, then ostentatiously thumbs its nose at through the use of (parodic) allusion. And although here and elsewhere Amorous Man gets many a laugh through the juxtaposition of vulgar subject matter and classical allusions, such moments are matched, and in its later chapters outweighed, by implied and direct assertions of the value of high-chōnin culture and its products, of which Amorous Man itself is an early, brilliant example. In the introduction to his study of Bashō, Haruo Shirane writes, “In Edo culture the ability to create the new out of the old was generally a more highly regarded form of newness than the ability to be unique or individual.”89 Amorous Man’s copious use of various forms of literary allusion classifiable under the broad definition of parody I have adopted can be read as reflecting such a mindset. Later works by Saikaku such as Five Women or Kōshoku ichidai onna (The Life of an Amorous Woman, 1686) are less dependent on literary precedent,90 as if they were written with greater confidence that the chōnin characters and milieus they portray were worthy of sustained attention in their own right, without being constantly linked to elite texts and real or imaginary 88  Someya Tomoyuki posits a similarly multifunctional parody in the conventions of one of these commoner milieus, the licensed prostitution quarters, whose intricate customs governing interactions between prostitutes and clients he views as a parody of romantic love in the Heian court based on both an admiration of ancient traditions and laughter at the spectacle of their vulgarization. Someya then complicates the picture further by hypothesizing that this parody was enacted by (those running) the quarters and the prostitutes working there primarily as a means of showing off an elite (i.e., pseudo-aristocratic) culture inaccessible elsewhere to chōnin and samurai. According to Someya, the people enacting this parody thus assumed within the confines of the quarter a superior position vis-à-vis those who would be their social betters outside it (Someya Tomoyuki, “Kinsei bungei ni oite parodi to wa nan datta no ka: Ihara Saikaku Honchō nijū fukō o chūshin ni,” in Kristeva, ed., Parodi to Nihon bunka, pp. 273–75). 89  Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 5. 90  Maeda, Kinsei bungaku, p. 225.

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court aristocrats and samurai.91 With greater narrative cohesiveness and far fewer of the renga-like shifts of Saikaku’s first novel, structurally as well they show the traces of Saikaku’s background as a Danrin-haikai poet more faintly, a development perhaps merely due to the waning of old habits on the part of their author, as Taniwaki Masachika has implied.92 The same could be said of the decreased allusiveness of Saikaku’s fiction after Amorous Man, but this can also be read as a sign that the ingenious deployment of parodic literary allusion in his first novel had elevated, in the minds of both Saikaku and his audience, contemporary urban commoners and the world they inhabited to such an extent that the new art form that was Saikaku’s fiction and the new social and cultural forms it portrayed were now attributed value beyond that of manifestations of past glories.93

91  In a dialogue between two booksellers, one from Osaka and the other from Kyoto, who discuss the issues of literary allusion and imitation while comparing the book’s own author, whose very pen-name invokes the emperor’s capital, with Osaka native Saikaku, Miyako no Nishiki’s (1675–?) Genroku Taiheiki (1701) suggests contrasting sensibilities in a tradition-revering Kyoto, repository of ancient court culture, and an innovation-valuing Osaka at the vanguard of both commercial development and new, chōnin-associated cultural forms (Miyako no Nishiki, ed. Nakajima Takashi, Miyako no Nishiki shū [Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 1989], pp. 96–97). 92  Taniwaki, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu, pp. 151–76. 93  The afterword of Amorous Man, attributed to Saikaku’s disciple Saigin, presents it as a trifle that Saikaku did not at first intend to publish (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 250; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 381–82). Taken at face value and as an indication that Amorous Man was intended for consumption by Saikaku’s haikai coterie or a narrow audience of haikai practitioners, this could explain the relative preponderance in Amorous Man of haikai-like features in comparison to his subsequent fiction. However, Nakajima Takashi rejects what he describes as the generally accepted theory that Amorous Man was meant to be distributed among haikai masters, writing of the book’s release by an apparently inexperienced publisher, “Even if Saikaku did originally assume that its readers would be haikai masters, because his desire to sell copies was too strong, the project’s speculative nature in fact scared off old, established shops like the Fukaeya that exclusively published haikai books.” Nakajima interprets the book’s afterword as an expression of humility not to be taken literally, asserts that Saikaku had previously been proactive in the publication of his haikai books and conscious of their potential readership, and judges it unlikely that such a writer would have published Amorous Man without a thought for whether or not it would sell well. He further notes that it is written in such a way that the illustrations featured in each chapter appear at regular intervals in the book, and that its block carving, printing and cover are far superior to those of Saikaku’s early books of haikai poetry. Nakajima perceives enthusiasm on Saikaku’s part for publication of Amorous Man as the driving force behind its first edition’s fine craftsmanship. (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 174; Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 116–19.)

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Part 2: Brothels High and Low

“They Couldn’t Recognize a Stylish Man” The sixth and seventh chapters of volume five in Amorous Man neatly link various themes we have just examined: metropolitan sophistication, provincial backwardness and rudeness, pride in high-chōnin culture, and the role  Haruo Shirane writes that Saikaku remained a local author, his works only published in Osaka, until the publication of Amorous Woman in 1686, and describes that year as a turning point after which Saikaku moved away from haikai-esque technique and classical models and toward medieval short narratives (setsuwa) as a source of material (Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 44–45).  In a section on Edo editions of Amorous Man, Nakajima Takashi paints a somewhat different picture regarding the spread in popularity of Saikaku’s fiction, writing that Amorous Man was reprinted in Edo in 1684, about a year and five months after its first edition, albeit with Saikaku’s name misprinted. Nakajima goes on to quote the diary of Ishibashi Seian, a physician and Confucian scholar of the Kii domain, as recording that while serving in Edo in 1684 its author rented first Amorous Man and then its sequel, Shoen ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Many Charms, 1684, aka Kōshoku nidai otoko [The Life of an Amorous Man: The Second Generation]). Nakajima ends the section by noting, “One can see that with little difference between the Kamigata and Edo, or chōnin, samurai and wealthy farmers, or between those who had some knowledge of haikai and those who had none, Saikaku’s works won many readers.” In the following section he supports the theory that the Edo edition of The Great Mirror of Many Charms was printed in 1684, and comments that if this is the case, the book represents the first example of a joint venture pairing book businesses in Osaka and Edo. He later writes that Tales From the Provinces (1685) was published with an Edo-style cover, probably in hopes of duplicating the popularity of Many Charms in Edo, but also observes that Tales From the Provinces apparently did not sell well. (Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 144–47, 159.)  As for the status of 1686 as the point at which the style and content of Saikaku’s fiction turns away from haikai and toward setsuwa, Nakajima remarks with regard to Saikaku’s second work of fiction that aside from its initial and concluding chapters, there is little of haikai-like parody in 1684’s Many Charms. One should also note that Saikaku’s third published work of fiction, 1685’s Tales from the Provinces, consists of short stories that have much in common with setsuwa (Nakajima refers to them as such). Richard Lane notes a stylistic shift with Tales from the Provinces away from attention to rhetorical devices and toward “a cleanly functional style” (Lane, “Saikaku and Boccaccio,” p. 105). Someya finds problematic the premise that Saikaku(’s fiction) changed drastically in 1686 or 1687, and perceives continuity between Saikaku’s early kōshokumono and the chōninmono and bukemono he produced later, writing that the contrast that manifests itself later on as one between idealistic bukemono and realistic chōninmono is already present in his kōshokumono in the contrasting of a predominantly spiritual/psychological male homosexuality and a predominantly corporeal heterosexuality (Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 461–70).

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of money. In the volume’s sixth chapter, “Tōryū no otoko o mishiranu” (They Couldn’t Recognize a Stylish Man, age 40),94 Yonosuke travels to Hakata and to Miyajima to try out the local prostitutes. In Miyajima the annual summer fair is being held, two of whose attractions are kabuki actors and female prostitutes whose services can be enjoyed in cramped ageya.95 The women of the pleasure quarter are tackily dressed but seem proud of their cheaply dyed underskirts, which they appear to be intentionally exposing to view. Yonosuke is amused by the singing and glaringly incompetent shamisen accompaniment issuing from one of the establishments there.96 Yonosuke enters an ageya and orders women for himself and two companions, saying, “I don’t mind who we get. Bring us the sassiest ladies here, the sort likely to reject a man.”97 The three men are dressed alike, in order to conceal Yonosuke’s wealth, each wearing a crest made up of the punning characters “鎌輪ぬ” (kamawanu, “I don’t mind”) and a particularly infelicitous combination of garments. When three prostitutes are brought to them Yonosuke says, “Our clothes are pretty ugly if I do say so myself.” The whole act is a test to see if the women will detect that Yonosuke is a man of means and quality and treat him with due deference, a test which they fail. They make fun of the men’s clothes, neglect even to serve them saké, rudely speak in prostitute’s cant, and tease their customers. One of the women puts on an air of superiority, so Yonosuke singles her out and asks her what he and his two companions look like. “You look like human beings,” she tartly  When considering whether to divide Saikaku’s fiction into two qualitatively different categories at the point in 1686 when he ceases to publish long narratives, one should also consider that both The Great Mirror of Male Love (1687; Someya Tomoyuki and others believe it was written earlier) and some of the short stories that make up Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior (1687) and Tales of Samurai Honor (1688) resemble the kōshokumono of Saikaku’s early fiction in their treatment of love affairs. Furthermore, although like the rest of Saikaku’s post-1686 fiction, Great Mirror of Male Love consists of short stories, Someya Tomoyuki writes that it approaches Amorous Man in terms of the complexity of its finely wrought style. (Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 149, 159–63; Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 249–51, 464.) 94  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 154–58; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 150–53; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 266–70. 95  Some of these were temporary facilities set up for the summer fair, at which time prostitutes from other areas were brought into town (Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 197). 96  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 155, note 21. 97  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 155; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 151; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 267.

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answers, rudely (if one takes the sentence as direct discourse) using a plainform verb. Yonosuke clarifies that he wants her to guess their professions. The woman guesses that they make, respectively, ink brushes, cardboard boxes and obis. Yonosuke at first plays along, saying that she got two out of three guesses right and feigning surprise at her perceptiveness. This goes to her head, but Yonosuke then ends the game and says that no matter how people are dressed one can guess their status by the accessories they carry or the condition of their hands and feet. He then adds that his sandal carrier is a youth of such beauty and refinement as to stand out even in the capital, and that the fact that these women have made light of him (Yonosuke) despite the fact that with a servant like this they should be able to tell that he is a gentleman of means, indicates that they are not worthy to grace his bed (or those of his companions either, probably; the passage is ambiguous). Yonosuke then orders a bunraku performance as the next activity of the evening and a miniature stage and puppets are produced from among his effects. One of the prostitutes remarks that one of the puppets is dressed like an Edo lady, and another says, “That looks like that tayū what’s-her-name in Yoshiwara.” Yonosuke replies, “Good call, ladies, I had it made to look like the tayū in question.”98 He then proceeds to tell a story about the Yoshiwara courtesan in which she, too, is confronted by a party of three men dressed alike and is compelled to guess which among them is the boss. She tricks the men into getting up from their seats, and makes a correct guess by observing their tabi (split-toed socks), correctly surmising that the man with no wear and tear from sandal thongs on his tabi seldom walks because he is normally carried around in a palanquin, and is therefore the member of the group with the highest status. The curious story occupying this chapter offers a catalog of perceived deficiencies in provincial prostitution—and by extension provincial chōnin culture in general: cheap, untasteful clothing, cramped ageya and rude, culturally unsophisticated prostitutes. Yonosuke has in fact set out to see Miyajima prostitution at its worst, deliberately dressing poorly and asking the ageya99 for the most contrary women available, apparently in hopes of witnessing flagrantly bad manners on their part. The motivation of this particular outing is thus not primarily sexual—Yonosuke rejects the prostitutes as unworthy partners in the end. Rather, it is motivated by the desire of a big-city snob to amuse himself at the expense of provincial vulgarians and to confirm his own superiority and 98  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 157; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 152–53; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 269. 99  The word applies both to an inn for meeting prostitutes and to its owner/manager.

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that of the metropolitan milieu he normally inhabits. His test of the prostitutes’ powers of perception indicates that he sees his status as not entirely dependent on money; a truly discerning eye should be able to detect his excellence no matter how he dresses. Once the game is over and he ceases toying with the women he has rented for the night, he takes on the role of Kamigata sophisticate with a mission civilisatrice, producing artifacts of metropolitan chōnin culture: bunraku puppets, for the edification of these benighted provincials. However, the women are not completely unaware of their betters in the major urban centers, as attested by one woman’s recognition of Edo fashion and another’s of a particular Yoshiwara tayū; presumably they could have seen pictures featuring both in print media such as hyōbanki. When the model for this puppet is recognized, Yonosuke takes the opportunity thus presented to extend the lesson with a story of exemplary prostitute-customer relations, in which the Yoshiwara tayū whose simulacrum he has brought to this backwater makes use of her keen eye for status distinctions. The scene draws to mind the practice of etoki (“picture explanation”), whereby itinerant Buddhist monks explained to their audiences pictures with religious themes. As we shall later see, in the penultimate chapter of Amorous Man, Yonosuke again makes use of dolls modeled after metropolitan tayū to give provincials a taste of the big city, this time in Nagasaki, whose pleasure quarter impresses him much more than that of Miyajima. “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction” The humor of “Stylish Man” is primarily derived at the expense of the prostitutes Yonosuke sets up to prove their vulgarity and unworthiness. The formula shifts in the following chapter, “Ima koko e shiri ga demono” (Her Backside Aimed in His Direction, age 41),100 at the end of which the overbearing pleasure-quarter big spender gets his comeuppance, after a fashion. At the start of “Aimed in His Direction,” which features Saikaku’s typical introductory waka allusions, we are told that although there is still much of the provinces that Yonosuke has not seen, he has finally learned his lesson: that provincial prostitutes are “no fun,”101 so he sets sail for Osaka. Blessed with favorable winds, the boat arrives at its destination later that same day. They land at Sanken’ya, where Yonosuke reminisces about the prostitutes who once plied their trade in the pleasure quarter that used to be there. He then watches 100  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 158–62; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 154–57; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 271–75. 101  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 158; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 154; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 271.

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a beautiful scene unfold in the light of the setting sun as the chōnin of Osaka amuse themselves in various picturesque ways. Some cruise about on pleasure boats drinking or listening to music in the company of young kabuki actors. On the opposite shore four more actors present “a lovely sight”102 as they stretch out their fishing poles to catch goby. (All of these actors’ names are given, and most of them are known actually to have existed.) A bath-boat and one bearing a tank full of live bream and sea bass are towed along behind other boats. People write on fans and set them adrift, and when the sky darkens, the sparkling of fireworks is reflected on the water’s surface. At such a sight “Heaven itself became drunk” (a line based on a Chinese poem in the Wakan rōei shū, compiled c. 1013).103 Yonosuke says that such pleasure boating is better than the mountain excursions one has to settle for in land-locked Kyoto, and that he would like to demonstrate this to the emperor himself. This declaration is followed by a haikai no renga-like transition line drawing on a poem in the Shika waka shū (compiled c. 1151) mentioning “fires lit by palace guards”:104 Yonosuke observes that ordering a (sobering) bowl of vegetable porridge cooked over such a fire is surely a pleasure unknown to teetotalers. He continues by saying that since he is a bit of a drinker himself he could settle for one night of pleasure with a kabuki actor here in Osaka before proceeding back to Kyoto. Thereupon an acquaintance of Yonosuke’s recognizes his voice, presents himself and ends up convincing Yonosuke to join him on a trip to Osaka’s (female) prostitution quarter, Shinmachi. They end up in an ageya that has seen better days, where a middle-aged man in the kitchen, later described as the proprietress’s husband, is arrogantly bossing around the women working there. Yonosuke requests the services of a certain tenjin (a prostitute of the second rank) with whom he says he already has a relationship. He then observes that whereas in the past he had kept a desk, an inkstone, an ink brush stand, an incense box and other imported items in this ageya without fear that they would be taken, now they are all gone. He complains that (his) tobacco and pipe are missing, too, and continues the diatribe with a barbed remark about the taikomochi’s efforts to raise contributions for a new shamisen. Someone comments that when the tenjin arrives Yonosuke will take one look at her face and send her away before she even sits down, upon which she finally does show up, drunk. She immediately goes to bed, saying she wants 102  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 159; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 154; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 271–72. 103  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 159, note 25. 104  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 159, note 28.

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Illustration 2 “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction.” Waseda University Library.

to sleep, and starts snoring away before even loosening her obi. Later, while she and Yonosuke are engaging in a bout of indifferent sex, someone outside announces that the quarter will soon be locked for the night, so Yonosuke perfunctorily gets up from bed and says he is going to leave. The woman, apparently still drunk, just lies there without saying anything. Yonosuke has a good, long smoke to wake up, during which he notices that the woman is thrusting her bare buttocks in his direction out from under the covers. No sooner does he realize this, “thinking it strange,” than she breaks wind, twice. Yonosuke then presses the bowl of his pipe against the source of this interruption (i.e., to keep it from recurring). In the chapter’s final lines the narrator comments, “If she did it on purpose, how contemptible! But if it happened unintentionally, well, even the Buddha must fart.”105

105  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 162; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 157 (diverges considerably from the original); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 275.

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“Aimed in His Direction” serves as a continuation of the previous chapter, which is usually not the case in Amorous Man. Yonosuke’s western expedition has confirmed that Osaka and Kyoto (with the occasional trip to Edo) are the places to be, and it is with pride and relief that he views the aquatic amusements of chōnin high society upon landing in Osaka. The text actually makes direct reference to the chōnin class by characterizing the amusements described as “天下の町人の思ひでに.” “天下” refers to the shogun, thus the phrase translates literally as “[pleasures] for the shogun’s chōnin to remember,” i.e., pleasures that will last a lifetime. The townsmen in question are the shogun’s chōnin because Osaka, like Kyoto and nearby Sakai, were under the direct administration of the Tokugawa shogunate.106 In a note to the Shōgakukan edition of Kōshoku ichidai otoko, Teruoka Yasutaka indicates that the relative freedom of chōnin living in shogunal lands is being contrasted with the situation of those residing in domains under the rule of a daimyo.107 If this is so, it provides one more reason to take as sincere the paeans to the Tokugawa we shall examine later in the opening story of Way of the Warrior and in the preface to Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan. Similarly, in an account in the first chapter of volume eight of an excursion in which Yonosuke and friends drink and sing as they ride out from Kyoto’s Shimabara pleasure quarter, one of the merrymakers observes, “It’s because this is the emperor’s domain [that we can do this]. I wonder if it would be possible elsewhere?” Here Teruoka comments that because of the presence of the imperial palace, daimyo’s processions passing through Kyoto on their way to and from alternate attendance at the shogun’s court in Edo did not, as they did elsewhere, raise their spears or clear the road of other wayfarers, and commoners were not required to prostrate themselves before them. He thus sees the quotation as an allusion to the relative lack in the imperial capital of samurai oppression of commoners.108 Coming as it does in the context of a passage contrasting the sophisticated pleasures on offer in Osaka with the crudeness of the provincial areas from which Yonosuke has just returned, the allusion to the shogunate’s direct rule of Osaka at the beginning of “Aimed in His Direction” implies that greater freedom for chōnin results in a more sophisticated chōnin culture, whose most refined amusements are worthy even of the emperor. Invocations of the emperor and the shogun are rare in the texts studied here, so the mention of both so close together accentuates the passage’s political implications. The boldness of 106  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 209; Kōjien, “天下,” definition No. 6. 107  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 158, note 10. 108  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 233, note 20.

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Yonosuke’s exuberant comment that he would like to show the emperor how superior an amusement boating in Osaka is to mountain excursions in Kyoto is compounded by the non-humilific expression he uses for “want to show”: “見せたし”; interestingly, both Maeda Kingorō and Teruoka Yasutaka felt compelled to render this with a humilific “お見せしたい” in their parallel modern Japanese translations, thus adding a level of deference to the emperor absent in the original.109 Yonosuke’s assertion regarding the fine spectacle before him finds an echo in a companion’s comment to Yonosuke on the beauty of Shinmachi and Shimabara in the final chapter of the seventh volume: What a great view we have this morning! Why did Saigyō praise the dawn at Matsushima and the evening view at Kisagata? Yesterday you saw night fall over Shinmachi then hit the road, and now with those same two eyes you get to watch dawn light up the sky over Shimabara. Is there anything to compare to that even in China?110 Framed as it is by allusions to Japanese court poetry (one poem each from the Gosenshū [compiled c. 951] and the Shin Kokinshū [compiled 1205])111 at its beginning and an allusion to a Chinese poem from an esteemed anthology at its close,112 the description of the boating scene, like the preceding quotation and other passages in Amorous Man examined earlier, uses literary classics to transfer the prestige of imperial court culture and Chinese literati culture to the context of refined chōnin amusements, in this case away from the pleasure quarters. The kabuki actors referred to as presenting “a lovely sight” are of course being admired with their roles both on stage and as prostitutes in mind, the latter made clear by Yonosuke’s subsequent consideration of the option of purchasing the services of one for the night. It is important to note that the boating scene is described in the voice of the narrator, and not that of Yonosuke; thus the prestige it attaches to high-chōnin culture is not directly compromised by Yonosuke’s ridiculousness later on in the chapter. This ridiculousness lies in the disappointment of Yonosuke’s expectation of a high-quality pleasure quarter experience after his pretentiousness and condescension in Miyajima, and in his failure to fully appreciate the role of money 109  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 212; Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 159. 110  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 226; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 222–23; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 352. 111  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 158, notes 5 and 9. 112  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 159, note 25; Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, pp. 211–12.

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in the pleasure quarter. In the previous chapter he gives signs of wanting to believe that he is owed deference for qualities that should be discernable even when he conceals his wealth; in “Aimed in His Direction” he visits an ageya that is clearly suffering financially, and expresses outrage at the fact that the items he left there back when business was good have been pilfered, and that the taikomochi is scrounging for extra cash. It is as if he expects prostitutes, procurers and brothel entertainers to see him as something other than a source of money to be exploited to the maximum. His age in these two chapters, forty and fortyone, appears significant, inviting the reader to conclude that he is getting on in years and needs reassurance that he is wanted for something other than his money. In his outrage at the current state of affairs in the declined ageya he seems oblivious to that fact that a healthy cash flow is the driving force that makes possible the maintenance of the gilded world of high-end prostitution to which he has become accustomed, and something that this particular establishment has clearly not enjoyed for some time. Then his bedfellow for the evening arrives, drunk and tired and obviously in no mood or condition to provide her services, of which he avails himself anyway, stopping abruptly so he can leave before the quarter gates close. Apparently in retaliation (the narrator leaves open the possibility that it is an accident, but the posture she assumes would indicate otherwise) for this and for Yonosuke’s arrogance and grumpiness earlier in the evening, the tenjin assaults him from the same general vicinity as the area he has paid to use.113 This inarticulate gesture, the ageya worker’s earlier comment regarding Yonosuke’s surliness, and the seedy condition of the ageya itself together form a counterpoint to the narrator’s earlier descriptions of refined chōnin amusements. The chapter brings together both Amorous Man’s most infamously squalid scene and its boldest claim regarding the value of some aspect of chōnin culture: that Osaka’s boating parties are fit for an emperor. Given Amorous Man’s numerous passages portraying the pleasure-quarter-centered high-chōnin culture as elegant and sophisticated, the chapter’s second half does not negate its first; rather, their juxtaposition is part of the novel’s larger dialogue between high and low, between the surface brilliance of the prostitution and theater quarters and their sordid underpinnings. 113  As alluded to in note 65, the same mode of retaliation is used by the tayū and accomplished haikai poetess Yoshida in the ironically titled “A Fragrant Gift,” in which we thus see juxtaposed at close range the high (i.e., artistic accomplishment) and the low of the pleasure quarter (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 186–90; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 160–69 [trans. Drake]; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 175–79; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 304–8).

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Part 3: A Love with Illustrious Precedents: Shudō in Amorous Man

Yonosuke’s sudden switch in “Aimed in His Direction” from plans to purchase the favors of a kabuki actor to spending an evening with a female prostitute illustrates the ease with which many of Ihara Saikaku’s male characters shift between male and female objects of desire. Few chapters in Amorous Man center on erotic relationships between Yonosuke and other males, but brief references to such relationships abound, and each of the first two volumes features a chapter focusing on a sexual relationship or encounter between Yonosuke and another male. The first of these chapters is especially noteworthy as it ends with a passage implying that the relationship whose beginnings it depicts is finally consummated, making this the first occasion in Amorous Man in which little Yonosuke’s efforts at seduction are successful, at the age of ten; all previous chapters involve the precocious boy’s failed attempts to win the favors of women or girls. Yet despite the obvious significance, in a novel about sex, of the protagonist’s first sexual conquest, the chapter is omitted in Kengi Hamada’s abridged and very free 1963 translation, which is still the closest thing to a full translation available in English. This omission is not particularly surprising, since even in today’s America a comical account of a prepubescent boy (and as indicated earlier, age ten by the traditional East Asian count usually corresponds to age nine in Western terms) eagerly trying to seduce a grown man would test the limits of the public’s and the publishing industry’s tolerance to a greater extent than the novel’s earlier references to Yonosuke’s precocious importuning of women and later references to his post-pubescent homosexual experiences, both of which are included in the translation. The effect of eliminating the chapter in question is compounded by Hamada’s rendering of the later chapter in which Yonosuke, now a man of thirty, visits the man he wooed and won twenty years earlier, for here the translation inventively refers to Yonosuke’s former lover as “his old-time schoolmate.”114 Artifacts that are widely accepted in their culture of origin but deemed too shocking to see the light of day in another are of course of special interest, since they inevitably reveal some key cultural difference. In the case of the account of Yonosuke’s first sexual relationship, this difference lies in the contrast between present-day abhorrence, in Japan, the West and elsewhere, of sex between adults and prepubescent children, and, on the other hand, the norms evident in this and other Edo-period accounts of shudō relationships, in which the wakashu is usually in his teens, but in which the lower age limit 114  Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 102.

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for this junior partner does not appear to be fixed or given much importance,115 although the older males whom ten-year-old Yonosuke woos all (initially, at least) do find him too young for such purposes. In contrast, the upper age limit for the junior partner, as coded in his clothing and hairstyle, is a major preoccupation. The latter is made clear in the second account of a homosexual relationship or encounter involving Yonosuke, when at age fourteen (in intervening chapters he has encounters with women) he is disconcerted to learn that the male prostitute whose favors he has just enjoyed is, at age twenty-four, too old to serve him in a sexually receptive role. The earlier chapter’s witty use of literary and historical allusions also warrants attention, as does the fact that, prefiguring the chapter with the overaged pseudo-wakashu, it partially reverses the conventional age hierarchy of shudō, which dictated that the older party pursue the younger. The later account of Yonosuke’s visit as an adult to his erstwhile lover is noteworthy both for a passage that implies that the bonds of shudō last longer than those between a man and a woman, and for the ensuing scene foreshadowed by this statement, in which Yonosuke is fiercely attacked by the spirits of various women he has jilted over the years. “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower” In a manner similar to “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” and “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down,” a particularly densely allusive segment of “Sode no shigure wa kakaru ga saiwai” (His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower)116 provides further instruction in the novel’s haikai-like wordplay and uses of literary and historical allusion, as well as the ways in which these undermine its authority-appeasing condemnations of upstart commoners. At the beginning of the chapter, Yonosuke is described as “an old man at the age of ten.”117 Born with good looks, he dresses and fixes his hair in a stylish manner associated with youths seeking sexual relationships with other males, which he himself ardently desires. However, potential lovers all think Yonosuke too young to take as a partner, looking upon him as “a plum [tree] in the snow”118 whose blossoming they await.

115  Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 30–31. 116  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 30–33; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 115–18. 117  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 30; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 115. Shinoda Jun’ichi writes that this line derives from similarly worded descriptions of late Heianperiod general Minamoto no Yoshitsune as a child (Shinoda Jun’ichi, Kōshoku ichidai otoko no kenkyū [Tokyo: Iwanami, 2010], p. 66). 118  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 30; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 115.

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Illustration 3 “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower.” Waseda University Library.

One day, while out catching birds in the hills near Kyoto,119 Yonosuke and his attendant are caught in a light shower when a man living in seclusion in the area comes up behind Yonosuke bearing an umbrella to shield him from the rain. Yonosuke immediately takes a fancy to the man, who, however, unequivocally rebuffs the boy’s amorous advances. Yonosuke persists, making use of an eloquence and a knowledge of literature and history that match in precocity his interest in sex. As passages of particular importance in Saikaku’s fiction often do, such as in the sex scene that closes “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat,” most of this sequence is divisible into the five- and seven-syllable grammatical units of Japanese poetry, with some containing the extra syllable allowed, which, as noted earlier, is also a feature of nō. In the excerpt from the chapter

119  Interestingly, Saikaku also uses the place in question, Mt. Kurabe, as the setting for a shudō encounter in a haikai linked-verse sequence written earlier (Asano, Saikaku tenbō, p. 225).

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given below, grammatical units conforming to the meter of waka are in boldface and followed by a syllable count in parentheses: 「つれなき思はれ人かな。（８）袖ゆく水の、（７）しかも又（５）同じ   泪にもあらず。鴨の長明が（８）孔子くさき（６）身のとり置きも、（７）   門前の（５）童部に（５）いつとなく（５）たはれて、方丈の（５）油火 けされて、 （ ８ ） こころは闇に（ ７ ） なれる事も（ ６ ） ありしとなむ。   （６）月まためづらしき不破の万作（７）勢田の道橋の（８）詰にして、     （５）蘭麝のかをり（７）人の袖に（６）うつせし事も、（７）これみなか   うした（８）事であるまいか」（８）と申すをも、（５）さらに聞きも入 れぬ秋の夜の（５）長物語（７）。

“Tsurenaki omowarebito kana. (8) Sode yuku mizu no (7) shikamo mata (5) onaji namida ni mo arazu. Kamo no Chōmei ga (8) Kōshi-kusaki (6) mi no torioki mo, (7) monzen no (5) waranbe ni (5) itsu to naku (5) tawarete, hōjō no (5) aburabi kesarete, (8) kokoro wa yami ni (7) nareru koto mo (6) arishi to namu. (6) Tsuki mata mezurashiki Fuwa no Mansaku (7) Seta no michihashi no (8) tsume ni shite (5) ranja no kaori (7) hito no sode ni (6) utsuseshi koto mo, (7) kore mina kō shita (8) koto de arumai ka,” (8) to mōsu o mo, (5) sara ni kiki mo irenu aki no yo no (5) nagamonogatari. (7)120 “How heartless you are to the one who loves you.121 Tears [continue to] flow down [my] sleeve, but they are not the same [hopeful first] tears [of love] as before. Even Kamo no Chōmei, who was as stiff and dour as Confucius,122 ended up frolicking with the boy123 who lived near his gate, and when the oil lamp went out in his ten-foot-square hut, they say, his heart strayed in the darkness. And at one end of the Seta Bridge, Fuwa no Mansaku, as beautiful as the harvest moon at the place that bears his name, left a fragrance of orchids and musk124 on someone’s sleeves. Weren’t these the same sort of thing [as what I am proposing to you 120  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 117–18. 121  More literally: “How heartless a beloved you are.” 122  More literally: “who in his bearing stank of Confucius.” 123  Literally, “child.” 124  “[Fragrance of] orchids and musk” is the literal meaning of “ranja (蘭麝),” but it is also a set metaphor for a pleasing fragrance and probably refers here to ranjatai (蘭奢待), the precious incense the scent of which was supposedly transferred in this encounter (Kōjien; Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32, note 12; Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 1, pp. 93–94).

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now]?” [Yonosuke] said, but [the man] wouldn’t listen to [this] long tale for an autumn night.125 By referring to the man he is addressing as “omowarebito” (“a person who is loved/thought of/longed for”), Yonosuke draws attention to the fact that in letting his own feelings lead him to try to initiate a relationship with someone older he is violating the conventions of shudō, which, as mentioned earlier, required that the senior partner pursue the younger.126 The seven-syllable grammatical unit “sode yuku mizu no,” meaning “the water running down [my] sleeve” and apparently referring to both rainwater and tears, signals the beginning of the passage made up mostly of waka metrical units. The line is also the beginning of an allusive variation of the opening line of Kamo no Chōmei’s (1155?–1216) famed Buddhist essay the Hōjōki (An Account of a TenFoot-Square Hut, 1212): ゆく河の流れは絶えずして、しかももとの水にあらず。

Yuku kawa no nagare wa taezu shite, shikamo moto no mizu ni arazu. The river’s flow never ceases, but its water is not the same water as before.127 Yonosuke then describes the author of the Hōjōki as literally “stinking of Confucius,” casting the Chinese sage in the role of stern killjoy, something one should keep in mind when considering how to read the voice of Confucian morality elsewhere in Amorous Man and in other works by Saikaku, notably in Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan, examined in Chapter 3. But even this fuddy-duddy was not insensitive to the charms of a young boy, Yonosuke strongly implies, willfully interpreting as a sexual relationship the friendship

125  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 117–18. 126  Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 23–96. 127  Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki, in Kanda Hideo, Yasuraoka Kōsaku, Nagazumi Yasuaki, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 44 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1995), p. 15; Kamo no Chōmei, trans. Helen Craig McCullough, “An Account of My Hermitage,” in Helen Craig McCullough, ed., Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 379; Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 31, note 6.

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with a local ten-year-old boy (the same age as Yonosuke) that Chōmei mentions in the Hōjōki.128 Yonosuke then alludes to the story of Fuwa no Mansaku (1578–1595), who served as a page to Toyotomi Hidetsugu (1568–1595), the nephew and adopted son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598) and also one of his generals. As Hidetsugu’s page, Mansaku (also read “Bansaku”) was, by custom, at his disposal sexually and owed him sexual fidelity, but he was also said to have had a tryst with a certain samurai under the Seta Bridge in Ōmi province east of Kyoto, leaving on his lover’s sleeves the scent of a precious incense given him by Hidetsugu, thus risking exposure of their illicit liaison and endangering both of their lives.129 This part of Yonosuke’s speech opens with a reference to the harvest moon at Fuwa in today’s Gifu prefecture, whose light, filtering through the ruins of the abandoned checkpoint there, became a byword for lunar beauty after the aristocratic poet and painter Fujiwara no Nobuzane (1176–c. 1265) celebrated it in a poem later anthologized in the Shin gosen wakashū (1303).130 The narrator’s characterization of Yonosuke’s lengthy entreaty as “a long tale for an autumn night” is a joking reference to the title of the well-known earlyMuromachi-period chigo monogatari,131 and thus implicitly casts him in the role of the doomed acolyte who brings his monk nenja to enlightenment; this reference is also linked to the earlier reference to the Seta Bridge, for it is there that the beloved boy of the tale in question drowns himself.132 Afterward, according to Teruoka Yasutaka’s punctuation of the passage,133 Yonosuke admits that his taking the erotic initiative with an older man runs contrary to the conventions of shudō. However, in his exhaustive commentary on Amorous Man, Maeda Kingorō attributes the sentence in question to the narrator.134 The object of Yonosuke’s desire eventually appeases him with an insincere promise to meet him at a later date at a particular shrine, then the man starts for home. Yonosuke follows him, clinging to his sleeve and saying, “I will wait for you there just as Li Jietui awaited Su Shi at the Wind and Water 128   Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki, p. 31; Kamo no Chōmei, McCullough, “My Hermitage,” pp. 389–90. 129  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32, notes 11, 12. 130  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 1, p. 93. 131  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32, note 13. 132  Taniwaki, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu, p. 157; Childs, “Chigo Monogatari,” p. 147; Aki no yo no nagamonogatari, p. 712; see also Introduction, note 104. 133  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32. 134  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 32; Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 1, p. 90.

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Cave.” This is a reference to a story regarding a meeting between the famed Chinese poet of the Song period Su Shi (1036–1101) and his young friend Li Jietui at a scenic site near Hangzhou.135 The two finally part, and the man goes home—to the youth who is his beloved. He tells him of the episode with Yonosuke, and the story takes an unexpected twist when the youth, impressed by the depth of Yonosuke’s passion, encourages his lover to see Yonosuke. “Perhaps [you rebuffed him because] you couldn’t forget the ties between us. But it was too cruel of you; how can you possibly leave things as they are?”136 He then serves his lover and Yonosuke as a go-between, brings the two together, and abandons his own relationship with the man. The text of this chapter itself points out the reversal of shudō convention involved in the ten-year-old Yonosuke’s pursuit of an adult male, and this reversal is redoubled by the story’s surprising denouement, for the adult who was put off by the boy Yonosuke’s arrogation of adult erotic prerogatives is urged by his own beloved, an adolescent, to acquiesce to Yonosuke’s advances, an exhortation that the man follows. An adult male’s erotic choice is thus determined by not one but two males who have not yet reached adulthood, a development that compounds the initial comedy deriving from Yonosuke’s multifaceted precociousness. (In Chapter 3 we shall witness a similar but darker precociousness in the evil little girl Kogin when we examine Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan.) The ten-year-old Yonosuke’s extreme level of eloquence and erudition and his deadpan irreverence toward Confucius and Kamo no Chōmei provide one of Amorous Man’s comic high points. His allusions to Kamo no Chōmei’s classic essay, to Japanese court poetry, to figures in the retinue of Toyotomi Hidetsugu and to a major Chinese poet touch on nearly all of the elite cultural milieus from which Amorous Man frequently borrows prestige, referencing the Japanese imperial court aristocracy of centuries past, high-level samurai and Chinese literati, with the Chinese reference here (as elsewhere in Amorous Man) presented at the end as the pièce de résistance. Furthermore, the wakaand nō-like meter of the passage links it to Japan’s imperial and shogunal courts, in which, respectively, these genres developed. Texts originating in these elite milieus are used (and in the case of the Hōjōki, twisted) to provide classical precedents for the dubious (because of his 135  In Saitō Tokugen’s Haikai shogaku shō (1641) (Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 1, p. 99). 136  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 33; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 118.

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extreme youth) love affair Yonosuke proposes. These references also manifest the social ambitions of the rich chōnin Yonosuke and the cultural ambitions of both Yonosuke and Amorous Man itself. As is made clear in a chapter, set when Yonosuke is thirty, in which he reappears, the man whom the ten-year old Yonosuke has his eye on is a samurai.137 Shudō was, as mentioned in the introduction to this study, associated with the samurai at the time, so Yonosuke’s pursuit of a shudō relationship with a samurai represents a case of precocious social climbing and emulation of the dominant status-group reflective of the parvenu (as opposed to hierarchy-leveling) sensibility that suffuses the novel. In addition to serving as intellectual counterpart to Yonosuke’s comical sexual precocity, his show of absurdly precocious erudition in his come-on spiel demonstrates that he is worthy of intimate association with a member of the elite. In fact the relationship that Yonosuke establishes with his samurai lover is shown as developing into a deep friendship that outlives the sexual relationship that the conventions of shudō demanded must end when the junior partner reached adulthood, because, as the narrator explains, love between males lasts longer than the love of a man for a woman. Here and in other instances in Saikaku’s fiction, shudō provides a social space in which commoners can both emulate the samurai and interact closely with them, a function that the haikai salon also served.138 As we shall see, two noteworthy instances of this are to be found in a tragic, rather than comical, context in “Hatsutakegari wa koigusa no tane” (Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love) from Way of the Warrior and “Koi no yama Gengobei monogatari” (Gengobei, The Mountain of Love) in Five Women Who Loved Love, in both of which a chōnin man wins the heart of a samurai youth. The latter story is notable for a scene in which the father of the chōnin protagonist’s samurai beloved evinces acceptance of and an emotional connection with the lover of his now dead son, with whom he grieves over their shared loss.139 “The Bedding in a Clay Hut” Amorous Man’s second chapter devoted to a homosexual relationship or encounter occurs at the beginning of the novel’s second volume. In “Hanyū no

137  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 114; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 103 (diverges considerably from the original); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 220. 138  Ikegami, Bonds of Civility, pp. 171–92. 139  Ihara, Budō, pp. 120–27; Ihara, Kōshoku gonin onna, p. 375; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 208–9.

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nedōgu” (The Bedding in a Clay Hut)140 the age-hierarchy of shudō is contravened more drastically than in “Opportune Shower,” and Yonosuke’s education regarding the status of the brothel as a realm of illusion begins. This topos appears at various times in the novel, as well as in the first story of Five Women, as detailed in Chapter 2, and is related to the recurrent figure in Saikaku’s fiction of the deceitful prostitute, here making its first appearance, in male form. As the chapter opens, a fourteen-year-old Yonosuke undergoes hangenbuku, the first stage of coming-of-age, which involves a change in his hairstyle and the type of clothing he wears but leaves his forelocks unshaven, as evident in the illustration for the chapter, which marks him as still a wakashu and thus still available as the junior partner in a shudō relationship.141 This transformation does, however, serve as a reminder that the clock is ticking; the aestheticization (and here, eroticization) of impermanence described in the introduction to this study makes an appearance here, and we are suggestively told that people regret the change in Yonosuke’s appearance when viewed from behind. Accompanied by “one or two” servants, Yonosuke makes a pilgrimage to Hasedera, a temple in today’s Nara prefecture, apparently in hopes of gaining divine help in his efforts to woo a certain person. On the return journey he passes through the peasant village of Niōdō at dusk, where he peeks through a fence beside which a bean plant grows on a trash heap, a bean pod dangling from it “very funnily” (“ito okashiku”; Taniwaki Masachika interpreted this to mean “phallically”142). He discovers a group of youths in their aesthetic prime who are being dressed and combed by servants. Their hairstyles do not appear to be those of amateurs. Yonosuke asks a local about the building there and is told that it is used by tobiko (itinerant male prostitutes) from Kyoto and Osaka for meeting clients.143 This is an unexpected boon for Yonosuke, as he had been disheartened at the prospect of bedding down for the night in a place where no sexual services are provided. He and the tobiko he hires carouse late into the night then at last go to bed. Yonosuke feels “bittersweet” at the touch of the young man’s hands, which bear the marks of a recent case of scabies. Later Yonosuke asks to hear of the 140  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 48–51; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 35–39; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 135–39. Hamada’s translation of the chapter diverges in tone from the original through key word choices (first the working boys look “odd,” then “queer” is used three times in association with them) that cast this as a strange experience for Yonosuke. 141  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 48, note 2. 142  An opinion given to me during a conversation. 143  There actually was such an establishment in this village (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 47, note 2).

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Illustration 4 “The Bedding in a Clay Hut.” Waseda University Library.

places the tobiko’s work has taken him. The tobiko indicates that since they have enjoyed such intimacy he will give a totally candid account, and proceeds to tell of years spent as an actor and flutist in kabuki, working for different bosses in a variety of locales before ending up in the current location, where his main clients are monks from nearby temples, including a “merciless” pair, “incomparable” devotees of the way of youths who so put him through the mill that after servicing them, he assures, one can handle anything that this profession demands of him. He says he regrets that he has turned into someone who swindles his clients and has strayed from the proper spirit of shudō. At the end of the tobiko’s account of his career, the narrator expresses doubt as to its veracity.144

144  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 51; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 38 (in Hamada’s translation this becomes a thought directly attributed to Yonosuke); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 138.

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Yonosuke then asks how it is to sleep with a client one does not like, upon which the tobiko answers that he cannot say he dislikes even clients with chapped feet or those who have never once used a toothpick, but that being used as a customer pleases from dusk till dawn has caused him to shed many a hidden tear. He then rejoices at the fact that his contract will run out in the fourth month of the coming year, and that people like him born in years associated with the element metal are supposed to enjoy seven years of happiness starting in two days’ time. This causes Yonosuke to speculate aloud that the tobiko must then be twenty-four, and he exclaims that this makes him ten years older than himself. The narrator then ends the chapter with the observation that it is best not to pry into someone’s age in such situations. Yonosuke is still young enough to take the receptive role in a sexual relationship with an older male, which, as indicated above, should be assumed only by boys who have not yet fully come of age, which normally occurred sometime in the late teens. However, in accordance with the customs of the time, as the provider of sexual services the tobiko would have been the receptive partner. Thus, for professional reasons, Yonosuke’s tobiko has had to retain the clothing and hairstyle of a teenaged boy. Yonosuke’s realization that he has just assumed the active role in sex with an adult male ten years older than himself renders the act distasteful after the fact. “The Bedding in a Clay Hut” depicts the brothel as a realm of deceptive appearances and emphasizes the uncertainty, for the customer, of what actually happens to prostitutes and what their real feelings are. One implication of the tobiko’s account of his career is that he habitually masks his true feelings, which of course calls into question the sincerity of the feelings for Yonosuke that he has just expressed. The narrator then adds another layer of uncertainty for the reader by casting doubt on the tobiko’s tale of woe, which one can read as implying that the tobiko may be making things up to win Yonosuke’s sympathy and thus move Yonosuke to give him money or a gift or to buy out his contract, and the tobiko’s own admission to swindling customers makes the narrator’s reservations seem all the more justified. As for the tobiko’s age, rather than recommend that one take steps to avoid being tricked into bedding a superannuated male prostitute, the narrator in effect recommends that one allow oneself to enjoy the illusion that one’s tobiko is still of the proper age. In other words, be aware that your pleasure might be based on illusion, but do not go so far as to try to strip away such illusions, lest you ruin your enjoyment, as does the hero of the first story in Five Women, when he induces the women at his brothel party to strip off their clothing, as we shall see in Chapter 2. The peeping scene early in “Bedding” is a classic transposition of Genji-esque kaimami (erotically charged “peering through the gaps in the fence/hedge”) to

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a contemporary milieu, right down to the bean plant next to the fence, which calls to mind the eponymous “evening faces” vine in the fourth chapter of the Tale of Genji, which also grew in a humble environment. Its counterpart in “Clay Hut” is rendered even humbler by placing it atop a rubbish heap, and made coarsely comical as well if one takes the bean pod to be phallic. In a contrastingly tragic context, a similar transposition is effected in Way of the Warrior’s “Ishiusu hikubeki hanyū no koto” (Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One Would Expect to Hear the Pounding of a Stone Mortar Instead), analyzed in Chapter 4;145 both substitute a male object of desire for Genji’s typical refined young girls hidden away in obscurity, and, interestingly, both feature clay huts (hanyū) in their titles and as the site of the kaimami, with the Amorous Man incarnation of this theme lowering the setting a notch by adapting this classic scenario to a scene at a rural male brothel. In the Way of the Warrior story this recontextualization does not seem comical; in bittersweet “Bedding” it is not as obviously comical as little Yonosuke’s absurdly erudite literary references in “Opportune Shower.” The reference to scabies in the chapter’s bed scene highlights the vulnerability of the body being sold and the human body in general, and represents a sort of worm in the erotic apple that we shall see again in a dermatological detail given in the first story in Five Women Who Loved Love. Amorous Man occasionally brings up the hardships of prostitution and the prostitutes’ enslaved state, but following the novel’s tendency to undercut pathos soon after it develops, here the tobiko’s tale of misery is undercut by the narrator’s (and by implication Yonosuke’s) doubts as to its veracity. The revelation of the tobiko’s age at the story’s end, like the ten-yearold Yonosuke’s arrogation of the nenja’s right of erotic pursuit and the final twist involving his quarry’s acquiescing to Yonosuke at his own wakashu beloved’s insistence, highlights the hierarchical nature of shudō by reversal of its age hierarchy, and also brings into focus the artificiality of shudō’s hair- and wardrobe-coded categories, as does the humorous account in Saikaku’s Great Mirror of Male Love of a sixty-three-year-old man who retains his forelocks in order to justify his relationship with his lover and lifelong companion.146 The fact that the first two chapters centered on homosexual relationships (here I 145  Ihara, Budō, pp. 236–44; Saikaku Ihara (sic), trans. E. Powys Mathers, Comrade Loves of the Samurai (Rutland: Tuttle, 1972), pp. 41–47. 146  Ihara Saikaku, Nanshoku ōkagami, in Matsuda Osamu, Munemasa Isō, Teruoka Yasutaka, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 67: Ihara Saikaku shū 2 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996), pp. 439–43; Ihara, Schalow, Male Love, pp. 180–83. For a discussion of various sorts of superannuated wakashu, see Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 32–34.

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avoid the term shudō because the whole point of the second story’s denouement is the invalidity of the encounter’s pederastic credentials) turn on such reversals gives this tampering with shudō hierarchy a special prominence in Amorous Man. “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream” In the third chapter of volume four, “Yume no tachikaze” (The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream),147 a thirty-year-old Yonosuke, still wandering the provinces after being disowned at the age of nineteen, goes to meet the man who became his lover twenty years earlier at the end of “Opportune Shower.” The man, who, it now becomes clear, is a samurai, lives in poverty and provincial obscurity as a result of a stagnant career. Yonosuke and his long-lost love shed copious tears on meeting, for, we are punningly told, “外の因とかはりて、替 らぬ” (“Hoka no chinami to kawarite, kawaranu”; “Unlike that other bond, this one does not change”).148 Teruoka149 and Maeda both take “that other bond” to refer to heterosexual love. Maeda elaborates, “According to the conventional wisdom of that time the essence of shudō was sincerity, and the attachments formed in shudō relationships were even deeper than the passion shared by a man and a woman and lasted, unchanging, until old age.”150 As proof of this, Yonosuke’s former lover (they still love each other, but now that Yonosuke is a shaven-pated adult, sex is presumably not on the agenda) is still wearing a small eleven-headed Kannon amulet made by the Heian-period priest Jikkaku, which Yonosuke gave him when they traded vows long ago. The night grows late and Yonosuke’s host takes a trap from a wicker box, says he is going to catch a raccoon dog that has been running amok in the mountains nearby, and promises to serve Yonosuke the animal’s meat. After Yonosuke is left alone and before he has a chance to fall asleep, a woman with the feet of a bird and the torso of a fish comes down from the second floor and asks him in a voice like crashing waves if he remembers her. She then says that she wants to let him know that Oman of the Koiya teahouse (in actuality a sort of brothel) in Kyoto’s Ishigakimachi district feels a lingering attachment 147  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 114–17; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 102–7 (with, as mentioned before, Yonosuke’s erstwhile nenja passed off as “his old-time schoolmate”); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 219–23. 148  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 114; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 219. This contrasting of two types of love is missing from the Hamada translation. 149  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 114, note 5. 150  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 49.

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Illustration 5 “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream.” Waseda University Library.

to him. Yonosuke strikes at her with his dagger and feels it hit something solid, but then the apparition vanishes. “Koiya” means “Carp House” and is homophonous with “Love House,” so the woman’s fish-like body is an apparent pun on the name of the establishment. Then, from behind him, a creature with (judging by the text and the illustration together) the beak and body of a bird and the face and voice of a woman flies at him, telling him that she is the spirit of Ohatsu, the lumberman’s daughter whom he made pine away and die of a broken heart after having told her that they were like the (legendary) one-winged birds that always fly with their mate, and that she is taking out her resentment on him. Yonosuke dispatches her, too. Then from a corner of the garden a woman about twenty feet tall with hands and feet like maple leaves151 says in a voice like a blast of wind that she 151  Here again the illustration differs from the text, as is often the case in Saikaku’s fiction; in the picture the apparition’s hands look normal.

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is the woman he took maple-viewing in Takao who later poisoned her husband and shifted her love to Yonosuke, who then quickly abandoned her. “Do you recognize Jirokichi’s wife?” she asks, and starts to bite him. He wrestles her down and kills her with his blade as well. Next a long, thick rope descends from the sky with a woman’s head attached to it. The rope-woman announces that she is the nun whom Yonosuke lured away from her devotions at Daigoji temple, twice making her grow her hair back and leading her astray. She says she will not let him get away, wraps herself around him and bites into his windpipe, but he manages to stab her to death, too. Not expecting to survive the night, Yonosuke prepares for death, chanting the nenbutsu and praying toward the west (location of Amida’s Pure Land). When his host returns he finds Yonosuke unconscious amid pools of blood. On regaining consciousness Yonosuke tells him the whole story, and on the house’s second floor they find the pledges of love Yonosuke once had these four women write, all torn to shreds, sparing the places bearing the names of the gods and Buddhas by whom they swore. The narrator closes the story with the bland observation that “this is something you should never have someone write.” There is an obvious contrast in this chapter between shudō, with a sexual phase limited by convention to a brief span but emotional bonds that never loosen, and heterosexual love, whose sexual phase is not constrained by the same time limits as shudō, but whose emotional bonds are not durable. And if we are to judge all men by Yonosuke, they are not durable because men, although faithful to each other, are fickle toward women. The chapter leaves open the question of why these women’s spirits choose this occasion to attack Yonosuke; do they resent the endurance of the ties between him and his host, or are these apparitions merely illusions produced by a shape-shifter, the mischievous raccoon dog that the host is out hunting? If the latter is the case, the host’s offer of serving Yonosuke the flesh of a creature that takes on the form of Yonosuke’s discarded lovers provides a brutal metaphor for male bonding over the objectified female body. In either case these apparitions represent a new iteration of the neglected, resentful wife or mistress of Heian-period literature, but these manifestations of that type, if we take them to be acting together, show a feminine solidarity that Michitsuna no Haha, who in Kagerō nikki rejoices at the death of her rival’s child,152 and Lady Rokujō, whose wandering 152  Michitsuna no Haha, Kagerō nikki, in Kikuchi Yasuhiko, Imuta Tsunehisa, Kimura Masanori, eds., Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 13 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1995), p. 114; Michitsuna no Haha, trans. Helen Craig McCullough, The Gossamer Journal, in Helen Craig McCullough, ed., Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 120.

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spirit attacks and kills three of her rivals,153 lack. Yonosuke’s jilted women attack him. One is tempted to sympathize with them and deplore the injustice inherent in the contrast between Yonosuke’s enduring feeling for his erstwhile nenja and his abandonment of these women and scores of others like them, but here again pathos is undermined by the ridiculous grotesqueness of the apparitions, the absurd associations between their anatomies and the circumstances of their seduction by Yonosuke (maple-leaf-like hands on a woman seduced while viewing the fall colors, etc.), and parody through exaggeration of the havoc wrought by Lady Rokujō’s spirit in Genji; whereas Murasaki Shikibu’s novel shuns explicit descriptions of violence, here the appearance of not one but four Lady Rokujō-like phantoms leads to an orgy of grappling, biting, slashing and stabbing that leaves Saikaku’s romantic hero lying amid puddles of their blood.

Part 4: The Plight of Women and of (Male and Female) Prostitutes

As we have seen, Amorous Man is not entirely carefree in its treatment of prostitution or of sexual promiscuity and its consequences, but varying its tone like a haikai linked-verse sequence it never stays in a moralizing or pathetic mode for long. This aspect of the work is intimately linked to its treatment of female characters and especially prostitutes, including male ones, whose suffering and lack of freedom it repeatedly acknowledges, after which it changes the subject. The Roving Libertine “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream” is immediately preceded by a sequence of three linked chapters in which Yonosuke’s search for erotic pleasure leads to great suffering for two women whom he pursues. But just when the reader might imagine that Amorous Man is turning into a sentimental melodrama and that Yonosuke is in for an extended period of moral condemnation by the narrator, parody and cynical comedy again intervene to create an alienation effect worthy of Bertolt Brecht that discourages (Buddhistically?) attachment by 153  Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari 1, in Abe Akio, Imai Gen’e, Akiyama Ken, Suzuki Hideo, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 20 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994), pp. 164–70; Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari 2, pp. 30–46; Genji monogatari 4, in Abe Akio, Imai Gen’e, Akiyama Ken, Suzuki Hideo, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 23 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996), pp. 233–37; Murasaki Shikibu, Tyler, Genji, pp. 67–69, 171–76, 653–55.

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the reader to the characters in question and, in the graveside passage described below, redirects the reader’s attention from the characters’ plight to the novel’s recurrent, Buddhistic theme of the layers of illusion in the realm of prostitution and, by analogy, in the phenomenal world as a whole.154 In the seventh and final chapter of volume three, “Kuzetsu kotofure” (An Oracle About a Lovers’ Quarrel, age 27),155 a particularly active Yonosuke becomes the lover of an itinerant Shinto priestess, soothsayer and part-time prostitute, traveling the provinces with her, fobbing off pun-filled nonsense oracles. He then takes up with a type of low-grade, unlicensed prostitute known as a rice-polisher (because she performs that job when she has no prostitution clients), gets her pregnant, abandons her and heads north for Oku province, sampling the prostitutes along the way. In Shiogama he falls in love with a married priestess at the shrine there. He tries to seduce her, she resists, he insists. He attempts to rape her but she successfully holds him at bay. The attack is described in a relatively terse, straightforward manner without the usual ironic touches and with a direct acknowledgment of the woman’s great distress. Meanwhile her husband, away on night duty, wakes up feeling anxious, has a hunch that a robber has broken into his house and therefore goes home and rescues his wife from Yonosuke. Since she is blameless in this failed attempt at adultery, the narrator notes, Yonosuke alone is punished, by having the hair shaven from one side of his head.156 In the following chapter, “Inga no sekimori”157 (The Karmic Checkpoint Guard, volume four, chapter one, age 28), Yonosuke rues having dismissed as a charlatan’s humbug a fortune-teller’s warning that if he lusted after another man’s wife it would bring him great, life-endangering trouble. And his troubles have not ended with the hair-shaving punishment; later, on the road, he is stopped at a temporary checkpoint that has been set up as part of an investigation into a recent crime. He has to remove his hat and then must explain the reason for his unorthodox hairstyle, which lands him in jail as a suspicious 154  Writing of two stories in Five Women to be examined in Chapter 2, Donald Keene takes note of two cases in which the prevailing tone of a scene is abruptly undercut by comedy, crediting this, in the first case, to Saikaku’s “detachment” (Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 177–78, 181). 155  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 98–102; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 87–92; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 202–6. 156  Hamada’s translation adds violent details not in the original account of this forced shaving, depicting it as a knife attack (Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 92). 157  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 106–9; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 93–97; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 209–13.

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Illustration 6 “Her Water-Comb a Memento.” Waseda University Library.

character needing further investigation, a turn of events the narrator, taking on a Confucian tone, describes as “Heaven’s punishment.”158 In jail he is placed with other male suspects in a cell next to that of a woman who has run away from her husband. The two fall in love, and at night cling to the lattice that separates them, bewailing, “while being eaten by fleas and lice,” the impossibility of consummating their relationship. At the start of the next chapter, “Katami no mizugushi” (Her Water-Comb a Memento, age 29)159 the two are released in a general amnesty declared as part

158  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 107; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 94–95; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 210–11. Both Hamada and Siary write of Yonosuke as having a “wound” (“blessure”) on his head, whereas the original only mentions his asymmetrical hairstyle. 159  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 110–13; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 97–102; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 214–18.

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of a memorial observance for a deceased member of the Tokugawa family.160 They run off together, but male family members catch up with the woman, who, they say, has caused them trouble (presumably because of the system of collective responsibility for the actions of one’s family members). Their leader declares that she is to be killed; Yonosuke attempts to stop them and is beaten within an inch of his life for his efforts. When he wakes up, the woman is gone. Searching for her, he comes across two peasant men digging up a grave. Yonosuke is outraged and horrified and threatens the men with his sword to force them to explain their actions. The grave-robbers beg for mercy, saying that because they could not make ends meet they started stealing the hair and fingernails off beautiful women’s corpses, which they then take once a year to the pleasure quarters of the Kamigata region to sell to prostitutes who use them as phony shinjūdate (things sacrificed as a token of love). The prostitutes are thus able to curry favor with multiple rich clients while giving their real hair and nails to their non-paying lovers. This explanation ends with an exhortation to Yonosuke to make sure he has prostitutes cut off their hair right in front of him. Yonosuke is surprised to hear this, then looks down and sees that the woman in the grave the robbers have opened is none other than she for whom he was searching. He clings to her corpse, melts into tears and blames himself for her fate. She for a moment seems to come back to life, opening her eyes and smiling, but a moment later again appears to be dead. Yonosuke says he is ready to die and the grave robbers must restrain him from killing himself. “It makes you think,” the narrator then comments mysteriously, closing the chapter, and one wonders whether the narrator is speaking of the perils of pursuing married women or the falseness of big-city prostitutes. The grave robbers’ tale comes at Amorous Man’s most heartbreaking moment, comically deflating in a manner typical of the novel a tragic denouement toward which three chapters have been building. One could take this story of dishonest prostitutes and the grave robbers who serve them as a misogynistic counterpoint to the pathos of the two preceding scenes of male violence toward women, or as a comical reminder that the prostitutes whom Yonosuke patronizes, including those with whom he has exchanged pledges of love, are in this line of work because their families’ poverty forced them into it, not because they want to be, and thus despite all of the prostitution industry’s efforts to produce an illusion of desire and free will on the part of these women, their professions of love, even when backed up by a hank of hair 160  Hamada’s translation diverges drastically from the original here, adding, among other things, a reference to Japan’s rulers as “tyrannous” (Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 97).

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or a torn-off fingernail, can never be assumed to be true, and even if true can seldom qualify as disinterested. “A Secret Stash of Cash” Any man would of course already know this. For a man, like the latter-day Narihira and Genji who is Yonosuke, known for his looks, charm and sexual technique, this knowledge would threaten his pride, presumably increasingly so as he gets older. This is implied by the third story of volume seven, “Hito no shiranu watakushigane” (A Secret Stash of Cash),161 set when Yonosuke is fifty-one. In it a tayū sends him a love letter that leaves him feeling proud of the effect he appears to have on her, but then he learns from a companion that she in fact regularly steals clients from other prostitutes, makes the men think she loves them, then squeezes as much money out of them as she can. The scene in which Yonosuke’s informant explains the woman’s modus operandi contains a cruelly comical description of her fleecing of one victim, a village headman with no nose (presumably as a result of syphilis), who, in front of onlookers, tearfully complains to her of her duplicity and heartlessness. This scene and another later in the chapter dish out humor at the expense of unsophisticated yokels, now in the form of gullible johns, including the village headman, who unwittingly compounds his degradation at the hands of his tormentor by tearfully enumerating to her in front of onlookers the various agricultural products with which he has supplied her and her parents, thus drawing attention to his status as a denizen of the despised countryside: “When she picked a quarrel with him by saying, ‘I don’t like your face,’ the poor man answered, ‘Are you just noticing that now? How cruel of you to say this after taking so many things from me! Your madam told me to give you some wheat, so I had it made up into mazuki162 and sent you two whole bags-worth of it just today. When I was told that your parents needed cotton I even went to the trouble of cleaning it and gave them a full hundred catties only four or five days later. I have sent a steady stream of dried turnips, melons, and eggplant [to your parents’ home] all the way out in Tenma, all just to please you, but since the dike at Ninnaji163 burst this summer and flooded my fields you’ve decided to turn your nose up 161  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 206–10; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 139–44; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 327–32. 162  The process in question involves soaking the grain in water, drying it, then adding water a second time and pounding the grain (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 207, note 25). 163  This refers to an actual event in 1674 (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 208, note 3).

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at me. It’s too horrible!’ Grown man that he was, it was enough to make him cry, and there were quite a few people there to see it. Then he turned around and went home. Stay away from this woman.”164 But Yonosuke does not stay away from her, deciding instead to punish her deviousness by taking her favors for free then dropping her the moment she tries to wheedle some cash out of him. There follows a scene in which she meets him secretly while her time is being paid for by a “rustic big-spender,”165 whom she hoodwinks by feigning illness and pretending to take a long trip to the privy, when in fact she has repaired to the woodshed for a tryst with Yonosuke amid bags of charcoal. Afterwards she has her kamuro brush off her soiled kimono, “Not minding that someone was watching,” and goes to snack in the kitchen, where her client, his patience having reached its limit, finds her counting her money out in the open, which the narrator condemns as conduct unbecoming a prostitute. Her client tells her sarcastically, “What a relief! You’re feeling well enough to count your money!” and takes his leave. Not giving this a second thought, the tayū then asks a man there who appears to be someone’s business assistant how much interest she can get when lending money. The narrator deplores that such a person could be fobbed off as a tayū, and says that there is no need to mention her name because readers will figure out who she is. After four or five more meetings the expected letter asking for money arrives. In his reply Yonosuke writes that he has a regular relationship with another prostitute that leaves him little time for anyone else, but that now and then he sees others, like her, “out of charity.” He tells her to find someone else to make money off of, but offers to help her if she wants to give out high-interest, one-day loans. Thus Yonosuke punishes the tayū for swindling her clients, only he is of course guilty of a similar offense since here, as elsewhere, he has cuckolded a prostitute’s client. But of course even though Yonosuke has managed to obtain a prostitute’s favors for free, since her motive was money to begin with he is still left with the problem of confirming to himself his continued desirability. There is a sort of dialogue in Amorous Man between accounts of ostensibly true love and/or physical desire on the part of some prostitutes for Yonosuke and for other clients, anecdotes like the grave-robbing scene that call these 164  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 207–8; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 141; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 328–29. 165  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 208; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 142; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 329.

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“A Secret Stash of Cash.” Waseda University Library.

into question (including stories like that of “Secret Stash” in which the narrator expresses outrage of a dubious sincerity that women sold into prostitution would try to milk their clients for money and gifts), and occasional acknowledgment of the hardships of prostitution. The blurry line between truth and illusion, sincerity and pretense in the novel’s descriptions of pleasure-quarter liaisons matches its curious blending of other, related pairs of opposing elements: irony and sentiment; absurd scenes such as that in which the ten-yearold Yonosuke plumbs the Chinese and Japanese literary canons to seduce a grown man, and realistic passages describing in detail milieus ranging from elegant Shimabara ageya to the docksides of a provincial port town where the streetwalkers’ pimps carry sticks to beat away the dogs;166 descriptions of apparently fictitious characters and events and references to actual prostitutes,

166  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 97; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 87; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 200.

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kabuki actors, ageya and dike collapses; literary and colloquial language; verse and prose; reverent and irreverent literary allusion. It is as if the shifting medium of narrative and its variable verisimilitude are metaphors for the uncertain sincerity of prostitutes’ declarations of love and responses to physical intimacy, as well as for the uncertainty regarding the question of how much the narrator and the male characters care about what prostitutes and other objects of male desire really think, want or feel. References to the plight of prostitutes in Amorous Man range from the callous to the tearfully sentimental. In the second chapter of volume six (age 37), when a party of pleasure-quarter habitués compares the merits and flaws of various prostitutes in a manner resembling the “rainy night” scene of Genji’s second chapter, the narrator mentions the men’s “regret” that a certain tayū’s contract will soon run out (thus freeing her from sexual slavery).167 Conversely, the chapter that precedes it (age 36) is devoted to a tear-soaked melodrama revolving around Yonosuke’s relationship with Mikasa, a tayū who continues to see him on the sly even though the debts he owes cause her employer to forbid it. For this Mikasa’s employer imposes cruel and humiliating punishments culminating in her being tied half-naked to a tree in wintertime. After suffering terribly, she sends a letter to Yonosuke written in her own blood announcing her intention to commit suicide by biting her tongue. Yonosuke decides to join her in death, but after he arrives on the scene sympathetic bystanders intercede on the couple’s behalf in ways not specified and save them from death, as well as from the obstructionism of Mikasa’s greedy boss.168 In the similarly melodramatic fifth chapter of volume seven (age 53), while Yonosuke is in Dewa province, Washū, a prostitute in Osaka to whom he is close, sends him a month’s worth of diary entries. They are filled with realistic accounts of her daily activities, some seemingly recorded to arouse jealousy, homesickness or sympathy in Yonosuke. When the tone of her entries turns sadder, an apparition in the form of Washū visits Yonosuke saying that because she has not attracted enough customers lately she is about to be sent to the (declining) pleasure quarter of Kyoto (which presumably would be accompanied

167  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 171. I detect no rendering of the phrase in question in either Hamada’s translation or Siary’s (Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 166; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 285). 168  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 166–70; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 157–64; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 279–83. Hamada fills out the chapter’s rather flat ending with some inventions of his own.

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by a drop in rank169), in which case, she says, she would die forthwith. On hearing this, Yonosuke rushes back to Osaka to save her.170 However sympathetic Yonosuke and the narrator of Amorous Man may appear toward individual prostitutes suffering keenly from the subjugation that is their lot, both are great respecters of the hierarchy among prostitutes, with approval, favors and the bulk of their empathy going to those with breeding, manners, talent and taste, the very qualities that a woman needed to be placed at the top of the formal system of ranking prostitutes. In the third chapter of volume five, “Yoku no yo no naka ni kore wa mata” (A Noble Soul in This Greedy World, age 37),171 while traveling in the provinces Yonosuke encounters a young prostitute who at first makes a mediocre impression but then shows, without showing off, great expertise in the identification of fine incense, a sure sign of good breeding. Yonosuke immediately falls for her, and gives her a large sum of money after they spend the night together, which she then gives to an itinerant Buddhist ascetic who returns it when he realizes the size of the contribution. Startled by the girl’s noble gesture, Yonosuke asks about her background and learns that she is the daughter of “someone well-known.” (Teruoka notes that at the beginning of the Tokugawa period many daughters of generals in the defeated Toyotomi camp became prostitutes.172) In the end Yonosuke buys the girl’s freedom and sends her home to her parents, much as Genji repeatedly rescues refined aristocratic girls languishing in rustic obscurity. Yonosuke does not bestow such favors on prostitutes made of coarser material. Later, in the third chapter of the eighth and final volume, on a busy day in the Shimabara pleasure quarter in Kyoto, after rejecting all of the prostitutes of the second rank who are available (all tayū are booked), Yonosuke pays for a guest of his to take over the role of first client in the induction process known as mizuage, which in this case involves a tayū who has just been transferred there from Osaka’s Shinmachi quarter. This involves a huge expenditure of money, for the tayū’s services must be booked for nine days, a lavish weddingstyle ceremony must be held and gifts and gratuities showered in all directions. The account of this potlatch is detailed and admiring, and its description of the

169  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 390. 170  Despite the tone of these two chapters, Donald Keene writes that pathos is “totally lacking in The Life of an Amorous Man” (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 183). 171  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 144–51; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 135–38; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 253–57. 172  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 147, note 14.

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prostitutes seated by rank should give pause to anyone who regards Amorous Man as predominantly hierarchy-reversing and egalitarian.173 “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am’ ” One might be tempted to view the story of the tayū Yoshino as evincing an egalitarian sensibility, but close examination reveals the parvenu ethos that prevails throughout the novel. In the first chapter of the fifth volume, “Nochi ni sama tsuke yobu” (Now They Call Her “Ma’am,” age 35),174 the matchless Yoshino becomes the object of a certain apprentice knife- and short-swordsmith’s desire, and he works fifty-three evenings straight making fifty-three swords to earn the fifty-three monme needed to pay for a meeting with her. On a holiday that all of the smiths take off from work he goes to the quarter but then gets cold feet thinking he will be rejected because of his low station, money notwithstanding. Yoshino gets wind of this and secretly invites him to meet her. He is happy just to have laid eyes upon her and soon gets up to leave, but she holds onto him and says she will not let him go until they have made love. She then spends the entire evening enticing and cajoling him until he finally accomplishes the task she has given him. Her employers are outraged that she has squandered her favors on such an unworthy client. Yoshino counters that her customer for the day is the wellseasoned pleasure-quarter habitué Yonosuke, and that he will approve of what she has done. Indeed he does, when he shows up, and says that her act embodies the quintessence of what a prostitute should be. He decides at once to marry her and buys her freedom.175 Yoshino is an elegant woman wise in the ways of the world, and like Yonosuke she is a Nichiren Buddhist. Furthermore, she gives up tobacco just for Yonosuke. In short, she will make the perfect wife for him. But Yonosuke’s relatives all find his choice of bride scandalous and cut off relations with him. This saddens Yoshino, and she begs him to divorce her or at least to keep her in a second home on the outskirts of town as a concubine, but he refuses. In that 173  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 239–42; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 219–24; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 367–71. In Hamada’s version the account of this gathering differs substantially from that in the original, with details such as the seating of the prostitutes by rank left out and others added. 174  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 136–40; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, pp. 50–55; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 125–30; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 243–47. 175  The real Yoshino was banished from the quarter for such an act (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 137, note 17).

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case, she says, she will have to fix matters between them and the relatives. She dictates a letter to Yonosuke in which he is to tell his relatives he is divorcing Yoshino and sending her home, and then humbly ask them to resume relations with him as before. Moreover, he is to ask his female relatives to come view the cherry blossoms in his garden before Yoshino leaves. This he does, and they all accept, saying, “We don’t actually hate her.”176 When the appointed day comes, Yoshino dresses as a maid and serves the guests saké and snacks with great humility, then when they have drunk a bit she tells them that she is a Shimabara prostitute who is unworthy of showing her face in such a home as this, and that Yonosuke is sending her back home to her village, but as a parting gesture she wants to sing a song. She then entrances all present with her lovely voice. She goes on to impress them with her grace and sophistication through expert koto playing and various other arts, and by generally being an excellent hostess. When Yoshino withdraws to the kitchen the women all call her back. They forget the time and all stay until dawn, begging Yonosuke for forgiveness as they leave, telling him that Yoshino would make a fine wife for any man, and telling him to keep her as his. Their marriage is then celebrated in a lavish ceremony (or reception177) before Yonosuke’s family. The story of Yoshino encapsulates the bourgeois ethos of self-improvement and social self-advancement that permeates Amorous Man. It thus militates, like the novel as a whole, not for a reversal or an elimination of hierarchy but rather for a more fluid hierarchy that recognizes acquired excellence as much as fortunate birth, a meritocracy in tune with the commercial spirit of Genrokuperiod chōnin. It begins with the same narrative of benevolence of high toward low that we shall see in Way of the Warrior’s two tales of love affairs between a high-ranking samurai wakashu and nenja of humbler status, respectively, a well-to-do chōnin and a samurai of low rank: “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love”178 and “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama.”179 This narrative actually occurs twice in “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am’ ”: first when 176  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 139; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, p. 53; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 128–29; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 246. As is often the case in premodern Japanese, it is open to interpretation whether this is direct or indirect discourse, a thought or an utterance, as are attribution and the questions of where the quotation begins and ends and of who is the object of the sentiments described. The above translations’ renderings of the phrase in question all differ from one another, and from my own. 177  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 136. 178  Ihara, Budō, pp. 120–27. 179  Ihara, Budō, pp. 180–89.

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Yoshino rewards the young smith’s sincerity by granting him her favors on their initial meeting, which according to convention she should rarely do with even a new client of wealth or rank, and again when Yonosuke rewards Yoshino’s exceptional display of proper pleasure-quarter sentiment by taking her as his wife. This narrative occurs elsewhere in Amorous Man as well, in the context of kabuki-actor prostitution, when in the fourth chapter of the fifth volume (age 38) the young onnagata (player of female roles) Takii Sanzaburō (an actual figure) gives his heart and his favors to a low-ranking and shabby-looking monk who has proven his sincere devotion by attending all of his plays, by following him around secretly and by preparing to hang himself after one last look at the object of his love, a plan that he is prevented from executing just in the nick of time.180 “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am’ ” then continues with a narrative of snobbish rejection and skillful, humble appeasement of the group from which a disadvantaged party has been excluded, through demonstrations of artistic accomplishment and social graces in a passage that depicts not hierarchy-overturning but the successful effort of a socially disadvantaged party to adapt to hierarchy and thus rise within it. Here we have an equivalent to the strategy of the wealthy chōnin who wins samurai friends by skillfully manipulating literary codes in the haikai salon. Furthermore, the inconsistencies in the dominant group’s snobbery—Yonosuke himself is the child of a former prostitute—are never directly pointed out or objected to either by the narrator or by any of the characters.

Part 5: Sailing Out

“Dolls from the Capital” As we have seen, a key aspect of Life of an Amorous Man is its embodiment, through positive depictions of a money-driven high-chōnin culture, through Yonosuke’s stylistic, cultural and social ambitions and through the chōnin author’s own ostentatious displays of literary erudition and stylistic brilliance, of a chōnin desire to have the potentially acquirable assets of money and cultural sophistication, rather than birth alone, determine status, as well as to emulate aspects of samurai and aristocratic culture, in short, a desire to transcend the limits placed on them by the Tokugawa status-group system. One important feature of this system was that it gave samurai a monopoly on bureaucratic 180  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 148–51; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 147–49; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 258–61.

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posts, thus preventing government service from becoming a path to political and social advancement available to the ambitious of various backgrounds, as it was in nearby China, where, as long as one could afford an education, there was hope of gaining prestige and political power through the examination system that served as the gateway to a career as a government official. It is thus highly symbolic—and perhaps more than accidentally so—that Yonosuke’s departure to the legendary Island of Women at the novel’s end is preceded in its penultimate chapter by a charming journey to the city that then functioned as abroad-in-Japan: Nagasaki, experienced by Yonosuke specifically in its role as China-in-Japan. At the beginning of “Miyako no sugataningyō” (Dolls from the Capital, age 59),181 Yonosuke meets with someone about to travel on business to Nagasaki and hands over a cashbox he wants taken ahead for him, saying that he will later join his acquaintance in the Kyushu port. The man asks Yonosuke if in the meantime there are any imported goods he would like to have, to which Yonosuke replies that the money is for purchasing “something Japanese,” which Teruoka takes to mean the favors of a prostitute who serves Japanese clients, as there were separate classes of prostitute for Japanese, Chinese and Dutch residents of the city.182 Yonosuke’s acquaintance leaves Kyoto for Nagasaki soon thereafter. While still in Kyoto, Yonosuke makes up his mind to spend a goodly portion of his fortune, and he uses it to finance temple and shrine construction and new temple lanterns, to buy houses for young kabuki actors, and to purchase the freedom of prostitutes he has frequented. But spend as he may he still has money left in his storehouse and wonders what to do with it. On the thirteenth of the eighth month he decides to head for Nagasaki in search of amusement. As he takes a boat on the Yodo River to the theater district on its south bank in Osaka, he thinks of Abe no Nakamaro (698–770), a noble and poet who went to study in China, became a favorite of Emperor Xuanzong (better known in his role as lover of Yang Guifei) and was then prevented from returning to Japan. He wrote of his homesickness in a famed waka and died in Chang’an.183 Yonosuke muses that whereas Nakamaro longs in his poem for the moon over his hometown in Japan, he himself longs for the moon “over there,” using a

181  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 242–46; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, pp. 225–29; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, pp. 372–76. 182  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 243, note 14. 183  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 243, note 26; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 373, p. 407, note 12; Kōjien.

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word that Maeda says was used at the time to mean “abroad” and specifically “China.”184 In Osaka, Yonosuke spends two or three days at the home of a kabuki actor, then, getting up from the bed they have shared, lovingly bestows five hundred ryō on him. In an afterword to this the novel’s final scene depicting a shudō encounter or any erotic encounter at all, the actor Hiiragiya Hyōshirō (an actual figure), accompanying Yonosuke on the way to the boat that will take him to Kyushu, humorously tells him that young kabuki actors are soon coarse, grown men who lose their popularity and end up living unstable lives of poverty, an observation that is both depressing and admirably resonant with the aesthetics of ephemerality, as well as an implicit rationale for the age limits placed on the junior partner in shudō relationships. After an easy voyage, Yonosuke arrives at Nagasaki and heads straight for the Maruyama pleasure quarter. There the jorōya look better than he has heard them to be, with eight to ten women on display in each. The narrator then explains the manner in which prostitutes’ services are provided to the Chinese in Nagasaki, and comments that Chinese men are passionate and jealous and therefore do not like to see the prostitutes they frequent put on display to passersby, as was normally the case in Japanese prostitution districts. The passage continues with the assertion that Chinese men take aphrodisiacs night and day and so can have sex constantly, and ends with the observation, “Japanese can’t copy that.” The narrator then mentions the fact that whereas the Dutch must summon prostitutes to their quarters on Dejima, the Chinese can visit theirs in town, and get to enjoy themselves there without hindrance. Some men in Nagasaki who have reveled with Yonosuke in Kyoto’s Shijōgawara (center of kabuki-actor prostitution) and Shimabara are pleasantly surprised that he has made it all the way down to Nagasaki. They arrange for some prostitutes to perform nō plays for him and invite him to come see the show. In the garden (of the jorōya in question) there is a permanent stage,185 and there at the appointed time the women put on admirable performances of Teika, Matsukaze and Miidera. They then hold a big, informal drinking party “in the spirit of Bai Juyi’s poem in praise of drinking,” with thirty-five prostitutes in attendance, in the shade of turning maple leaves.

184  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 243; Ihara, Hamada, Amorous Man, p. 226; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 373; Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 454. 185  As was usually the case in jorōya with tayū, where prostitutes would perform nō for customers (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 244, note 12).

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Yonosuke comments that even he, who once served a quail186 worth thirtyfive ryō to a tayū as yakitori, is surprised by (the opulence of) this party, and admires the clothing of the women there, which is different from what he has seen elsewhere. The women at the party want to know what Kyoto prostitutes look like, and luckily Yonosuke (who apparently does not travel light) happens to have with him a collection of costumed dolls representing various tayū: seventeen from Kyoto, eight from Edo and nineteen from Osaka, each looking distinct from the others. He has these carried into the party in twelve large chests, set up on the stage and labeled with the names of the women they represent, and the party guests gather round to examine and discuss them. Soon tout Nagasaki is there and passes the rest of the day gazing at these paragons of beauty and style. Through this doll exhibition Yonosuke has again performed his role as disseminator of the high-chōnin culture of the Kamigata and of Edo, much as he did in Miyajima, this time in a town that, although far removed from those major urban centers and culturally distinct from them, nonetheless possesses a local culture that favorably impresses him, a development suggesting that there are other realms beyond the horizon that merit a visit, perhaps including, when one considers the quasi-foreignness of Nagasaki and the China theme in this chapter, places forbidden to Japanese by the shogunate’s foreign travel ban. The chapter’s reference to Abe no Nakamaro represents a particularly striking use of Amorous Man’s oft-repeated device of alluding to the ancient court cultures of Japan and China. Given the homoerotic undertones of the Naraperiod noble’s relationship with Emperor Xuanzong, by imagining himself in Nakamaro’s place, Yonosuke is essentially fantasizing about being a sort of male Yang Guifei, thus reprising in his imagination his earlier mode of social climbing through his affair with an older samurai male. More importantly, in counterpoint to the appreciation of the relative freedom of the shogunal domains implied in the Osaka boat-party scene, Yonosuke’s longing for a forbidden journey to China suggests a dissatisfaction with Tokugawa restrictions on spatial mobility, a sentiment parallel to the frustration at official restrictions on social mobility implied elsewhere in the novel. The narrator’s and by implication Yonosuke’s admiration for the passion and sexual power of the Chinese men living in Nagasaki is visually reinforced by the illustration for this chapter, which pictures Chinese men with roundtipped, phallically projecting tall hats and similarly projecting long, stiff chin 186  At the time quail were highly prized for their singing and the best could fetch a high price (Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 245, note 25).

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Illustration 8 “Dolls from the Capital.” Waseda University Library.

beards, striking poses indicative of emotional agitation (interpretable, given the context, as deriving from passion and/or jealousy) as they look at prostitutes on display in the second-floor windows of a jorōya, with Yonosuke observing in the foreground. The assertion that the Chinese men’s aphrodisiacfueled sexual marathons are not to be attempted by Japanese men bespeaks an envy and anxiety that I view as linked to a longing for a Japanese equivalent to the bureaucratic channels to political power that imperial China provided its prosperous commoners.187 Denied in samurai-dominated Japan a political means of expressing his will to power and becoming something more than a mere homo economicus, the wealthy chōnin Yonosuke takes a samurai lover, imagines himself as the beloved of a Chinese emperor and plays the role of 187  Far away in absolutist France, one sees a similar mindset reflected in an observation in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes (1725) regarding the superior fertility of the inhabitants of republics (Montesquieu, Lettres persanes [Paris: Flammarion, 1995], pp. 241–42 [Letter 122]).

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sophisticate and sexual prodigy on the glittering stage of the metropolitan pleasure quarters, much as, in a Germany still dominated by petty nobles, the title character of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, written about a century later, hobnobs with nobles, flirts with a noble’s wife and begins a theatrical career in hopes of transcending, by playing on stage the noble he believes he cannot become in reality, the prosaic, ignoble existence he views as the lot of the bourgeois.188 The Enlightened Libertine With regard to Yonosuke’s final voyage, invoking the notion of a categorically anti-sex Buddhism critiqued above, and contrasting the destination of Yonosuke and company with Amida’s western paradise in Pure Land Buddhism, Jeffrey Johnson writes, “This paradise in the here-and-now can only be taken as a satire on the Buddhist rejection of sexual life.”189 This turn of events could also be read as a parody of the practice of Fudaraku tokai, ostensibly an ocean voyage to Kannon’s paradise, but in fact a religious suicide in which a pilgrim was sealed in a boat cabin fitted with a plug he could pull in order to sink the vessel and hasten the inevitable.190 Matsuda Osamu writes that he believes that Yonosuke’s voyage was linked to Fudaraku tokai by Saikaku but that this was unconscious.191 Taniwaki Masachika once told me that he did not discern such a connection (at least as far as authorial intention is concerned), given that Saikaku’s fictional works normally follow the haikai rule of ending on a happy, auspicious note, and that since Fudaraku tokai ended in death, a reference to it in the Amorous Man’s final chapter would violate this rule.192 Be that as it may, I view the last two chapters of Amorous Man as depicting Yonosuke in the culminating phase of a gradual process of enlightenment through sex. By now the novel has given us a mixed portrayal of the pleasure quarters, both praising them as sites for enjoying refined pleasures and showing the falseness, suffering and cruelty beneath their glittering surfaces. Through the years, Yonosuke has become increasingly aware of the unsavory 188  Donald Keene writes, “In a society where the merchants officially ranked lowest among the four classes and where they could not hope to enjoy political power, the pleasures of the gay quarters were their highest ambition,” but he also elsewhere asserts, “Saikaku did not welcome the breaking down of class lines” (Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 202, 194). 189  Johnson, “Novelness,” pp. 232–33. 190  D. Max Moerman, Localizing Paradise: Kumano Pilgrimage and the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 38, 93. 191  Matsuda Osamu, Matsuda Osamu chosaku shū, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Umon Shoin, 2002), p. 168. 192  Private conversation with Taniwaki Masachika, circa 2008.

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aspects of prostitution, but rather than abandon the promiscuous pursuit of pleasures of the flesh, by the novel’s end this awareness merely alters his perspective on his favorite pastime, causing him to continue his amorous ways with the clear-eyed detachment of one now conscious of the layers of illusion shrouding, or rather constituting, the world, which he now accepts and enjoys for what it is. In this manner, the brothel and the prostitution quarters serve in Amorous Man, and, as we shall see, elsewhere in Saikaku’s fiction, as a Buddhistic object lesson in the illusory nature of the phenomenal world,193 a topos that, as outlined in the introduction to this study, builds on an older tradition of employing the inn and the brothel as symbols of impermanence and of casting prostitutes as instructing, bodhisattva-like, their customers in the Buddhist teaching that all phenomena are impermanent, and that therefore attachment to pleasures, possessions or people unavoidably causes suffering.194 Yonosuke’s ability, acquired over time, to enjoy the appealing surfaces of the pleasure quarter while aware of their probable falseness and of the suffering they hide is put forward as a sort of Buddhist enlightenment.195 Moreover, portrayals in Amorous Man and later fiction by Saikaku of the falseness and even the suffering and cruelty associated with prostitution present these as adding poignancy and excitement to the pleasures purveyed in the pleasure quarter, such that rather than dissuade either the protagonist or the reader from sampling them, these texts espouse their enlightened (i.e., not naïve) enjoyment and depict them as possessing a variety and depth well beyond mere physical satisfaction. This technique of assigning aesthetic value to initially negative qualities constitutes a new twist on the longstanding aestheticization in Japanese culture of impermanence as conceived of in Buddhist doctrine. It derives in part from a conflation under the rubric of impermanence in Mahayana Buddhism and premodern Japanese culture in general of the temporary, the unstable, the provisional, the illusory and the false.196 193  As it is the arena in which Yonosuke learns about the human heart, Daniel Struve, playing on the dual meaning of “ukiyo,” writes of the floating world of the prostitution quarters in Amorous Man as a synecdoche for the sad world of which it is a part (Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 85–86). 194  LaFleur, Karma of Words, pp. 60–79. 195  As noted earlier, Kuki Shūzō includes a Buddhistic “resignation” toward illusion and suffering as an essential element in his model of Edo-centered, late-Tokugawa pleasurequarter chic; he also remarks that naïveté in (pleasure-quarter) love is boorish (“yabo,” i.e., the opposite of “iki” [chic]) (Kuki, Nara, Structure of Iki, pp. 46–55, 74–75, 78–79). 196  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 20, 63, 67, 69. This conflation is inherent to the Japanese language itself, i.e., “仮の” (“temporary, provisional, makeshift, transient, tentative, false”) and various compounds using the same kanji.

CHAPTER 2

Chōnin High and Low: Five Women Who Loved Love Introduction Despite the fact that its title begins with the same two Chinese characters (“好色”) as those of Saikaku’s Kōshoku ichidai otoko, its sequel Kōshoku nidai otoko (The Life of an Amorous Man: The Second Generation,1 1684) and Kōshoku ichidai onna (The Life of an Amorous Woman, 1686), Kōshoku gonin onna (Five Women Who Loved Love, 1686) differs radically from the other works that bear this brand name, which means “loving (erotic) love,” in that whereas they center largely on the client-prostitute relationship, Five Women deals primarily with transgressive love affairs initiated by chōnin girls and women who are not prostitutes, and is largely told from their point of view. Its five stories’ treatment of erotic themes thus differs markedly from the accounts of pleasure-quarter intrigue and connoisseurship, told overwhelmingly from the male protagonist’s perspective, that dominate Amorous Man. Rather than in its treatment of erotic love, Five Women most strikingly resembles Amorous Man in its use of references to the literature and historical figures of the Heian-period court aristocracy to implicitly elevate chōnin characters and their milieu toward the level of these classical models, and in its contrasting of refined and coarse commoners. In Amorous Man this usually takes the form of juxtapositions of metropolitan refinement and provincial crudity; in Five Women the contrast is both between townspeople and countryfolk and, within the same urban space, prosperous and poor chōnin. Five Women shares with all of the other works examined in this study a dialogistic prose style which, in this case, shifts between stern Confucianistic condemnations of the protagonists’ amorous strayings, sympathetic portrayals of the protagonists that undermine the text’s voice of Confucian morality, a Buddhistic emphasis on fate, contingency and the irrationality of desire that tends to further mitigate the text’s pro forma expressions of Confucian rigor, and stretches of pathos undermined by comedy and irony, albeit less jarringly than in Amorous Man. In all but the last story love affairs initiated by the female protagonists lead to disaster for them, their lovers or both, which the narrator blames in part on forms of folly supposedly characteristic of women. However, in the last story 1  Also known as Shoen ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Many Charms).

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this pattern is reversed when, in arrogating to herself the male prerogative of erotic pursuit, in the process of which she further masculinizes herself by pretending to be a boy in order to seduce a man, its female protagonist brings about that rarest of outcomes in pre-modern Japanese love stories: the promise of lasting happiness for a pair of lovers or spouses, with, however, a note of uncertainty at the very end regarding the constancy of her husband’s feelings for her and the safety of the family’s finances now that they are exposed to the potentially ruinous consequences of his unstable desire.

“The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji”

The opening chapter of the first story in Five Women, “Sugata Himeji Seijūrō monogatari” (The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji)2 could lead one to believe that a pleasure-quarter narrative similar to Amorous Man is in store, when in fact the chapter’s denouement signals that prostitution is to be left behind, both by the narrator and by the newly penniless protagonist. Seijūrō, the young son of a wealthy saké manufacturer in the Inland Sea port of Murotsu, is described as even more beautiful than pictures of Ariwara no Narihira. Both his parentage and this comparison to the Heian-period courtier, celebrated poet, legendary lover and presumed hero of Tales of Ise link him to Amorous Man’s Yonosuke, who is also the son of a wealthy chōnin and allusively linked to Narihira. Furthermore, like Yonosuke, Seijūrō is disowned at the age of nineteen for wasting too much time and money in brothels, but whereas Yonosuke’s good fortunes are restored when he inherits his family’s riches, Seijūrō will have no such luck. “Seijūrō” is particularly noteworthy for its Buddhistic features. In general it partakes of the Buddhism-derived floating-world aesthetics outlined in the introduction to this study, and it foreshadows its hero’s downfall with various

2  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 255–76; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 39–72. I shall refer to the chapters in Five Women by De Bary’s renderings of their titles. De Bary’s translation contains all five stories and maintains a high level of accuracy. In The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings, Ivan Morris translates the first, third and fifth stories. For my readers’ convenience I will include page references to de Bary’s translation alongside references to the Japanese original, adding references to Morris’s excellent translations when they stay closer to the original than do de Bary’s renderings of particular passages. However, all translations from the Japanese of passages directly quoted in this chapter are my own, except for when variations between translations are being described.

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Buddhist references.3 Presenting the brothel as a realm whose false appearances concentrate, in microcosm, the illusory nature of the world as a whole, it appears to reveal the love professed by prostitutes to be illusory and contingent upon money, but in the end leaves open the possibility that even in the context of commercial sex a love can flourish that is no more illusory than love under other circumstances. Before he is disowned, like Yonosuke, Seijūrō is immensely popular among prostitutes, ostensibly for his looks and charm at least as much as for his money, such that he receives piles of love letters and of fingernails, hair and clothing offered as pledges of love. Of the crested kimonos he receives from his admirers the narrator comments that the sight of them would sate the greed of Datsueba, the old woman of Buddhist legend who strips away the clothes of the dead, and that the dealers in second-hand clothing in Osaka’s Kōreibashi district would be unable to appraise their value. The first comment foreshadows a subsequent scene in which collective nudity both unexpectedly kills the mood of a lavish brothel party and leads to Seijūrō’s disastrous reversal of fortune. It also prefigures Seijūrō’s death and introduces the theme of death in general, which will have an importance in Five Women that links the work to Twenty Cases and Way of the Warrior, but distances it from the more optimistic Amorous Man, with which it is usually categorized as a kōshokumono (work of erotic fiction). Seijūrō stuffs all of the items he receives from adoring prostitutes into an outbuilding on whose door he has cavalierly written the designation “The Floating World Storehouse,” using the term “ukiyo” discussed in the introduction to this study, which can designate hedonism, instability, and misery. The word initially seems to be used in the first sense, but proves prophetic in terms of the latter two as well. Saikaku’s usual Greek chorus of unnamed “onlookers” (“miru hito”) deplores Seijūrō’s behavior and expects his name to end up written in the book listing those who have been disowned by their parents. This extremely brief passage thus both hints at the plot of “Seijūrō” and introduces the major themes of this story and of Five Women in general, as well as the competing voices through which they are introduced: chōnin characters as contemporary avatars of classical figures, material wealth and its lack, frustrated desire, an aestheticized Buddhist conception of transience that 3  In Mahayana Buddhist discourse impermanence and illusion are often presented as interrelated qualities of the phenomenal world; of their connection to the word “ukiyo” Hashimoto writes, “From the Kamakura period [(1185–1333)] and into the Muromachi period [(1336– 1573)], the tendency of ‘ukiyo’ to mean ‘[this] unstable world of illusion’ became stronger” (Hashimoto, Ukiyo, p. 20).

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goes beyond the decorative use of clichés about cherry blossoms and autumn leaves, and the Confucianistic censure of sensual self-indulgence. It also prefigures Five Women’s relative compactness and unity of plot, especially when compared with the rambling Amorous Man, which despite its single protagonist displays less structural cohesion than the five completely separate stories of Five Women taken as a whole, a quality that, as noted in the previous chapter, Taniwaki Masachika links to Amorous Man’s status as Saikaku’s first work of fiction after a brilliant career in haikai no renga.4 The blending of Heianperiod aristocratic and mercantile references in “Seijūrō” partakes of the haikai aesthetic of dramatically juxtaposed disparate elements, albeit to a more subtle effect than, for example, that of Amorous Man’s comically incongruous references to nō plays in a passage dealing with the bedtime manner of a prostitute,5 examined earlier, or when the narrator mourns Yonosuke’s insalubriously squandered semen6 at the close of the novel’s opening chapter. The fateful brothel party, at which, during daylight hours, Seijūrō enlists taikomochi and others to stage an elaborate nighttime scene in a darkened room, serves as a metaphor for the false appearances that prevail in the pleasure quarter, which in turn serves as a Buddhistic metaphor for this world of illusion. Initially the passage in question also posits the contemporary pleasure quarters as the site of refined amusements, and thus elevates its host toward the level of the Heian-period courtier to whom Seijūrō is likened in the story’s opening references to Narihira. Then, when the party is in full swing Seijūrō announces that all present are to take off their clothes in imitation of the residents of the mythical “Naked Island” then featured on maps. The prostitutes are embarrassed but comply anyway, and in so doing a prostitute of the third rank named Yoshizaki reveals a patch of skin along her lower spine discolored by vitiligo, which she has hitherto managed to keep hidden. Punning in haikailike fashion on the Japanese name of the disease, “shironamazu,” which literally means “white catfish,” the other revelers then jokingly “worship” her as a “living Benzaiten,” an allusion to the belief that the Benzaiten enshrined on Chikubu Island in Lake Biwa is served by the catfish.7 4  Taniwaki, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu, pp. 151–76. 5  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 194; Ihara, Drake, Solt, North, Sensuous Man, pp. 178–79 (trans. Drake); Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 313. 6  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 23; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, p. 50; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 106. The line in question is omitted from Hamada’s translation. 7  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 257–58, note 28. De Bary goes for dynamic equivalence in his translation of this passage, having the other partygoers mock-worship Yoshizaki as “a veritable

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However, this mean-spirited game ends up spoiling the festive mood, and the party goes downhill further as people begin to notice other imperfections on the bared bodies around them. The unintended consequences of Seijūrō’s decision to have everyone disrobe constitute a further development of the scene’s representation of the pleasure quarter as enveloped in layer upon layer of illusion. The passage also highlights the erotic significance of clothing in Saikaku’s fiction, which is evident both elsewhere in Five Women and in the long descriptions of clothing and accessories in Amorous Man, and which parallels the role played by clothing in Edo-period pornographic prints (shunga), in which, as Timon Screech points out in Sex and the Floating World, clothing features more prominently than feminine curves and bulging muscles even when the subjects’ genitals themselves are exposed.8 The party scene reinforces an impression gained in reading both Amorous Man and Five Women that in the world they describe, sex stripped of its cultural trappings, both material and intangible, is unappealing. At this very inopportune moment, Seijūrō’s father shows up and disowns him on the spot. The theme of denudation as loss first broached by the narrator’s mention of Datsueba is further developed in a taikomochi’s attempt to comfort Seijūrō by citing the proverb according to which even a naked man is worth a hundred kan.9 However, despite the initial sympathy shown him, before the evening is through, Seijūrō is treated brusquely by those who can no longer count on being paid by him, including the prostitute Minagawa, with whom he has enjoyed a special relationship, but who now announces that their love affair is over, then leaves. One last layer of illusion is thus stripped away as it is revealed that despite Seijūrō’s beauty and prostitutes’ profuse demonstrations of devotion to him, without money the pleasure quarter’s doors will be slammed in his face. Seijūrō’s disillusionment is then somewhat mitigated when Minagawa returns with a pair of razors and proposes that they commit suicide together. But the two are pulled apart and prevented from taking their lives, and Seijūrō is sent away to his family’s temple, where he enters the Buddhist path at the age of nineteen, as did Amorous Man’s Yonosuke and the Buddha himself. Venus” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 43). Ivan Morris hews more closely to the original and explains the pun in an endnote (Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 56, p. 295, note 21). 8  Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan 1700–1820 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), pp. 110–25. 9  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 258, note 4; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 44; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 295, note 22.

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At the beginning of the story’s second chapter Seijūrō learns that Minagawa has at last succeeded in killing herself, but he finds this out ten days after the fact, so at this point a suicide on his part would be anticlimactic. Instead he absconds from the temple and obtains a job in Himeji running the business of a certain Tajimaya Kyūemon. It is at this point, now that the world of high-end prostitution has been left behind, that the story’s main narrative begins, the first chapter having served to portray Seijūrō as someone fallen from a high position. His transition from carefree, wealthy young playboy to obedient employee is now marked by the clause, “for the first time his status was that of a servant.”10 Seijūrō gradually stops paying attention to his appearance, gives up on love and becomes a model of diligence and propriety. It is thus not his looks but rather the contents of a cache of love letters written to him by prostitutes that stirs desire for him both in the heart of his employer’s younger sister, Onatsu, and on the part of the family’s maidservants. The letters are discovered by chance when Seijūrō asks to have the obi in which he has hidden (and apparently forgotten) them re-sewn to a narrower width (wide obis being the mark of the playboy and unsuitable for someone in his current position).11 In a touch reminiscent of Amorous Man, the letters are attributed to fourteen prostitutes mentioned in the pleasure quarter guide Shikidō ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Love, 1678).12 The letters are judged by their unintended readers to be sincere expressions of love devoid of tricks of the prostitutes’ trade. Reading them leads Onatsu to think that Seijūrō must possess some hidden quality that has made these women love him, and she begins to pine away wondering how she can consummate her feelings for him. Like the sequences regarding the prostitute Minagawa’s suicide prompted by the end of her contact with Seijūrō, the passage regarding Onatsu and her servants’ interpretation of prostitutes’ love letters to Seijūrō calls into question the story’s earlier implication that the love prostitutes expressed for him was either entirely fake or completely contingent upon money. It also leaves the reader unsure as to whether the letter readers are perceptive or naïve in their conclusions regarding the motivations of the women writing the letters. In either case a chance occurrence leads Onatsu to imagine on the basis of flimsy evidence attractive qualities in someone whose detectable traits have 10  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 261; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 49; Morris’s translation of the line in question is more direct (Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 59). 11  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 262, note 6. 12  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 262, note 8.

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failed to gain her attention. The passage brings us back to the Buddhist-tinged theme of the illusory and contingent nature of erotic love, this time outside of the context of the pleasure quarters. It recalls the mise en abyme involved in the passage concerning Seijūrō’s fateful brothel party: to wit, in staging his nighttime scene during the daytime, Seijūrō creates a realm of illusion within the realm of illusion that is the prostitution quarter, which in turn is contained in the realm of illusion that is, according to Buddhism, the phenomenal world. Similarly, heterosexual erotic love, which Saikaku’s fiction typically treats as evanescent, insubstantial and based on illusion,13 is rendered, in the case of Onatsu’s love for Seijūrō, all the more illusory and insubstantial by the fact that it is based not on her perception of the man right in front of her but rather on words written on paper that express love whose genuineness has already been called into question. The narrative ultimately leaves open the question of whether the expressions of love for Seijūrō by prostitutes other than Minagawa are sincere, but the fact that other women in the story assume them to be so and follow the lead of these prostitutes in their choice of a love object is significant in that it further undermines a reading of the depiction of Seijūrō’s brothel debacle as unequivocally condemning prostitution and warning men away from the pleasures of the pleasure quarter. It also intriguingly depicts prostitutes as role models for other women in matters of love, and the impression of an erotic hegemony on the part of the pleasure quarter14 is reinforced by the narrator’s observation that Onatsu’s is a beauty unseen in the provinces and even among “amateurs” in the capital, and by the comment of a visitor from Kyoto that 13  As we have seen reflected in the story of the adult Yonosuke’s reunion with the nenja he took at age ten, pederastic love not involving prostitution is portrayed differently, with the bonds of love and mutual devotion outlasting the sexual part of the relationship, which the conventions of shudō dictate should end when the junior partner’s forelocks are shaven in his coming-of-age ceremony (see Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 49). One could argue that this built-in expiration date prevented the eventual diminution of desire from souring the emotional bond between male lovers. In any case, the closest one gets in Saikaku’s fiction to a depiction of the sort of durable, stable desire served up in portrayals of married couples on American television occurs in the comical story in Great Mirror of Male Love, briefly mentioned earlier, of a pair of woman-shunning male lovers; well past middle age the younger of the two continues to wear the hairstyle of a youth not yet initiated into adulthood, in order to follow the form of the convention described above, though not its spirit (Ihara, Nanshoku ōkagami, pp. 439–43; Ihara, Schalow, Great Mirror of Male Love, pp. 180–83). 14  See also Hibbett, Floating World, p. 23.

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she is even more beautiful than a certain Shimabara tayū. The former comment also recalls the contrasting of metropolitan sophistication and provincial coarseness so prevalent in Amorous Man, and together both observations work to depict Onatsu as yet another model of beauty and refinement languishing in provincial obscurity, a figure borrowed from Genji and making its appearance, as we have seen, in Amorous Man and, as we shall see, in Way of the Warrior as well. Another instance of the erotic hegemony of the pleasure quarter occurs when the family’s seamstress writes Seijūrō a love letter in blood drawn with one of her needles, thus imitating, Higashi Akimasa notes, a practice originating among prostitutes.15 The nursemaid is particularly forward, pointing out to Seijūrō face-to-face that (although) she has a wide body, she (also) has a small mouth and crinkly hair, both of which were traits thought, in a woman, to indicate a lustful nature.16 Driving home the comical nature of this scene, the narrator comments that this overture is “funny (okashikere)”; the nursemaid’s vulgarity provides a foil to Onatsu that contributes to her overall image as a high-chōnin heiress to Heian-period (and earlier) aristocratic refinement, a link made clear, as we shall see, at the story’s end. Onatsu wins Seijūrō despite the fact that among the women competing for him she is, as the boss’s sister, the least accessible and the most dangerous. The tragedy of Seijūrō’s fate lies partly in the fact that had his wealthy father not disowned him he would presumably have made an acceptable match for someone of Onatsu’s social status, and that his privileged background has left him with a taste for well-bred women that eventually leads to his death. In an unusual touch reinforcing the Buddhistic flavor of the story, the passion that builds between the two as they continue to be kept from one another is described with the Buddhist term “shin’i,” which normally designates anger and resentment.17 The customary barrier in prosperous homes between the inner quarters, where male servants may not venture, and the outer quarters where they work and live (and pine for the women inside), is here poignantly evoked when at the end of the story’s second chapter the sound of the door separating these two realms rolling shut is described as “more frightening than thunder.”18

15  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 263, note 7. 16  Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 62. 17  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 265, p. 264, note 26; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 54–55. The term is written in kana in the text; the corresponding kanji are “瞋恚” or “嗔恚.” 18  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 265; Ihara, de Bary, Amorous Woman, p. 55.

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In a passage describing an elegant cherry blossom-viewing excursion by the members of the Tajimaya household, literary and historical allusions again help to portray wealthy chōnin as having achieved a quasi-aristocratic refinement. At Takasago they see the pine made famous by the nō play of that name and another pine said to be planted by the ill-fated Heian aristocrat and future deity Sugawara no Michizane.19 Later, in a scene of Genji-like kaimami, men peek into the curtained enclosure where the elegantly dressed ladies of the household amuse themselves under the cherry blossoms. Repeating Amorous Man’s pattern of closing sequences of literary allusions with references to Chinese literati or court culture, this is immediately followed by a line describing the pleasures of drink derived, with slight changes, from a poem by Bai Juyi.20 In a shift from high to low typical of Saikaku’s fiction, once the other members of the party are lured away by strolling entertainers performing a lion dance (we later learn that Seijūrō has hired them as a decoy), we are treated to an account of the long-awaited consummation of Seijūrō and Onatsu’s passion containing details one would not find in Genji. Onatsu feigns “a toothache, etc.” in order to stay behind, and pretends to sleep and snore, with her obi undone, and the narrator comments that for an amateur she is a real operator. Seijūrō sneaks back to the enclosure and they quickly make love, their hearts racing as (he)21 peers through a slit in the curtain to keep an eye on the other members of their party. Afterward they get back up and learn that they have been the object of a most un-Genji-like kaimami, for behind them they see a kindling-gatherer gazing upon them “with an expression that said, ‘Look at that!’ and seeming to enjoy it,” as he tightly grips his sickle and “moves his fundoshi.”22 (Maeda Kingorō interprets this last phrase as merely indicating an erection;23 Taniwaki Masachika viewed it as denoting masturbation.24) Invoking a proverb,25 the narrator comments that this is truly a case of hiding one’s head and leaving one’s backside exposed. The scene is a tour de force of 19  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 266, note 6. 20  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 267, note 18. 21  Or she, or both; the verb has no subject. 22  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 268; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 60. 23  Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 82. 24  An interpretation expressed to me in a discussion of this work; Morris concurs (Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 299, note 49). 25  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 268, note 9; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 299, note 50.

Illustration 9 Lion dance, “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji.” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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titillation, working as it does by reporting an onlooker’s reaction to its sexual spectacle rather than describing it directly. Soon afterward, the revelers head for home, and the low comedy continues when we are told that maybe it was just (Seijūrō’s) imagination, but it seemed that Onatsu’s buttocks had already become flatter, an allusion to the then common belief that such a transformation occurs when a woman first has sex with a man.26 From the low comedy of the third chapter’s latter half, the narrative moves in the fourth chapter to heart-wrenching pathos undercut, following the pattern we have seen established in Amorous Man, by one brief instance each of low comedy and bitter irony. Seijūrō and Onatsu attempt to elope to Osaka, but their boat turns back when a courier laments that he has left behind the letter box he was carrying, and the couple is apprehended by pursuers who meanwhile have arrived at the dock. The messenger’s forgetfulness ultimately leads to Seijūrō’s death and to the young and beautiful Onatsu’s tonsure-taking, but the tragedy of their fates is defused both by the absurdity of a professional courier forgetting his package, and by disgruntled passengers who chide him saying, among other things, “Have you got (your) balls?”27 In response, the courier, either as a deadpan joke or out of sheer simplemindedness, carefully searches himself and announces, much to the amusement of the others, “Lo and behold, I still have two!”28 In another stroke of bad luck for Seijūrō, a large sum of money has gone missing in his employer’s storehouse, and he is accused of having had Onatsu steal it and taking it from her to finance their elopement. In the end he is condemned to death by a magistrate and executed, after which the money in question turns up when the items in the storehouse are aired out. This discovery prompts “a pompous old man”29 to observe in the chapter’s last sentence, “One should be careful with one’s things,” an absurd understatement given the circumstances, and one that offsets the pathos of this tragic episode at its very close. While Seijūrō is awaiting judgment, Onatsu fasts for seven days and entreats the god of the Kamo Shrine of Murotsu to intercede to spare Seijūrō’s life. The deity appears to her in a dream and tells her sternly that it is beyond 26  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 268, note 11. 27  Higashi takes this to mean, “Did you leave your balls behind, too?” (Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 271, note 16.) Maeda takes the question to mean that a courier who forgets what he is carrying has no right to call himself a man (Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 95). 28  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 271; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 63. 29  “Shisairashiki oyaji”; conceivably the retired father of Seijūrō’s employer and of Onatsu, or perhaps just an old man, as “oyaji” can mean either “father” or simply “old man.”

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his power to grant her request, and the god comes across as comically grumpy when he goes on to complain at length about the many unreasonable and frivolous requests made of the various gods and Buddhas.30 Regarding Onatsu and Seijūrō’s current predicament he says that such are the wages of lustfulness, and, sounding rather Confucian, adds that Onatsu could have avoided trouble if instead of giving in to desire she had taken a husband according to the wishes of her parents and elder brother. In counterpoint to this syncretistic voice of sexual morality we read of Seijūrō’s guards’ sympathy for their prisoner, and that when Seijūrō is executed “The tears that wet the onlookers’ sleeves vied with the evening shower, and there was none who was not filled with sadness and regret.”31 While held captive, Seijūrō disregards his own current misery and speaks ruefully of his missed chance for happiness with Onatsu. In a gesture that amounts to an admission of wrongdoing, the Tajimaya family later takes the money that Seijūrō was erroneously accused of stealing and uses it to sponsor Buddhist observances on his behalf. The combination of negligence and injustice represented by Seijūrō’s execution for a theft that turned out never to have occurred further undermines the story’s moralizing voice. It also underscores the ambiguous role of money in this story and throughout Five Women; the importance placed on money is shown as a source of injustice and a barrier to young love, but wealth is also a precondition of the high-chōnin culture these stories valorize (as does Amorous Man). Those chōnin characters whom plentiful access to money at some point in their lives or in their family’s history has enabled to achieve a certain level of refinement are the only ones whose stories are given tragic weight, and they are the only ones linked to aristocratic culture-heroes of yore. And such a one is Onatsu, despite the comically sordid scene in which she at last fulfills her desire for Seijūrō. For after a period of madness brought on by news of her lover’s death, at the tender age of sixteen she takes the tonsure along with her maidservants, after which she diligently performs various devotions and austerities and becomes a nun of great renown, such that people come to believe that she is the reincarnation of Chūjōhime, the daughter of a Nara-period court noble, who also became a nun at sixteen and later featured in various legends. At the story’s end its heroine is thus linked to the court culture of Japan’s classical period, as is its hero at the story’s beginning, with the comparison drawn between Seijūrō and Ariwara no Narihira. In a tone that 30  Someya Tomoyuki makes a similar observation about the comedy of this scene (Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 402). 31  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 274; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 69.

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paints the pair as heroes in a tragedy of thwarted love rather than, as the god who admonishes Onatsu might have it, foolish miscreants in a cautionary tale, the narrator comments in the final lines of “Seijūrō” that their story became the subject of a kabuki play that spread their fame far and wide.

“The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love”

Just as within the first three sentences of “Seijūrō” we learn that its title character is born into wealth, in the first sentence of Five Women’s second story, “Nasake ireshi taruya monogatari” (The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love)32 we read that its eponymous barrelmaker (to whom I shall henceforth refer, as does de Bary’s translation, by the more proper designation of “the cooper”) lives in a rented, reed-thatched cottage on the outskirts of Osaka where he makes do with the meager fuel provided by the wood shavings that are a by-product of his work. His wife, Osen, is from the same humble area, and although she is unusually beautiful and refined for a woman of her background, neither she nor her husband, unlike Onatsu and Seijūrō, is ever compared to a court aristocrat of the Nara or Heian periods, and in contrast to the tragic elements in “Seijūrō,” the adulterous love affair that brings Osen’s downfall reads as an absurdist farce with a grim ending. One is thus confronted with starkly contrasting stories centered on characters occupying respectively the upper and lower ranks of the chōnin, with those born into wealth posited as the heirs of the aesthetic traditions of a golden age, and those of humbler origins seemingly brought onstage, for variety’s sake, to provide a temporary roughening of tone. The account of Osen’s fateful liaison takes up only the story’s fifth and final chapter, such that it seems oddly disconnected from the rest of “Barrelmaker,” which treats at length the twists and turns of the title character’s courtship of Osen. The strand uniting the story is the theme of the absurd contingency and irrationality of sexual desire introduced by the previous story and here manifested in heightened form. At its beginning, Osen, whose penurious parents have put her into service in a wealthy chōnin home, is portrayed as a prudish young girl who has hitherto “wasted” every night of her life by sleeping alone; in its final chapter she sets out to seduce a much older man in order to get revenge on his jealous and catty wife. In a dialogic fashion typical of Saikaku’s fiction, the characterization of her youthful chastity as a “waste” undermines the subsequent moralizing, and the description of her initial resistance to all overtures leaves a mixed impression: 32  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 279–305; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 73–113.

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Even if a man just gave her sleeve or the hem of her kimono a little tug in jest, she would object loudly and unreservedly, leaving the offender mortified with embarrassment, such that eventually no man dared even to speak to her. Some criticized her behavior, but this is how a girl from a respectable family should act.33 The cooper gets past Osen’s formidable defenses through the good offices of the crafty matchmaker Kosan, an ex-abortionist down on her luck since the authorities suppressed the practice of her trade. Through the purest chance the cooper meets this indispensable ally and discusses with her his amorous yearnings. During the Tanabata festival he sees Kosan holding a newt taken from a well whose casing he has been called in to repair during the annual well-cleaning, which was typically conducted on that romantic holiday. He asks Kosan what sort of animal that is, and she tells him, adding, in accordance with a belief of that time, that if its body is burnt to a crisp inside a bamboo cylinder and then sprinkled onto the hair of the one he loves, he in turn will become the object of a passion even more intense than his own. This leads to a discussion of the cooper’s unrequited love for Osen. Kosan offers the cooper her services as matchmaker, and says she will not need any charred newts to accomplish their goal. Admirable for her enthusiasm but unscrupulous in her methods, Kosan resorts to elaborate lies and feigned illness to win over both Osen and the girl’s employers to the cooper’s cause. She proposes to Osen that the two of them go on a nuke-mairi (the widely accepted practice of absconding on a pilgrimage to Ise without the permission of one’s parents or employers) and meet the cooper en route. Now burning with desire, thanks to Kosan’s efforts, for a man she has not yet met, Osen eagerly agrees, but before they can make their rendezvous with Osen’s suitor, another chance encounter alters the course of the story when the women run into Kyūshichi, a servant in the same household. He asks to join them on their pilgrimage, allegedly because he has always wanted to go to Ise Shrine, but in fact because he has designs on Osen. Kosan hypocritically objects that tongues will wag if the two women are seen traveling with a man, but Kyūshichi insists, and in turn hypocritically objects when, the party having encountered the cooper at the designated meeting place, Kosan invites him join them. There follows a series of comical scenes in which the two men try to woo, seduce or fondle Osen and to thwart each other’s advances, while Osen seems to passively soak up this attention. In the most vivid of these scenes the cooper waits in vain to use the tissue paper (a signifier for sexual intercourse in 33  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 280–81; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 76.

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both Saikaku’s fiction and ukiyoe) and clove oil (used as a sexual lubricant34) he has brought along, wearing a look of chagrin that the narrator, emphasizing the comedy of this passage, describes as “funny (okashi).”35 The party stops in Kyoto on the way back from Ise, and while Kyūshichi is visiting a friend, Osen and the cooper at last manage a tryst in the second floor of a bento shop in Gion, consummating their love while Kosan buys them time downstairs by drinking cup after cup of tea, commenting that the water there is especially good. The cooper then leaves for Osaka and the two women return to their inn where they tell Kyūshichi that they must now depart for home. He begs them to stay in Kyoto for two or three days of sightseeing, to which Kosan, using her regular trick of feigned scruples, objects, “But what if the lady of the house thought that [Osen] was tarrying to dally with a man?” Despite the fact that serving as the women’s porter had been one of Kyūshichi’s pretexts for joining them, now that his plan of erotic conquest has definitively failed, he unmagnanimously claims to have sore shoulders and refuses to carry a bundle for them on the way to the boat for Osaka. At the various places they stop for refreshments en route to the dock, the women pay for themselves. In an ironic epilogue to this episode, in the following chapter, the lady of the house in which both Kyūshichi and Osen serve fires him on suspicion of having morally compromised the girl, whereas her actual lover, the cooper, eventually marries Osen with her employers’ blessing. A professed concern for sexual propriety is thus repeatedly used by Kosan as a cover for her attempts to keep Kyūshichi from impeding her efforts to bring Osen and the cooper together, and an apparently sincere concern on the part of the employer of Kyūshichi and Osen for sexual propriety manifests itself through her punishment of the man who, unbeknownst to her, is the least “guilty,” in her terms, of the four traveling companions. Religion plays a part in the hypocrisy on display in “Barrelmaker” as well. Attempting to dissuade Kyūshichi from joining her and Osen on their pilgrimage, Kosan remarks that the deity of the shrine is particularly strict when it comes to amorous behavior on pilgrimages, and that people who have crossed the line of propriety while on pilgrimages to Ise have in retaliation been exposed to public shame. The comment is an allusion to the belief that couples having sex while on the pilgrimage to Ise would get stuck together as a divine punishment.36 After having joined the women anyway, Kyūshichi, not knowing 34  Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 205; de Bary writes that it was “used like toilet water” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 96, note 14). 35  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 295; there is no equivalent to this word in the de Bary translation. 36  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 292, note 3.

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that the cooper is not in fact a stranger, says it is unthinkable for a group with women in it to take on a man they do not know, but Kosan dismisses this warning by saying, “The gods see everything.”37 Similarly, Osen tries to discourage Kyūshichi’s interest in her by commenting to Kosan in his presence that she wants to become a Buddhist nun to avoid the terror of childbirth.38 When the party finally arrives at Ise, none of them is interested enough in the ostensible goal of the pilgrimage to bother visiting the inner shrine. The various characters’ hypocrisy and the irony involved in the firing of Kyūshichi resonate with and draw attention to inconsistencies in the stance of the narrator’s moralizing voice, encouraging an ironic reading of its pronouncements. After observing that Kyūshichi later forgot about Osen, the narrator comments, “All people are fickle.”39 After reporting that in the initial years of her marriage to the cooper, Osen is a model of diligence and wifely devotion, the narrator prefaces the ensuing account of Osen’s growing disgust for her marriage with a competing dictum: “All women are fickle.”40 And what prompts Osen’s change of heart? “Syrupy” erotic stories and kabuki plays. The narrator thus points disapprovingly at such titillating fictions in the midst of his own highly titillating narrative. The self-undermining moralizing voice of “Barrelmaker” and the absurd randomness of the event that spurs Osen to cuckold her husband complicate the story’s portrayal of her and mitigate its condemnations of her deeds. The story’s pivotal moment comes in its final chapter when Osen is hired to help out at the nearby residence of one Kōjiya Chōzaemon during observances marking the fiftieth anniversary of his father’s death. While Osen is in the storeroom putting together a tray of delicacies, Chōzaemon accidentally knocks an empty tray onto her head, causing her elaborately coiffed hair to come undone. She then ties her hair in a simple coil and re-emerges from the storeroom, whereupon the sudden change in her hairstyle causes Chōzaemon’s wife to suspect, despite Osen’s truthful explanation of what has happened, that she has just enjoyed a quick sexual encounter with Chōzaemon. Chōzaemon’s wife loudly

37  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 293; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 95. 38  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 294; interpreting the function here of the particle “no” differently from Higashi, de Bary translates the line in question as, “There is nothing so calamitous as bringing a girl-child into the world” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 96). 39  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 298. There is no rendering of the line in question in de Bary’s translation. 40  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 300; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 105. De Bary softens this to “[…] most women are fickle creatures.”

Illustration 10 Osen’s hair comes undone. Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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and angrily gives voice to her suspicions and continues in this vein for the rest of the day. Naturally this upsets Osen, who decides she “has to”41 retaliate and to that end starts to woo Chōzaemon, then soon even begins to love him, a development that provides a further example of the irrationality and contingency of sexual love. On New Year’s Eve, Osen’s husband discovers her and Chōzaemon as they are disrobing in order to finally consummate the affair that has been brewing between them. Osen stabs herself in the heart with a wood scraper, thus avoiding execution for adultery (a capital crime at the time, and one defined as sex involving a married woman and any male other than her husband). Chōzaemon manages to escape, stark naked, to a friend’s house (which, as Taniwaki Masachika points out, suddenly shifts the mood of the passage from tragedy to low comedy),42 but in the end his body is exposed alongside Osen’s on the execution ground at Togano. In the story’s final sentence the moralizing voice reemerges, admonishing, “[You] can’t escape [your] misdeeds. What a terrifying world this is!”43 As in “Seijūrō,” in Five Women as a whole allusions to classical literature work primarily to elevate by association chōnin characters of relatively prosperous backgrounds and the narratives that describe them. In “Barrelmaker,” in contrast, the humble origins of the cooper and Osen are repeatedly emphasized, and literary allusion accordingly plays a minimal role. “Barrelmaker” is also the only story in Five Women in which the moralizing voice gets the last word; when chōnin women from prosperous backgrounds are the protagonists they always exit the stage in glory and with the admiration of the narrator, even in the two cases in which they are executed. Furthermore, “Barrelmaker” contrasts the cooper and Osen with the unmarried Osen’s wealthy and luxury-enjoying employers, who deem her worthy of only low-quality items and hand-me-downs when selecting presents for her trousseau, which are enumerated in a monozukushi (“exhaustive list”) of consumer goods, a hallmark of Saikaku’s fiction.44 When the love story- and kabuki-corrupted Osen deliberately becomes wasteful in her habits in hopes of causing her husband to divorce her, the narrator 41  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 304. De Bary appears to have translated the expression in question as “there is nothing left to lose” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 109). 42  Taniwaki, Saikaku kenkyū josetsu, pp. 266–68. 43  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 305; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 113. 44  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 299, p. 299, notes 11–15; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 103. Donald Keene remarks that such enumerations constitute “one of Saikaku’s most successfully employed comic techniques,” giving this passage and another in the same story as examples (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 180).

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comments in an extended moralizing aside that women such as she would start seeking a new husband within seven days of becoming widows, and if divorced might marry between five and seven times. Such behavior, the narrator adds, is found only among the lower orders; women of the better sort only give themselves to one man, and become nuns if anything goes wrong.45 Thus with lower-class chōnin protagonists and without the literary allusions and poetic language and imagery of the other stories in Five Women, “Barrelmaker” represents a radical departure from the rest of that work. It also offers a refreshing counterpoint to their allusive lyricism. With its extensive, verisimilar dialogue and its colorful portrayal of the scheming and lively Kosan, the most fully-drawn character in any of the four works on which this study focuses, the story comes closer to modern notions of realism than do Way of the Warrior, Amorous Man, Twenty Cases, or its companions in Five Women.

“What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker”

The contrasting of prosperous and poor commoners also figures prominently in the opening chapter of the following story, “Chūdan ni miru koyomiya monogatari” (What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker),46 which functions as sort of prologue introducing its heroine, Osan, the wife of the “almanac maker” of the title. On a spring day in Kyoto, four fashionable young playboys who live off their inheritances and spend their days and nights dallying with tayū and kabuki actors (as we have seen elsewhere, the names of real actors and courtesans are used) sit at a tea shop (the sort that does not double as a brothel), evaluating the charms of the women who pass as they return from viewing the wisterias blooming nearby. Five of the women are described to us, with their clothing, hairstyle and accessories receiving the most attention. Each of the first two initially seems likely to take the top prize until something is revealed that the four friends judge to be a flaw: the first woman is missing one of her lower teeth; the second, actually a young girl, has a prominent scar. The problem with the third woman is evident right away; although 45  Higashi interprets this passage as contrasting chōnin with nobles and samurai (Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 300, notes 15, 16). Maeda does not make such a specific interpretation (Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 230). Elsewhere in the story the contrast is between, on the one hand, the unmarried Osen’s wealthy, apparently chōnin employers, including the very proper lady of the house, and, on the other, Osen and the cooper, so I am inclined to agree with Maeda’s broader interpretation of the terms involved. 46  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 309–36; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 116–56.

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she possesses a beautiful face and an irresistible charm, she has ragged, illmatched and out-of-fashion clothes and unkempt hair, and appears to be very poor. The fourth woman combines flawless features with high fashion, but she is followed by three whiny children. The fifth object of the men’s scrutiny is a girl of thirteen or fourteen with servants carrying a palanquin for her (the description seems to imply that when the men see her she is walking). Her hairstyle and exquisite clothing and accessories are described exhaustively; as for her face, we are told, “There is no reason to go into the details regarding her beauty.” The men select her as the overwhelming winner of the competition. They ask someone who she is, and learn that she is known as “the Modern Komachi” (“Ima Komachi”), a reference to Ono no Komachi (flourished c. 833–857),47 the great authoress of love poetry, legendary beauty and alleged collector of lovers in early-Heian court society. The attention lavished on the girl’s clothing and accessories, the contrastingly curt mention of her own beauty, the pathetically shabby clothes and messy hair of the nonetheless beautiful woman who passes by earlier, and the aristocratic nickname “the Modern Komachi” together offer a distillation of the intersecting roles of style, wealth, physical beauty, social class and high culture in Five Women and the rest of the works examined in this study. According to their reigning aesthetic, innate physical beauty is emphasized less, and its details seemingly regarded as less interesting, than high fashion (the precondition of which is plentiful access to money) and an elegant bearing. To be a great beauty one must be beautiful, but more importantly, one must also have great clothes! Both the shabbily dressed woman and “the Modern Komachi” have beautiful faces and both would be classed as chōnin, but they are separated by a gap in wealth that eliminates the former from the contest in which they unwittingly take part. As one of the men watching the poor woman says, “If you put good clothes on her she’d knock them dead.”48 “The Modern Komachi” has both looks and a wardrobe worthy of her aristocratic namesake, and her nickname both links her to the milieu in which Ono no Komachi lived and implies, with the designation “modern” (“ima,” literally “now”), that today it is the cultural milieu of wealthy and stylish chōnin like her that is the most important (or at least the most conspicuous) heir of the aesthetic tradition of the Heian court. “The Modern Komachi” is none other than the story’s heroine, Osan, and as her nickname might lead one to anticipate, in this story, which returns us to the realm of well-heeled chōnin, we shall also witness a return to the allusions 47  Miner, Odagiri, Morrell, Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature, p. 215. 48  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 314; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 124.

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to elite literature temporarily abandoned in the previous tale’s portrayals of chōnin of the humbler sort. In the story’s second chapter Osan is married to the “almanac maker” of the title, which is de Bary’s English approximation of the rather high-status position of daikyōji, the imperial court’s official mounter of sutra scrolls, paintings, calligraphy, etc., and licensed producer and seller of almanacs.49 The two live happily together for three years, during which they grow more prosperous and Osan proves a thrifty, devoted and industrious wife, “just the sort of woman one wants to have in a chōnin household.”50 When her husband must go away to Edo on business, Osan’s parents recommend that he hire Moemon, a trusted young employee of theirs, to take care of things while he is away. Moemon is honest, frugal, unstylish, and no frequenter of the pleasure quarters. The almanac maker follows his in-laws’ advice and takes the young man into his home. In the first of two chance occurrences that lead to Osan’s and Moemon’s eventual downfall, Moemon has the maidservant Rin give him a moxibustion treatment, and while she is applying the burning mugwort to the prescribed points on his back, a bit of it becomes dislodged and she extinguishes it by rubbing it with her hand. This is the first time Rin has stroked a man’s skin, and the experience causes her to fall in love with Moemon immediately. Rin is of “lowly” origin51 and does not know how to write, so Osan eventually helps her out by writing a love letter to Moemon on her behalf. Deciding to have a little fun with his pursuer, Moemon writes her an impudent reply in which he offers to grant her his amorous attentions if she will provide him with clothes and bath money. The letter incenses Osan when she reads it for her maidservant, and she decides to turn the tables on Moemon by playing a practical joke on him. She writes more love letters for Rin, which have the desired effect of stirring the young man’s passions, then, still writing as Rin, she arranges for a tryst with him. Osan then lies down in the spot where Rin normally sleeps, having arranged for the female staff of the household to attack Moemon when he shows up at her bedside and she raises the alarm. The second fateful turn of events occurs when both Osan and her waiting maidservants fall asleep before the tardy Moemon shows up. When he does, he makes love to the sleeping woman he thinks is Rin, but is alarmed when he realizes that she is not a virgin, as he expected the young maidservant to be. 49  Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 257. 50  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 317; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 128. 51  Or more, literally, “upbringing”; de Bary and Morris both translate the word in question as “education” (Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 319; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 132; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 84).

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Osan then wakes up to see the sordid evidence of her dishonor: her dislodged pillow, her obi undone and tossed aside, and scattered, used tissues. She then rather surprisingly declares that since word of this will inevitably get out, she and Moemon might as well continue with the affair and become companions in death (i.e., when they eventually are executed for adultery). Moemon goes along with her proposal, and the second chapter closes with a brief description of their dangerous liaison in a passage containing a reference to Ono no Komachi in the form of an incongruously bawdy allusive variation of a line from the nō play Kayoi Komachi,52 with the perfunctorily abandoned Rin compared to “a horse that [Moemon] had already started to mount,”53 a device reminiscent of similar uses of nō allusions in Amorous Man. Significantly, it is the low-status Rin rather than her mistress who is the butt of this witticism. “The path of love is not governed by reason”;54 the opening line of the story’s third chapter could well serve as a subtitle to Five Women as a whole, and most especially for “Almanac Maker,” in which passion can be triggered by a fleeting touch or an accidental sexual encounter in one’s sleep. This dictum is falsely attributed to The Tale of Genji, as it is in other texts of the period,55 and the literary references in the lyrical michiyuki56 that follows include allusions to or language lifted from a poem from the Gosenshū,57 Tales of Ise,58 and the nō drama Shiga,59 all of which are used, as is typical in Five Women, in a manner that elevates the passage rather than comically abusing the original as does the salaciously Amorous Man-like nō allusion at the end of the story’s second chapter. The passage, tinged with forebodings of the lovers’ deaths, describes a trip by Osan and Moemon to the famed Genji-associated temple Ishiyamadera and other sites around Lake Biwa in Ōmi province, which, as is often the case in 52  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 321, note 2. Part of the line appears ultimately to originate in a poem attributed to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (dates unknown, died early 700s) in the Shūi waka shū (Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 311, note 137; Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, p. 311). 53  Like Higashi and Maeda Kingorō, Morris takes the phrase in question to refer to Rin; de Bary translates it as referring to Osan, and makes no reference to horses in this passage (Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 322, p. 321, note 2; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 135; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 87; Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, pp. 307, 311). 54  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 322; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 136. 55  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 322, note 6. 56  A passage in a work of literature or portion of a theatrical performance depicting a journey and typically featuring descriptions of scenery and rhetorical flourishes. 57  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 323, note 8. 58  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 323, note 21. 59  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 323, note 22.

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Saikaku narratives set on the lake and its shores, contains highly poetic references to the area’s landmarks. Especially noteworthy is the sequence in which the couple sails across the lake, using the occasion to make love, scandalously tousling Osan’s hair in a manner that recalls a suggestive poem by Osan’s (nick) namesake, Ono no Komachi.60 (They apparently have other servants along on the journey as well, and the question of whether or how the lovers manage to conceal from them their amorous exploits is especially piquant in the context of the boat excursion; a pair of illustrations shows the couple crowded into a small, uncovered vessel with seven others.) After landing, Moemon and Osan decide to pretend to drown themselves in the lake and then to run away together, leaving behind suicide notes alluding to their affair. Osan has had the foresight to bring along a considerable sum of money to finance their life in hiding. After the feigned suicide, they flee toward Tanba province over stretches of trackless, mountainous terrain. At one point the hardships of the journey nearly kill Osan, but eventually they are resting at the house of Moemon’s aunt, whom he has not seen in years. Moemon tries to pass off Osan as a sister who has left the capital to look for peace and quiet and a husband in the countryside, but this backfires when the aunt proposes that Osan marry her son, known as “Rock-hopping Zetaro.” When he makes his appearance, he is described as a sort of good-natured, simple-minded ogre who manages to amuse Osan in the midst of her distress at the prospect of marrying him. Moemon is trapped by his own lie, so the match is agreed to and marriage cups drunk, but Osan and Moemon manage to give his aunt and cousin the slip early the following morning, apparently without the marriage having been consummated. They continue their flight, eventually hunkering down in Tango province. Meanwhile, the almanac maker accepts, or at least goes along with, the story of their deaths and cares enough for Osan to have monks perform memorial services for her. Initially, Moemon is too afraid of being discovered to even leave the house, but eventually he is overcome by nostalgia for Kyoto and goes back incognito to take a furtive look at the capital’s sights and his old haunts. The sight of Osan’s husband in the audience of a kabuki performance fills him with terror, and he rushes out of the theater and heads back to Tango. In the end the couple’s continued existence and whereabouts are revealed to the almanac maker by a traveling chestnut vendor. Osan’s husband sends a 60  Ono no Komachi, Ono no Komachi shū, in Kubota Utsubo, ed., Nihon koten zensho, Vol. 38 (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1958), p. 291 (poem no. 97); Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, trans. Jane Hirshfield, Mariko Aratani, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu (New York: Vintage, 1990), p. 20.

Illustration 11 Moemon and Osan’s boat ride. Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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party to apprehend them, and they are executed in Kyoto along with Rin, who is condemned (wrongfully, it seems) for serving as their go-between. Just as the illiterate, lower-class chōnin Rin serves as a foil against which the well-bred child of affluence Osan can be defined, the places and people the fugitive lovers encounter in the countryside after their faked suicide provide a contrast that helps to define Kyoto and its cultured residents. When after their arduous hike through the mountains Moemon and Osan stop at a remote village for a rest, in the shop where they take refreshments Osan61 “derives strength” from the sight of items on display there: tea-whisks, clay dolls, miniature drums, for they remind her of the capital. Their spirits buoyed, out of gratitude the couple pays the elderly proprietor with a gold coin, but “this was like showing an umbrella to a cat,” for the man makes an unpleasant face and asks for payment, and the lovers find it “funny” that not fifteen ri from the capital there is a village where people do not recognize a gold koban, a detail bespeaking an amused contempt for countryfolk on the part of the couple. At his aunt’s house, when making up a background for Osan, Moemon himself links her to the aristocratic culture of the capital by saying that she has been in service to an imperial court aristocrat.62 Osan’s metropolitan refinement is then set off by the contrasting portrayal of her would-be bridegroom, a caricature of rustic barbarism: He was dreadful to behold. Extremely tall, he had crinkly hair that stood up like a lion’s mane, a beard that could have made one mistake him for a bear, flashing, bloodshot eyes, and arms and legs like the trunks of pine trees. He was wearing sakiori cloth63 with a belt made of braided wisteria vine rope, and carried a musket with a match cord and a bag full of rabbits and raccoon dogs, which he appeared to hunt for a living. When they asked his name they were told it was “Rock-hopping Zetarō.” Everyone in the village knew of his wild ways, and when his mother mentioned the prospect of a bride from the capital, the savage was delighted. “Let’s get moving,” he said, “let’s make it tonight!” He then took out a hand-mirror and gazed tenderly at his own reflection.64

61  Or both she and Moemon; the subject is not stated. 62  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 325–28; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 141–47. In a similar vein, the narrator of a story examined in Chapter 3 expresses surprise that a little girl living in a remote village would recognize koban when she sees them (Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 191). 63  A rough cloth woven from rag strips and ramie (Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 330, note 3). 64  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 330; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 147–48.

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Zetarō later claims that he does not care for Osan’s soft Kamigata ways, but that he will have to put up with her because she is a relative. He appears merely to be teasing her as immediately afterward he nestles his head in her lap. The specific material circumstances of Osan and the rock-hopping hunter’s (apparently unconsummated) nuptials (matrimonial cups poured from a chipped saké decanter, a tiny, crudely partitioned space for the marriage bed) provide an additional contrast between Osan’s current deprivation in the wilds and her former life as the daughter of a prosperous Kyoto family and as the wife of a producer of luxury goods for the imperial court. As we have seen, Moemon, too, eventually pines for the cultural and scenic charms of the capital, and his trip to Kyoto and most especially his desire to take in a kabuki play (just the sort of amusement in short supply in his and Osan’s remote hideaway) nearly lead to an encounter with Osan’s husband, an event that foreshadows the couple’s discovery and execution. The suffering of those exiled from the capital to provincial wilds, an aristocratic theme prominent in Genji, is, as felt by the chōnin Osan and Moemon, a major source of pathos in “Almanac Maker,” and, like Osan’s nickname and the literary allusions of their michiyuki, ties them to classical antecedents, in this case to Genji himself, to the Uji princesses of Genji’s latter chapters, and to other Heian-period court literature in which aristocratic characters or the speaking subjects of poems find themselves in the provinces. In the rustic shop scene the depiction of this sentiment is modernized and brought to a chōnin level by the portrayal of the sight of simple consumer goods as a stimulus to memory of and desire for the social and cultural center that is Kyoto. This strengthens the impression first given by the initial parallel drawn between Osan and Ono no Komachi and reinforced by the literary allusions enumerated above that this story is meant as a rencontextualization of the tropes of Heian-period aristocratic romances and love poetry in a contemporary, chōnin milieu, to which all of this works to transfer Heian aristocratic prestige. Hatanaka Chiaki discerns a similar effect of transferring the prestige of an elite milieu to an analogous commoner milieu in the juxtaposition of tales featuring idealized depictions of samurai shudō relationships in the first half of The Great Mirror of Male Love with tales of love involving prostituted kabuki actors in the collection’s second half. Hatanaka rhetorically asks, “Isn’t it quite a bold experiment just to place kabuki actors, who existed outside the [status-group] system, alongside samurai, who were given a special position among the four status-groups as the ruling class?” She then observes that the effect of this is to raise the prestige of the stories centered on actors.65 Despite the fact that 65  Hatanaka, “Nanshoku no michi,” p. 98.

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they do not appear to be an attack on their source texts or, in any way obvious to at least to this modern reader, partake of any comical incongruousness, the identification of Osan with Ono no Komachi, and of her and Moemon with Heian aristocrats exiled to the provinces, as well as the placement of kabuki prostitution narratives alongside samurai shudō romances in Male Love all fit the definition of parody adopted in the introduction to this study, according to which Five Women’s references to aristocratic and high-samurai literature represent no radical departure from those of Amorous Man. Like many of the narratives examined in this study, “Almanac Maker” presents us with a dialogic counterpoint between expressions of disapproval of the protagonists’ behavior and various narrative elements that undermine these. Unlike Osen in “Barrelmaker,” Osan is described as being the model chōnin wife right up to the point where chance makes her guilty, in the world’s eyes, since she cannot prove that she was asleep, of adultery, which somewhat lets her off the hook when she is later condemned for her behavior after her startling decision to go ahead and enjoy the crime in which she has accidentally become implicated. Later, on their grueling flight from the site of their faked suicide Osan seems on the point of dying, and Moemon encourages her by holding forth the promise of sharing a bed in the village ahead. This has the desired effect, and she tells her lover that he means more to her than life itself, at which the narrator remarks that the lot of someone who has thoughts for nothing but love is pitiful indeed, a comment that seems as much sympathetic as disapproving. When it looks like Osan will have to marry Moemon’s roughneck cousin, Moemon takes up his dagger to kill himself (Osan persuades him to put it away), saying that he should have drowned himself in Lake Biwa, and condemns his own actions using both Buddhist and Confucian terms, implying that their present predicament is karmic retribution for past deeds, and saying that Heaven will not let him go unpunished for what he has done.66 But for him, too, the initial, fateful act of adultery was an accident, which mitigates his guilt as well. When on his furtive return to Kyoto Moemon, his face concealed by the brim of his hat, sneaks by the almanac maker’s house to have a look, the narrator observes that the young men there on whom Moemon eavesdrops are fussing over their hair and clothes, and remarks that such actions are rooted in sexual desire (i.e., manifested as a desire to look sexually attractive). Whether we take this as a neutral observation or as a lament regarding the sorry state of 66  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 330. In de Bary’s translation Moemon only mentions the Confucian “Heaven” here, whereas Morris’s Moemon only speaks of “the Gods” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 148–49; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 94).

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the world, it sets the stage for a conversation juxtaposing more or less grudging admiration of Moemon’s exploit and condemnation thereof: “… That son of a bitch Moemon threw his life away to steal himself an incomparable beauty, but even though he had to die for it he could count himself lucky,” said one of them. “Absolutely,” said another, “that would have been the memory of a lifetime.” Then some prudent fellow priggishly declared, “That scoundrel Moemon wasn’t fit to stand upwind of decent folk. Only the worst sort of rogue would seduce his master’s wife; it’s unheard of!” As he listened in, Moemon gnashed his teeth and thought, “That was Kisuke of the Daimonjiya who was talking! What a heartless bastard he is to go badmouthing me like that! I lent him eighty monme of silver, and I’ve got an IOU to prove it! If he’s going to talk that way about me I’ll get my money back if I have to choke him for it!” But since Moemon was hiding from the world he just had to stand there and take it. Then someone else began speaking. “I hear that Moemon isn’t dead, and that he’s now somewhere around Ise with Miss Osan. It must be nice.”67 Three out of four of those who discuss Moemon’s deed in this scene give evidence of wishing they themselves had done likewise, and the one who condemns him is both described by the narrator as “priggish”68 and shown to be betraying someone who has helped him in the past. In contrast, when Moemon, frightened by hearing that someone suspects he and Osan are alive, subsequently prays to the Jizō of Mt. Atago that they remain undiscovered, the moralizing narrative voice returns to ask rhetorically why this bodhisattva would help Moemon in his sin (i.e., he would not and does not help him). Finally, when describing the lovers’ execution, the narrator again shifts tone to strike an admiring note: … There was nothing lowly about the way [they] met [their] end, and [the impression they made] became the talk of the town. Even now

67  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 334; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 153–54. 68  I base this translation of “義理をつめて” on the discussion thereof in Maeda’s Gonin onna zen chūshaku (p. 356).

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[their] fame abides, as does the vision of [Osan] dressed in a pale blue, small-sleeved kimono.69 Introduced at the story’s beginning in ornate finery as the modern incarnation of a celebrated lady of the Heian court, Osan thus remains “not at all lowly” (“sarasara … iyashikarazu”) when her story meets its end.

“The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love”

Like the heroines of the other stories in Five Women except “Barrelmaker,” the greengrocer’s daughter of the fourth story in the collection, “Koigusa karageshi yaoya monogatari” (The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love)70 is from a prosperous chōnin family, and the story shares with the other tales featuring protagonists of such a background the use of classical allusions and a general sense of ennoblement of the protagonists, both of which are lacking in “Barrelmaker.” In a similar vein, “Greengrocer’s Daughter” shares with Way of the Warrior’s “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love,” examined in Chapter 4, the narrative feature of a chōnin character with a devoted, selfsacrificing samurai lover. As we shall see, Five Women’s final story includes a somewhat similar subplot as well (in that case, as in “Early Mushrooms,” the relationship in question is between a samurai wakashu and a nenja who is a chōnin). In all three cases, as outlined in my analysis of “Early Mushrooms,” I interpret these plot features, similarly to little Yonosuke’s pursuit of a samurai man in “Opportune Shower,” as an embodiment of high-chōnin ambitions for social advancement and hopes for a rapprochement with the politically dominant samurai status-group. Furthermore, these aspects of each of these narratives dovetail with the ennoblement through allusion of prosperous chōnin characters and high-chōnin culture throughout Amorous Man. In “Greengrocer’s Daughter” the sixteen-year-old daughter of a family engaged in the produce trade finds herself, along with her mother, driven by fire to take shelter in a temple crowded with others fleeing the blaze and its aftermath. The daughter, Oshichi, falls in love with a samurai youth of the same age, 69  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 336; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 156. I have added brackets to indicate that it is not entirely clear at what point the narrator begins to focus on Osan. Here Morris’s translation stays closer to the original than does de Bary’s (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 156; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 99). For an explanation of the color of the garment, see Maeda, Gonin onna zen chūshaku, pp. 268, 365. 70  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 339–64; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 158–94.

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Kichisaburō, a rōnin “of good lineage”71 who is lodging at that temple. She initiates with him an exchange of love letters, then late one night walks stealthily to his room and seduces him. Her mother tracks her down, pulls her away and, for a while, prevents a repetition of that night’s encounter. Oshichi and her mother return to their old neighborhood, and the separated lovers pine for one another until one night in spring when Kichisaburō visits disguised as a farm boy selling his family’s produce. The two manage to spend the night together right under the noses of Oshichi’s parents. Later, hoping desperately to be sheltered again in the temple where Kichisaburō lives, Oshichi sets a fire near her home, but the blaze is soon discovered and extinguished, and Oshichi is caught and confesses to her crime. Kichisaburō becomes ill and delirious when he learns of what has happened. In punishment, Oshichi is put to death by fire, but the news of her execution is kept from Kichisaburō for a hundred days. When he learns of Oshichi’s death he decides to commit suicide, but is prevented by the monks in the temple from doing so. We learn that he has a nenja who has been away in Matsumae;72 when the nenja returns, with his permission Kichisaburō becomes a monk in order to pray for Oshichi, and his nenja later takes the tonsure as well. There are of course different levels among greengrocers; Oshichi’s family appears to belong to the upper ranks of the trade. They have servants, her father, Hachibei, is described as “not of lowly birth,”73 and the narrator uses plenty of honorific verbs when describing the actions of Oshichi’s parents. When the character of Oshichi is first introduced, after describing her great beauty the narrator comments that it is regrettable that Ariwara no Narihira, having lived in a different age, was never able to see her.74 Her samurai lover Kichisaburō is likewise symbolically ennobled by reference to the same figure (here referred to by the Ise hero’s sobriquet of “Mukashiotoko”) near the end of the rainy night that is the couple’s first spent together. When Oshichi’s mother shows up at Kichisaburō’s bedside to take her daughter away, Kichisaburō’s feeling of shock and loss are said to be like those of the hero of Ise when, in its sixth episode, on a rainy night his lady love is gulped down by a goblin (which provides a somewhat less flattering association regarding Oshichi’s mother). The classical literary allusions continue with references to poems anthologized in

71  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 344; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 166. 72  A castle town located at the southwestern tip of the island now known as Hokkaido. 73  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 341; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 160. 74  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 341; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 161.

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the Kokinshū,75 the Gosenshū76 and the Senzaishū,77 and before her execution Oshichi chants a poem in waka form referring to her own death, thus linking herself to the court culture in which the genre developed.78 Oshichi also becomes implicitly identified with someone of higher status when looking at clothing that has been donated to the temple and which the monks are now lending to those temporarily taking shelter there. She comes across an exquisite kimono still scented with its previous wearer’s incense, which is described with Saikaku’s usual sartorial precision, and which she imagines to have belonged to a high-born girl who died young, her family contributing it to the temple because as a memento it was too painful for them to behold. This sends her into a somber reflection on impermanence and she begins to pray. Her prayers are interrupted by her first sight of Kichisaburō, which of course will lead to her death. In the subsequent scene her love for the boy is triggered by an unplanned, unforeseen touch, much as happens to Rin in “Almanac Maker,” and here again the heroine’s guilt seems mitigated by the role of fate in her crime. Of all of the heroines in Five Women, it is Oshichi whose lover, as a well-born samurai, has the highest status. He is also the one who goes to the greatest lengths to visit his beloved. Moreover, the fifth and final chapter of the story, which occurs after Oshichi’s execution, is devoted to describing Kichisaburō’s grief over her death, his shame at not having committed suicide at the time of her death (about which he did not know), and his taking the tonsure to pray for her. I view the emphasis on Kichisaburō’s status and on the fervor of his devotion to Oshichi as a further device for symbolically raising the status of the chōnin heroine by demonstrating that her higher-status lover thinks her worthy of extraordinary consideration from someone such as he. Once Oshichi and her mother have returned to their home from their temporary residence at the temple, in hopes of seeing Oshichi, Kichisaburō disguises himself as a peasant boy, sleeps on the dirt floor of her family’s kitchen, where Oshichi’s father has allowed him to stay because of a snow storm, endures cold temperatures that make him dangerously ill, and quietly bears the unwanted sexual advances of the low-ranking manservant, Kyūshichi (who nonetheless gives up when the boy proves unresponsive). In a manner we have seen elsewhere when relatively high-status chōnin characters are contrasted 75  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 344, note 14, p. 345, note 20. 76  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 345, note 28. 77  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 344, note 17. 78  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 359. In de Bary’s translation she is described as singing a song here (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 185).

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with lower-class chōnin, Kichisaburō’s distaste for the lowly Kyūshichi highlights his high estimation of Oshichi. Kyūshichi is not described as physically repellent, and Kichisaburō, we later find out, has a nenja, so presumably he would not find homosexual advances per se repulsive. He may not want to betray both his girlfriend and his nenja, but his great distress, evinced by tears and gnashing of teeth, here bespeaks a feeling of degradation brought by the too-low status of the one importuning him. The scene implies that wealth and breeding lifts some chōnin high above others and makes them, unlike lowerclass chōnin, fit company, and fit lovers, for well-bred samurai. Furthermore, Kichisaburō’s noble qualities are emphasized in this scene through the signs that lead Oshichi to recognize him, disguised though he is, in the darkened kitchen: a noble profile, the scent of incense on his clothes, and the fine cloth of his underclothes peeking out from beneath his peasant costume. The inclusion of a chapter set in the time after the heroine’s death distinguishes it from the other two stories in Five Women whose heroines meet a violent and untimely end, “Barrelmaker” and “Almanac Maker,” for in each of these cases their deaths occur at the end of the final chapter. (The last story in Five Women, as we shall see, provides the collection with a happy ending, in line with the haikai linked-verse practice of always ending a sequence on an auspicious note.) With Onatsu’s mourning of Seijūrō taking up its last chapter, in this respect “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji” has a structure similar to “Greengrocer’s Daughter,” but the devotion of a final chapter to the heroine’s mourning of her dead lover is less surprising in a collection of stories ostensibly centered on their female protagonists, as the title of Five Women implies. The inclusion in a story centered on a female protagonist of a chapter in which she is already dead, seemingly in order to show how thoroughly she is mourned, thus reinforces the impression that Oshichi must have been a particularly fine young chōnin woman if a samurai would be so devastated by her death. Furthermore, Kichisaburō expresses remorse at having betrayed his nenja by taking a female lover, which further raises Oshichi’s stock, since it demonstrates that she possesses qualities sufficiently alluring to bring a sincere young samurai to go against his principles. Moreover, his taking of the tonsure to pray for Oshichi is described in the most tragic terms, with the shearing of such a beautiful and young boy’s locks described as even sadder than Oshichi’s death by fire, implying that she inspired an extraordinary will for sacrifice on her behalf in someone of much higher status. The final chapter of “Greengrocer’s Daughter” bears key resemblances to the latter portions of Way of the Warrior’s “Early Mushrooms” and “Striped Hakama.” As detailed in the fourth chapter in this study, in the former, during a period of illness and delirium similar to that suffered by Kichisaburō, the

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samurai wakashu who has just lost his chōnin nenja engages in an extended reflection detailing his feelings of grief, anger and guilt, which sets it apart from the other stories in the collection. At the story’s end he presents the head of his nenja’s enemy to the man’s brother, then commits seppuku, thus proving to his chōnin lover’s family member the sincerity of his love.79 Kichisaburō’s decision to take the tonsure, which was Oshichi’s wish, relayed to him by her parents, accomplishes the same purpose. The high-status samurai wakashu of “Striped Hakama” loses his low-ranking samurai nenja through the perfidy of a jealous rival, then leaves behind, after a spectacular murder-suicide, a manifesto espousing egalitarianism in matters of love.80 Thus in the final passages of “Greengrocer’s Daughter,” “Early Mushrooms” and “Striped Hakama” the higher-status partner in the relationship engages in an extended utterance or reflection on the lower status partner who has died, and then demonstrates his devotion to his beloved through dramatic self-sacrifice. The subplot regarding Kichisaburō’s violation of his vows to his nenja for the sake of Oshichi’s love and his remorse for having done so introduces the theme of female competition for the attentions of males who seem just as inclined to focus on the love of other males. (In contrast, a similar situation in Way of the Warrior’s “Bamboo Flute” is not shown as causing any remorse, resentment or conflict.81) One encounters the first inkling in Five Women of tension or conflict between the practice of shudō and the desires of women in “Almanac Maker” when Osan, who has prayed for help to Monju (Mañjuśri), reputed patron of shudō,82 is admonished in a dream by the bodhisattva to abandon her adulterous liaison and become a nun. She in turn taunts him by saying that while he may know about shudō, he knows nothing of the love between a man and a woman.83 Given the fact that love between males was (even though its sexual 79  Ihara, Budō, pp. 125–27. 80  Ihara, Budō, pp. 188–89. 81  Ihara, Budō, p. 70. 82  Michel Strickmann writes that in Japan the eternally young Mañjuśri is held to be paired as the junior partner in a homosexual relationship with fellow-bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Japanese name “Fugen”), with the lovers together serving as the divine patrons of pederasty, and that this characterization of the two is reinforced by a pun on the long form of Mañjuśri’s Japanese name, which is homophonous with a pair of words meaning “sweet bean paste-filled bun(s)” and “buttocks” (Michel Strickmann, Mantras et mandarins: Le bouddhisme tantrique en Chine [Paris: Gallimard, 1996], p. 274). 83  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 332. De Bary’s rendering of the passage masks the pederastic nature of shudō by translating the term as “the love of men for men” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 150); the corresponding wording in Morris’s translation is similar (Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 95).

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expression had an expiration date) commonly thought of as deeper and more durable than heterosexual love,84 a passage suggesting feelings of competitiveness and resentment on the part of women vis-à-vis shudō is unsurprising. One aspect of the structural cohesiveness of Five Women is the fact that the shudō references of these two stories foreshadow the theme of the collection’s final tale, in whose happy ending a chōnin maiden finds lasting happiness seducing a man by leading him to believe she is a boy.

“Gengobei, the Mountain of Love”

In “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji” the title character’s devotion to the pleasures of the flesh leads to a sudden loss of wealth on his part and eventually to his death. In “Koi no yama no Gengobei monogatari” (Gengobei, the Mountain of Love),85 the title character’s love of love ultimately brings him access to fabulous riches. Along Gengobei’s path from riches to rags to greater riches, which includes a spell as a youth-chasing monk and an abandonment of the Buddha way once he develops a taste for women (or at least, for the woman who eventually becomes his wife), the story’s moralizing narrative voice clicks its tongue at his fickleness, lustfulness and filial impiety, as well as decrying the female sex en masse, but Gengobei and the scheming young woman who woos and wins him end up together happy and wealthy anyway. In this manner the last story of Five Women flips the grim plot of its first, ending the collection’s dialogue between moral rigor and permissive hedonism by giving the last word to the latter. En route it treats a theme that features in portions of each of the four works studied here: imitation of the dominant by the dominated, as well as portraying a rapprochement between the two, with the novel twist of depicting, in addition to the topoi of chōnin mimicking and sleeping with samurai, introduced above, a young woman who takes on the persona of a boy to seduce an enthusiastic follower of the way of youths. At the story’s beginning we meet the twenty-six-year-old Gengobei, a chōnin of Kagoshima in Satsuma province, an area known both for its martial tradition and the popularity of shudō there.86 In imitation of his samurai betters he carries the long sword elsewhere normally forbidden to commoners, a practice (according to the story) tolerated in that region.87 Gengobei is besotted with 84  Maeda, Ichidai otoko zen chūshaku, Vol. 2, p. 49. 85  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 367–89; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 195–229. 86  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 368, note 7. 87  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 368, note 6.

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the love of youths and completely impervious to the charms of the female sex, a preference that also aligns him with samurai ways, given the association between the warrior status-group and shudō. In one manner he proves unusually unlucky in love, for he loses two beloved wakashu in succession to sudden and untimely deaths. In passages employing the topos established by Buddhist acolyte tales described earlier,88 Gengobei, led by the death of the first youth, takes Buddhist vows and makes a pilgrimage to Mt. Kōya, a Shingon Buddhist site of cult then forbidden to women. Significantly, given the fact that the protagonist of this story is a woman-avoiding devotee of shudō who is eventually coaxed into a heterosexual union, the founder of Mt. Kōya’s male-only temple complex, Kūkai (774–835), was credited in legend with introducing male homosexuality to Japan.89 The importance placed on keeping women from Mt. Kōya’s temple precincts is illustrated by a legend in which Kūkai’s eightythree-year-old mother crosses into them to visit her son. In preparation he lays a surplice over the boundary of the restricted zone, explaining that all will be fine if she can cross over it uneventfully, but as soon as his octogenarian mother does so she produces menstrual fluid that drips onto the surplice, causing it to burst into flame.90 En route to Mt. Kōya, Gengobei meets and sleeps with a samurai youth, who then dies in his absence. However, on his return from Mt. Kōya, Gengobei, believing that the boy is still alive, enjoys a brief encounter with his ghost. When he learns the boy is in fact dead his resolve to walk the Buddha path is strengthened. This serial bereavement leads Gengobei to move to an isolated hermitage. At this point we are introduced to Oman, a sixteen-year-old chōnin girl whose parents, we later find out, are very rich. She falls in love with Gengobei and sends him numerous love letters, but he of course does not reply. Aware of the man’s erotic tastes but not one to give up easily, she disguises herself as a wakashu and visits Gengobei’s hermitage. Gengobei is still being visited by the ghosts of his dead lovers, which disappear at the sight of Oman. She ends up in bed with her host, who is initially fooled by her disguise. When in the course of preparing to make love with Oman he discovers that she is a girl, he is too aroused and charmed by her beauty to desist. 88  See Introduction, note 104. 89  Pflugfelder, Cartographies, pp. 50–51, 64, 75, 83–84, 87, 333; Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 400. 90  I have based this partial summary of the legend in question on Hatanaka Chiaki’s summary of the Jison’in Miroku Bosatsu ryaku engi (Short Account of the Origin of the Bodhisattva Miroku of Jison’in), held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library (Hatanaka Chiaki, “Nanshoku ōkagami no inja,” Nihon bungaku, December 2004, p. 41).

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Gengobei and Oman end up staying together, and he re-enters secular life for her. The couple initially passes through a period of poverty. Apparently hoping for help, Gengobei attempts to visit his father, but he is nowhere to be found, and Gengobei learns that his own earlier extravagance bankrupted his father. For a while he and Oman support themselves as kabuki performers, with Gengobei oddly singing of himself using actual lines from the popular ballad version of his story. At the story’s end, however, the couple is saved from destitution by the unexpected arrival of Oman’s parents, who have been searching for her, and who take Gengobei into their home as their son-in-law, handing him the keys to a family storehouse stuffed with fabulous riches, including various fanciful objects nonexistent in the real world, and the items revealed are minutely described in what is perhaps Saikaku’s best-known monozukushi.91 The story’s opening description of Gengobei both invokes the dichotomy between the metropolis and the provinces introduced earlier and portrays Gengobei as exceptionally amorous92 for someone from such a backwater as Kagoshima, thus implying that at least in this one matter he manages to rise above his origins, as Saikaku protagonists are wont to do. As in all of the other stories in Five Women other than the proletarian-flavored “Barrelmaker,” the tone of the prose in “Gengobei” is elevated by references to texts of various elite genres, in this case Tsurezuregusa,93 Tales of Ise94 and poems from the Shin Chokusenshū95 and the Shoku Goshūishū.96 Gengobei’s all-too-brief relationship with the samurai youth, which takes up the story’s second chapter, is a particularly striking instance of symbolic ennoblement of a chōnin character through such a cross-status-group love affair. Their initial encounter represents a variation of Yonosuke’s first encounter with his samurai nenja in the fourth chapter of Amorous Man; in both cases a boy hunting birds with a limed pole meets his future nenja, but in Amorous Man the boy is a chōnin and the nenja-to-be is a samurai, whereas in “Gengobei” the roles are reversed. The boy’s unglossed silk kimono marks him as someone of 91  Mary Elizabeth Berry views this passage as a parody of “the bookkeeping culture of the tradespeople who made up the prime audience for contemporary fiction” (Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006], p. 13). 92  Higashi writes that the phrase in question can also denote good looks, in which case the passage repeats an assertion we have seen before: that the best-looking people are seldom to be found in the provinces (Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 368, note 3). 93  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 369, note 12, p. 371, note 22. 94  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 374, p. 375, note 16. 95  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 378, note 12. 96  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 378, note 14.

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wealth or high status,97 and he is wearing a dagger with a stylish gold swordguard. His hair is described as “full and rich like a girl’s.”98 So far the boy has been unable to bag any birds, so Gengobei takes over and soon has brought down a large number of them, a violation of his Buddhist vows99 portending another infraction that soon follows. The boy then leads Gengobei to a beautiful mansion with trees, a garden and caged birds. There the neighing of a horse and displayed armor and weapons make clear that this is a samurai household. They continue to a room on the second floor with elegant bookshelves and views on all sides. After their tearful parting, Gengobei asks a villager about the boy’s family and learns that his father is a prominent local official. Later, after returning from his pilgrimage to Mt. Kōya and spending a night together with what he does not yet know is the boy’s ghost, when in the morning the boy’s father finds a strange monk in his house, Gengobei must explain why he is there. The father reveals that the boy is dead, and that he spoke over and over about “that monk” in his last hours. In this manner the second chapter of “Gengobei” lists a series of items of evidence that the boy who loves him is not only a samurai but also one of exceptional status and distinction, then the depth of the high-born boy’s feelings for this monk of chōnin origin is confirmed by the boy’s own father with greatest proof of all: the boy’s dying words. The opening section of the story’s third chapter constitutes the longest, sternest piece of narrative moralizing in Five Women, which culminates in the work’s most misogynistic passage, but this chapter and the following one end with humorous suggestions that the Buddha himself might not be so judgmental about the shenanigans recounted, and the fact that the backsliding monk and the girl who brings him to forsake his vows permanently are so richly rewarded at the story’s happy ending forces the reader to take with a grain of salt not only the narrator’s moral pronouncements in “Gengobei” but also those in the rest of Five Women. The chapter begins with the statement that human beings are the most contemptible things in existence. As evidence, the narrator goes on to say that, when grieving for loved ones, people think they want to throw their lives away, 97  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 372, p. 373, note 14. Both de Bary’s translation and Morris’s describe the garment in question as made of hempen cloth (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 204; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 104). 98  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 372. Both de Bary and Morris plausibly interpret the expression in question to apply to the boy’s whole appearance (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 204; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 104). 99  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 373, note 25.

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but soon begin again to desire the good things in life. As an example of such behavior we are presented with a scenario in which a woman starts to think of whom she will marry next even before her dying husband takes his final breath, then sets about attracting his replacement soon after he is gone. This is followed by a second scenario in which a woman takes the tonsure but still harbors a desire for the pleasures of secular life, after which the narrator concludes, in a qualification of his earlier condemnation of the human race as “contemptible,” that “nothing is more terrible than a woman,” similarly to the narrator of “Barrelmaker.”100 The narrator then notes that no one criticizes a man even if he keeps remarrying after the deaths of three or even five wives (i.e., because such fickleness is so commonplace among men). This shaggy dog story then reaches its punchline when the narrator states that Gengobei is different from the preceding examples of insufficient grieving, for after being bereft of (only) two beloved wakashu he retires to a remote hermitage and really, truly gives up sex, which, we are told is praiseworthy indeed. But of course he does not give up sex for long. The passage is immediately succeeded by an account of how Oman sets out to seduce Gengobei, secretly cutting her own hair in wakashu style, shaving the crown of her head and leaving the ever-important forelocks in place. Then from the moment he sees this ersatz wakashu waiting for him in his hermitage, Gengobei desires “him.”101 So much for unending grief; this development renders ridiculous the moralizing voice’s recent statement that Gengobei was different from all of those horrible, fickle people it has just described, which provides further evidence that we are never to take this particular narrator’s moralizing seriously. Alluding to the fact that in schools of Buddhism with a celibate clergy, sex with women was seen as a more serious infraction of a monk’s vows than was sex with another male, the narrator then closes the chapter by speculating, seemingly with a sly wink, that since Gengobei did not know that the object of his desires was a woman, the Buddha himself would forgive him this indiscretion. The sentence in question—“女ぞとしらぬが仏さまもゆるし給ふ 100  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 376–77; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 209–11. 101  Tanaka Takako asserts that Oman dresses as a boy not to seduce Gengobei but to gain access to him so that she can directly express her resentment toward him for having avoided her. Tanaka points out that Oman’s crossdressing does not figure in Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s Satsumauta, which is based on the same incidents. She concludes that this aspect of the story is apparently Saikaku’s own witty invention, and writes that Gengobei’s embrace of Oman “as a male” is a parody of monks’ liaisons with acolytes (chigo) (Tanaka Takako, “Onna to otoko, dotchi ga ii?,” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Vol. 4 [November 2010], p. 134).

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べし”—is a classic example of Saikaku’s deft wordplay, uniting, as it does, with

two kakekotoba three overlapping phrases meaning “He didn’t know she was a woman,” “He who does not know is a Buddha” (a saying roughly equivalent, as mentioned earlier, to “ignorance is bliss”), and “Even the Buddha would forgive him.” The following chapter is a masterpiece of sexual comedy. Gengobei declares his love for Oman and she secretly finds it terribly funny that her disguise has worked so well. She elicits from him a vow that he will be faithful and not go against anything she says, then the two bed down. Gengobei reaches inside Oman’s sleeve to caress her skin, and is surprised by the fact that she is not wearing a fundoshi. Apparently still thinking she is a boy, he takes out something and begins to chew it; it is nerigi, the dried root of a plant of the mallow family, which was chewed to produce an anal lubricant.102 Oman asks what this is, Gengobei blushes and hides it away, and whether or not she actually knows what he was up to, she finds this funny, too. To delay the moment at which her sex will be revealed, Oman pretends to be asleep. Gengobei finally figures things out when he discovers a female undergarment on his bedfellow, and in his shock tries to get up out of bed, but Oman holds onto him, reminds him of his vow, and tells him who she is and of her love for him, which would not relent even when he left her letters unanswered. Hearing this heartfelt declaration of love, Gengobei (here referred to, significantly, as “the monk”) “loses all reason”103 and declares, “There’s no difference between love for a male or a female.” The fourth chapter then ends similarly to the third, with the narrator, using Gengobei’s change of heart as evidence, again deploring the fickleness of humanity, then mitigating his disapproval by hypothesizing similar behavior on the Buddha’s part: Gengobei was not the only person ever to take vows when his heart wasn’t really in it; it’s probably the same with everyone. Come to think of it, even the Buddha must have put one foot into that pit trap that one can’t quite manage to dislike.104

102  Pflugfelder, Cartographies, p. 239; Tanaka, “Onna to otoko, dotchi ga ii?,” pp. 135–36. De Bary mistakenly terms the preparation “an aphrodisiac” (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 220, note 6). 103  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 384, note 8. 104  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 384–85. De Bary’s rendering of the passage leaves this coarse metaphor untranslated; Morris includes it (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 218; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 115, p. 322, note 225).

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The misogyny of the punchline’s obvious metaphor is offset by its gentle repudiation of the current of hostility to the female anatomy to be found in various Buddhist texts and practices,105 reflected in this text and others in passages implying or directly stating that homosexual violations of a monk’s vows were less grave a matter than heterosexual ones.106 It and the entire bedtime episode preceding it partake of the same comedy observed by Hatanaka Chiaki in portrayals in Great Mirror of Male Love of extreme repudiation of women by onnagirai, woman-averse devotees of shudō (who, one must reiterate, are portrayed in Saikaku’s fiction and elsewhere as a subset of followers of the way of youths).107 The wording of Gengobei’s pivotal declaration regarding the equivalence of the two ways of love resonates with an even more resounding statement of principles in Way of the Warrior, examined near the end of the final chapter in this study. In my translation of the former, “there’s no difference” is my rendering of “hedate wa naki mono,” more literally translatable as “there is no distinction” or “there is no barrier.” A version of the same expression is used when Umenosuke, the protagonist of “Striped Hakama,” whose late nenja was a samurai of lower rank than he, writes, in a final testament explaining his vendetta against a man implicated in his nenja’s unjust execution, that in the “way” of love “there is indeed no distinction between high and low.” This is followed, as we shall see, by a manifesto espousing a sort of egalitarianism in matters of love, not only in shudō but in heterosexual love as well, since the classical model for such an ethos that Umenosuke cites involves love between an emperor and a girl of commoner status. Is the testament’s initial, defining sentence an echo of Gengobei’s declaration of the equivalency of homoand heterosexual love in Five Women, published the previous year? And does Umenosuke’s proposition of a rapprochement through erotic love between individuals separated by a gap in rank also apply to the gap in status between genders? In the context at least of “Gengobei” it seems that it does, for here the heroine takes on male garb and hairstyle and the male prerogative of erotic pursuit to win over a man who has hitherto, for reasons both personal and religious, rejected women. And she succeeds. And unlike in “Seijūrō,” neither of the lovers is punished for breaking the rules in the pursuit of erotic pleasure and fulfillment. The contrast between the 105  Faure, Red Thread, pp. 55–58. 106  Pflugfelder, Cartographies, p. 74. 107  Hatanaka, “Nanshoku ōkagami no inja,” pp. 40–41. Hatanaka perceives a passage in one of the stories in question (the fifth of the second volume) to be a parody of the legend regarding Kūkai’s mother mentioned earlier.

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stories that begin and end Five Women Who Loved Love is emphasized by the complementarity of their respective denouements. Mislaid gold in the family storehouse of Seijūrō’s beloved brings about his death; the doors of Oman’s family storehouse open to reveal to Gengobei the wealth that will enhance the emotional and sexual happiness the two have found together. The fanciful inventory of the wonders that meet his eye recalls the lists of fine objects— clothes, hair ornaments, lacquerware, painted screens—that embellish many a passage in other works by Saikaku examined here, together with which it suggests that, whatever else happiness may be, it is also material. Are we to take this denouement as a rejection of Buddhism and its warnings against attachment to things (or people)? I am inclined to find in this story’s juxtaposition of Buddhist sorrow and consumerist hedonism both the breadth of vision that Sasaki Akio prizes in Saikaku’s fiction108 and the two complementary aspects of ukiyo thought, each visible, in Hashimoto Mineo’s metaphor, from either side of the translucent sheet of paper they occupy.109 Indeed, instability and illusion characterize the pleasures of love in both halves of the story. The earlier half features the sudden deaths of two young lovers, a night spent making love to a ghost, and a newfound passion for a girl first disguised as a boy, a development the narrator with a show of outrage links to the fickleness of the world. The instability of wealth is emphasized as well, as Gengobei finds his parents gone from their former home and is told by a stranger in their old neighborhood that because of the money Gengobei once squandered in his amorous adventures his father, formerly a prosperous money-changer, lost his high position in “this floating world” (“ukiyo”), showing us both sides of that sheet of paper by using the term with its more negative connotations, but in a context that calls to mind its association with hedonism as well.110 The narrative then draws attention 108  Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 72–74. 109  Hashimoto, Ukiyo, pp. 94–95. 110  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 386. Neither de Bary’s translation nor Morris’s contains a “floating world” reference here (Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 223; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 116). In contrast to Hashimoto’s model, and seemingly contradicted by this passage, Donald Keene treats the two meanings of “ukiyo” as separate homonyms, with the “sad world” version applying in medieval literature and the one designating the “floating world of pleasure […] familiar since the time of Asai Ryōi’s kanazōshi” and taking on more specifically erotic connotations starting with the publication of Saikaku’s fiction. However, Keene does seem to imply a sort of aestheticized instability in the latter version of ukiyo when he later writes of it as, among other things, “the world of delightful uncertainty” (Keene, World Within Walls, pp. 168, 170). Howard Hibbett, for his part, hints at an aestheticization of evanescence in the early-Tokugawa conception of ukiyo when he

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to its own fictionality by bizarrely having Gengobei sing for an audience an actual ballad telling his story. When finally he gets wealthy in-laws who replace the parents he bled dry, the story closes with Gengobei imagining how he will spend their supposedly inexhaustible fortune on male and female prostitutes, bringing Five Women full-circle back to the pleasure quarter, the realm of heightened illusion inhabited by that other wastrel son, Seijūrō, whose pursuit of the mirages of eros twice leads him to disaster. The ostensibly happy ending of both “Gengobei” and Five Women thus neither presents marriage as lastingly satisfying or stabilizing desire, nor, because of its echoes of the lead-up to the brothel debacle in “Seijūrō,” does it depict the pleasure quarter as a realm of trouble-free pleasure. Rather, as do Amorous Man and “Seijūrō,” “Gengobei” embraces sexual desire and pleasure without averting its gaze from their (narratively dynamic) instability and their grounding in illusion, as well as their potentially devastating impact on personal and family finances. Furthermore, in Amorous Man, Five Women and much of the rest of Saikaku’s fiction, rather than posit a dichotomy between a true and stable love involving amateur women and a false, unstable appearance of love involving prostitutes, amorous intrigue in the prostitution quarters is depicted as characterized by a heightening of the qualities of illusoriness and instability intrinsic to heterosexual love outside of its walls as well, qualities, I argue, shown as intensifying a man’s experience of love.

defines it as “the ‘floating world’ of transient pleasures”; in contrast to Keene and similarly to Hashimoto, he also writes that “[…] ukiyo retained the overtones of its earlier Buddhist use to suggest the sad impermanence of earthly things” (Hibbett, Floating World, pp. 3, 11).

CHAPTER 3

Paragons of Wickedness: Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan Introduction “A frog in a well can’t have much to say about the sea,” North Sea Jo replied. “It’s bound by its own empty space. A summer bug won’t have much to say about ice. It’s trapped in its tiny time. A cloistered scholar can’t have much to say about the Tao, being all wrapped up in his doctrine and dogma … “Of all the waters of All-under-heaven, none is bigger than the sea. The ten thousand streams return to it forever, and yet it is never filled. It boils away at Wei Lu, but the sea has never emptied. It doesn’t change with spring and autumn. It knows no drought. It is so much bigger than the flow of the Yellow River that it simply can’t be measured. And yet I haven’t let this make me take myself for ‘big.’ […] The place of the Four Seas between heaven and earth is no more than the place of a pile of field stones in the Great Swamp. The place of the Middle Kingdom within the Four Seas is no more than the place of a single seed in a granary. “… ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are not so easily divisible—no more than ‘big’ and ‘little.’ … “So when they say, ‘Let’s make Right our teacher and do away with Wrong, let’s make Rule our master and leave Chaos alone!’ they haven’t yet lit on the principle that illuminates heaven and earth, nor on the facts of the ten thousand things. This is like saying that heaven’s your teacher, but not earth; or yin, but not yang. There is no possibility of such thinking getting anyone into the light, but they keep talking that way nonetheless. They are stupid—or think we are.” Zhuangzi, “Autumn Floods”1

…

1  Credit: Chuang Tzu, excerpt from “Autumn Floods” from The Essential Chuang Tzu, translated and edited by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton, ©1998 by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton. Reprinted by arrangement with The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA, www.shambhala.com [pp. 84–87].

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004344310_005

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Religions and ideologies ... require that someone be right: either Anna Karenina is the victim of a narrow-minded tyrant, or Karenin is the victim of an immoral woman; either K. is an innocent man crushed by an unjust Court, or the Court represents divine justice and K. is guilty. This “either-or” encapsulates an inability to tolerate the essential relativity of things human, an inability to look squarely at the absence of the Supreme Judge. This inability makes the novel’s wisdom (the wisdom of uncertainty) hard to accept and understand. Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel 2

∵ Of the texts examined in this study, Honchō nijū fukō (Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan, 1686), which consists of twenty tales, each depicting the behavior of a son or daughter guilty of violating the Confucian doctrine of filial piety, stands out as the most different from the others. It generally (with the exception of one tale examined here) lacks the subtext of status anxiety most salient in Amorous Man but also evident in Way of the Warrior and Five Women. It is also set apart by the fact that the ostensible didactic purpose stated (but also ironically undermined) in its preface is reaffirmed in each of its stories. Early on in Way of the Warrior, that collection’s supposed didactic purpose is mentioned as well, but afterwards it is not brought up as regularly as is the case with Twenty Cases, throughout which, moreover, the narrator more intrusively moralizes than do those of any of the other three texts. Its rhetoric is the simplest, with fewer literary allusions and less wordplay than feature in its companions here, which makes Twenty Cases occupy the opposite end of the scale from Amorous Man in terms of linguistic and stylistic complexity. Of these four texts, Twenty Cases is the most closely linked to a pre-existing literary genre, the Confucian morality tale, to which, in its preface, it professes to belong. The fact that each story in the collection in some way references the Confucian morality tale means that Twenty Cases, to the extent that it parodies this genre, which it does in its title and to varying extents in a number of its 2  Kundera, L’art du roman, pp. 17–18; Kundera, Asher, The Art of the Novel, p. 7. (The translation above is Asher’s.)

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stories, more closely resembles straight literary parodies such as Fake Tales than any of the other three Saikaku texts examined here. For while among these works it is Amorous Man that most frequently makes parodic literary references, because it parodies such a wide range of materials in a dense intertextual collage, no single work stands out among them as the preeminent object of parody. For this reason Amorous Man cannot be defined as a parody of Genji or Tales of Ise, the texts to which it contains the most thematic (as opposed to stylistic) links, in the same way that Fake Tales is a parody of Tales of Ise or Twenty Cases is a parody of Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, a collection of Chinese Confucian morality tales that had long been popular in Japan at the time Saikaku’s book was published. However, it is important to note that Twenty Cases is neither consistently a parody nor consistently didactic, and that despite its relative stylistic simplicity when compared to Way of the Warrior, Amorous Man and Five Women, it is far more stylistically and thematically complex than the naïve tales of Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, to which it repeatedly makes reference. Perhaps it is because it does not fit into any of the pre-Saikaku genre categories that it is classed, like the rest of Saikaku’s fiction, within the nebulous, catchall category of ukiyozōshi rather than being treated as a stand-alone anomaly in Saikaku’s œuvre. What then, if anything, connects it to the rest of Saikaku’s fiction, and specifically to the other Saikaku texts examined here, other than the occasional ironic literary allusion? This is a crucial question, for an examination of the similarities between the least typical text of these four and the others promises to shed light on some key quality or qualities uniting Saikaku’s entire fictional œuvre. I shall demonstrate in this chapter that it is precisely a trait that Confucian morality tales lack, as does Confucian philosophy in general, that most significantly links Twenty Cases to the Way of the Warrior, Amorous Man and Five Women, namely, a dialogic interplay of competing voices making competing ethical and/or truth claims, a quality that Bakhtin saw as a central feature of novelistic discourse in the early phases of the European novel’s development. Here as elsewhere, it is not my intention to isolate an essence of the novel and then use it to include Saikaku’s fiction in the same category as fictional works produced in the West. Rather, the similarities that do exist between Saikaku’s fiction and fiction produced in Europe at a similar phase in the evolution of reading publics and book production point to larger conclusions that can be drawn about the development of a bourgeois literature produced for a commercial market in societies both inside and outside the European

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cultural sphere. A key similarity to be found between the products of Japan’s and Europe’s literary cultures early in the history of commercial publishing lies precisely in this dialogic quality of Saikaku’s fiction. This is not to say that Twenty Cases is in any way an apologia for parentabusers—far from it; it in fact shows characters’ outrageous, despicable behavior toward their parents and others in a suitably unflattering light. Twenty Cases does, however, complexify and problematize the naïve genre it takes as its starting point, adding moral ambiguities and even occasionally including elements in the portrayals of its villains that court the sympathy or grudging admiration of readers.3 Furthermore, its narrator strikes the same ironic pose as that with which the narrators of Amorous Man and “Seijūrō” repeatedly undermine key moments of pathos, thus forcing an emotional distance between reader and characters. In Twenty Cases the effect of such irony is less to undermine emotional identification with certain characters than to undermine the emotion of moral indignation, if not to seriously tamper with one’s moral convictions themselves. Twenty Cases is thus morally relativistic to the extent that it encourages a certain skepticism toward Confucianism’s claim to provide an all-encompassing, universally applicable set of ethical formulae, a claim that puts Confucianism at odds with Buddhism and Daoism’s acceptance of ambiguity and skepticism regarding the graspability by human beings of an ultimate truth. Paradoxically, it is precisely these qualities that allow Buddhism and Daoism to accommodate Confucianism as a socially expedient set of conventional truths. In a spirit informed by this Buddhist and Daoist relativism, Twenty Cases satirizes preachiness without directly opposing the content of the preaching per se. The above quotations from Zhuangzi, a key text in philosophical Daoism, demonstrate that centuries before Chinese learning became entrenched in Japan there existed in China a textual tradition expressing skepticism toward and even contempt for the teachings of Confucianism. The relatively peaceful coexistence of religions in East Asia when compared to the Christian and the Muslim spheres, as well as the doctrinal openness to syncretism of Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Shinto and Chinese folk religion, have tended to obscure conflicts among their doctrines and practices, which came to a head in the suppression of Buddhism in China in 845 and in the anti-Buddhist campaign in early-Meiji Japan. As we shall later see, books contrasting the relative

3  Writing of Twenty Cases, Howard Hibbett finds its author “an unconvincing moralist,” and perceives a hint of parody in the title of the work (Hibbett, Floating World, p. 45).

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merits of Buddhism and Confucianism and favoring one over the other were published in Japan decades before Saikaku began writing fiction.4 Perhaps the most important source of conflict between the two traditions is the incompatibility between, on the one hand, Buddhism’s exhortations to leave one’s family, withdraw from society and forswear sex and reproduction, and, on the other hand, the Confucian imperative to remain engaged with both family and society and to produce descendants for one’s parents and ancestors. In certain stories in Twenty Cases the Confucian duty to reproduce is highlighted and problematized,5 and in two of these is shown to be in conflict with Buddhism. It is on stories such as these that include dialogic elements undermining a reading of Twenty Cases as univocal and consistently Confucian that this chapter will focus. The erasure of ambiguity and uncertainty that, attacking Confucianism without naming it, the “Autumn Floods” chapter of Zhuangzi roundly criticizes is manifest in Confucian tales of paragons of filial piety, whose self-abasement and self-sacrifice on behalf of their parents and grandparents range from lying down half-naked on ice to tasting excrement, acts that win them miraculous rewards from Heaven, conceived of in Confucianism as a universal governing force. In a manner that can be taken as either parodic or earnest, the title of the collection, Honchō nijū fukō, reconfigures those of two previous collections of Confucian morality tales: Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, known in Japan as Nijūshi kō (date of composition uncertain), and Asai Ryōi’s adaptation of the same, Yamato nijūshi kō (Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety in Japan, 1665). The preface of Saikaku’s work presents the stories that follow as cautionary tales to complement the examples set by the paragons of Confucian virtue on display in Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, yet the preface also seems to guardedly poke fun at the naïveté of that work in oblique references to two of its stories. In these the filial sons Kyōshi and Mōsō both search for difficult-to-obtain food for their respective mothers. As a reward for Kyōshi’s filial piety, Heaven causes a pond to appear next his house swimming with the carp his mother craves.6 Mōsō’s filial devotion is rewarded when, as he pursues a wintertime hunt for the bamboo shoots his mother desires, Heaven causes 4  Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, p. 14; Nakajima Takashi, Shoki ukiyozōshi no tenkai (Tokyo: Wakakusa Shobō, 1996), pp. 26–27. 5  Regarding this issue as dealt with in Amorous Man, Matsuda Osamu observes that its unor­ thodoxy lies not in its portrayal of eroticism but rather in its anti-familial non-reproductivity (Matsuda Osamu, Edo itan bungaku nōto [Tokyo: Seidosha, 1993], p. 50). 6  Nijūshi kō, in Teiji Ichiko, ed., Nihon koten bungaku taikei, Vol. 38: Otogizōshi (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1958), p. 249.

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numerous bamboo shoots suddenly to sprout up through the snow covering the floor of the bamboo grove where he has hitherto been searching in vain.7 Alluding to these well-known stories, the preface to Twenty Cases opens with the wry observation that “the bamboo shoots in the snow are at the greengrocer’s, and there are carp in the tank at the fishmonger’s.”8 In other words, here the naïve miracle tales of Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety are contrasted ironically with the actual living conditions of the newly prosperous Japan of Saikaku’s day, where cash performs miracles that once required Heaven’s intercession. After these initial comments, the preface implies that filial piety will follow as a natural result of striving at one’s trade and becoming prosperous. Someya Tomoyuki writes that in these opening lines lurks the power to overturn Neo-Confucian values, for they take the central NeoConfucian value, filial piety, and give it secondary or tertiary ranking in a commercial value system.9 Despite the sly opening comments quoted above, later in this same preface the twenty stories that follow are presented as morality tales encouraging filial piety through the cautionary description of instances of scandalous unfiliality and the punishment it incurs. The preface thus creates conflicting expectations of earnest moral didacticism and of satirization thereof, both of which expectations are met in various parts of the collection of stories that follows it. Writing of the internal contradictions in Twenty Cases, Taniwaki Masachika concludes that its preface is either a pose, a parody, or a camouflage.10 Emoto Hiroshi, who judges the book a failure, notes that the preface initially negates the moral absolutism of Neo-Confucian kanazōshi, then switches abruptly to a statement about the punishment of Heaven. Similar shifting of gears in the stories themselves causes Emoto to find them lacking, noting that the tales pull one in with their depictions of abnormal psychology only to flop with their facile endings and moral platitudes,11 which of course raises the question of whether we are to experience these as a satire of such platitudes.

7  Nijūshi kō, pp. 244–45. 8  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 153. (All references to this work are to the Shōgakukan edition, unless otherwise indicated.) 9  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 38. 10  Taniwaki Masachika, Kinsei bungei e no shiza: Saikaku o jiku to shite (Tokyo: Shintensha, 1999), p. 169. 11  Emoto Hiroshi, Saikaku kenkyū: Shōsetsu hen (Tokyo: Shintensha, 2005), pp. 227–34.

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Brothel Quarter Wastrels

In the tales that follow the preface, it is not until the first two stories of the second volume of the five that make up Twenty Cases that plot elements undermining the collection’s ostensible moral message appear. However, comical and parodic elements are present in the four stories of the first volume as well, in the form of social satire, punning titles and exaggeration to the point of absurdity. In the opening story, “Ima no miyako mo yo wa karimono” (Even in the Capital Now, the World Lives on Borrowed Time),12 a son whose adventures in the pleasure quarter have put him deeply into debt plans to poison his father, under the guise of giving him medicine, in order to obtain his inheritance. He instead poisons himself accidentally when, apparently intending to administer the “medicine” mouth-to-mouth, he absentmindedly tests it out by swallowing some. In an essay on Twenty Cases, Yano Kimio points out the irony in this denouement: by testing the poison before giving it to his father, the unfilial protagonist is engaging in a reflexive act of filial piety which brings on his own demise as a punishment for unfiliality.13 Otherwise, “Borrowed Time” has the plot of a simple tale of sin and divine retribution, but the narrative is humorous and satirical in its detailed description of the financial feeding frenzy on the part of the various middlemen and parasites associated with prostitution and moneylending, saying of a moneylender specializing in brothel customers, for example, “From New Year’s Day, when he told people they had just gotten younger,14 until the last night of the year, he spoke not a word of truth.”15 It is more difficult to detect humor in the horrific second story of volume one, “Ōzetsuki ni nai sode no ame” (Sleeves Drenched by Unseasonable Rains at Year’s End),16 yet the extremity of the protagonist’s misdeeds and the absurdity of the death he suffers as a divine punishment parallel plot devices in other stories in Twenty Cases that have a more discernably comical effect. At the age of sixteen Buntazaemon, the brawny but lazy eldest son of a poor family in Fushimi, south of Kyoto, kills his seven-year-old sister on a hot summer night because she is not fanning him as vigorously as he would like, but he is protected by his mother from punishment for this crime. Years later, in 12  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 157–63. 13  Yano Kimio, Saikaku ron (Tokyo: Wakakusa Shobō, 2003), pp. 256–7. 14  As noted earlier, according to the method of reckoning age in premodern Japan one’s age increased by one year on New Year’s Day, rather than on one’s birthday. 15  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 157–63 (quotation excerpted from p. 158). 16  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 163–71.

Illustration 12 Buntazaemon attacked by wild dogs. Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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response to an admonition from his mother to end an affair with a married woman (as noted earlier, a capital crime at the time), Buntazaemon repays his mother’s earlier kindness with a vicious attack that leaves her crippled. He lives off his father’s labor, refusing to work, thus exacerbating his parents’ poverty to such a point that, as the time of account-reckoning at year’s end approaches, they resolve to kill themselves. Buntazaemon’s remaining sister temporarily saves her family from suicide by indenturing herself to a brothel in Shimabara and handing her parents the money thus obtained. However, Buntazaemon steals this considerable sum and spends it all on a seven-day debauch at a nearby brothel. Meanwhile, having thus lost all hope of being saved from destitution, his parents kill themselves in a deserted field, after which their bodies are eaten by wild dogs.17 After Buntazaemon leaves the brothel where his reckless expenditures have, unbeknownst to him, caused his parents’ death, he unknowingly happens upon the site of their suicide. There he suffers a seizure (apparently as Heaven’s punishment) and falls to the ground. He is then eaten alive by the same dogs that devoured his parents’ corpses after their deaths. Having picked his bones clean of flesh, they reassemble his skeleton on the side of a road, thus exposing the wicked son’s shame to the world.

A Serial Divorcée: “Her Trousseau Held in a Battered Trunk”

The sins of the unfilial daughter of the story that follows “Sleeves Drenched” are similarly prodigious but seem written to inspire laughter rather than horror. In “Ato no hagetaru yomeiri nagamochi” (Her Trousseau Held in a Battered Trunk)18 the spoiled, exceptionally beautiful and fatally haughty Kozuru, daughter of a wealthy silk wholesaler in Kanazawa, ruins her family’s social standing by divorcing a long string of men for an assortment of petty reasons. Both the daughter’s behavior and that of her arrogant, doting mother are treated with humor:19

17  It is unclear which species of canid is being indicated here (Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 170, note 7). 18  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 171–76. 19  As there is no full, published English translation of Twenty Cases available I hope to give readers a sense of the tone of its stories by including translations of this and other passages.

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Since they were well-off, the utensils purchased in advance for the girl’s trousseau were lacquerware of exquisite beauty decorated with raised patterns covered in gold dust; as for her clothes, on the outside they conformed to the sumptuary laws, but they were lined with fabrics dyed in an array of dot patterns. A woman was summoned from Kyoto to instruct her in proper etiquette, and she trained her to behave in a ladylike manner in all situations. “Now she would make a proper wife for any man,” her mother proudly said, her nose now sticking so high up in the air that even the [big-nosed] tengu20 of nearby Mt. Hakusan would have turned and fled in the other direction if he had met her. The funny thing is, even if parents have a daughter with a face like the monster that gobbled down a baby in that book of ghost stories, when they go to view cherry blossoms or maple leaves in autumn, they stay behind their daughter, who looks about as graceful as a grain-pounding mortar that somehow manages to walk, and they cool her from behind with a black-ribbed fan, not just because they are fond of her but also because, in her mother’s eyes, the girl’s front-tying purple crêpe obi, whether viewed from the front or the side, gives her the charm of Ise or Komachi or Murasaki Shikibu. So it is no surprise that from her clothing to the money for her dowry, a beautiful girl like Sakoemon’s daughter should be given only the best. Nor was it a surprise that men desired her. “I want a handsome man,” the girl stipulated, “and one without a mother around to become my mother-in-law. His family should be Nichiren Buddhist, like ours, and they should pursue a trade that is nice and clean.” After the families of a thousand potential husbands were investigated and compared, in accordance with her wishes she was sent to a family of cloth merchants as wealthy as her own. “Horses should go with other horses, and it is fitting that the daughter of a silk wholesaler should marry into a family of cloth merchants,” people said. But before half a year had passed this girl took a dislike to her husband. She went home to her parents frequently, so the couple grew apart and her parents finally received a letter of divorce. Her former husband soon remarried, so she was soon sent as a bride to a family well-known as makers of kikuzake,21 but from the start of fall she 20  A pun on “hana ga takai,” which refers to both a high nose bridge and smug pride; Kozuru’s mother is so pleased with herself that her nose is compared to that of a tengu, a mythical creature depicted either with a bird’s beak or a large, phallic nose. 21  A type of mirin and a local specialty of the Kaga domain (Kōjien).

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complained of the noise [from the brewing of that season’s batch], so her parents changed their minds about the match and called her back home. Next she was married into a family that lent out money and lived off their investments, but there weren’t enough people around the place to suit her, and she didn’t like being in a household where all they did was calculate their profits and losses. So she deserted her husband, who hated to see her go, and, with no thought of the shame it would bring, once again went home. It is the karma of parents that they cannot bear to turn away even such a child as this. She was then divorced three or four more times. The lacquer had peeled from the chest holding her trousseau, so they had it refinished and married her off to a dealer in medicinal herbs. There was nothing wrong with this man, and no complaints to make about the family finances, either. Since she had no grounds for demanding a divorce, she pretended to have seizures, showing the whites of her eyes, making herself foam at the mouth and causing her hands and feet to shake. Her husband found this hard to take, and she was secretly overjoyed when he sent her home. She told her parents, “That man has a disease that people would find disgusting if they knew about it.” This was a bald-faced lie for which she was bound to be punished someday. Soon she looked too old to wear an unmarried girl’s long-sleeved kimono, but even after [at age nineteen]22 the vents in her sleeves were sewn shut she married two or three more times, such that from her first marriage at age fourteen until her last at twenty-five she was married and divorced eighteen times. Then word got around that such a reprobate existed even among the ranks of women, and finally there was no place left where her parents could get rid of her.23 Here the story becomes, like so many in this collection, overwhelmingly gruesome and cruel. In the course of her eighteen marriages Kozuru manages to give birth to four daughters, whom her parents later have to support,24 and whose constant fussing is so annoying that even the family doctor eventually refuses to treat them, after which they all die, one after the other. Kozuru’s younger brother, Kamemaru, reaches the age at which he should marry, but guilt by association with his sister has ruined his prospects, and as a result he 22  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 174, note 1. 23  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 172–74. 24  In cases of divorce, customarily sons stayed with their fathers and daughters left with their mothers (Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 174, note 4).

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becomes lost in gloomy thoughts and dies at age twenty-three. Her parents, ashamed to show their faces in society, hole up in their home and die of broken hearts as well. After her finickiness regarding husbands has brought about the early death of all in her family, Kozuru degrades herself further by taking a family servant as her lover. After exhausting her fortune and moving to the countryside with him, Kozuru finds herself unable to swallow food or drink, a fate presumably imposed by Heaven as punishment for her selfishness, indiscretion and lies. She consequently shrivels up “like a mummy” and dies. With its portraits of an arrogant, snobbish mother and the incredibly frivolous daughter she spoils, and with its coldly sneering accounts of the deaths of the daughter’s own four girls, the story may come across as unbearably misogynistic to modern readers. However, “Battered Trunk” is the first story in Twenty Cases to problematize its portrait of filial impiety by introducing the issue of parental responsibility. Interestingly, the luxurious clothes and utensils given the beautiful young Kozuru and her lessons in etiquette from an instructor brought in from the capital are here presented as examples of her mother’s vanity, overreaching and poor parenting, whereas in Amorous Man, metropolitan tayū in possession of the same sorts of finery and training are the subject of extended expressions of the narrator’s admiration. One sees a similar distinction between the prerogatives assigned amateurs and prostitutes in a story in Storehouse (mentioned in Introduction, note 62) that pays lip service to sumptuary laws (which is, typically for Saikaku’s fiction, undermined by the sensual detail with which various sorts of luxurious cloth and garments are described), but which excuses the wearing of sumptuous clothing by prostitutes as a tool of their trade.25 Later in this chapter we shall revisit the theme of parental responsibility for children’s misdeeds in “I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk,” in which it is the father who is shown as implicated in his daughter’s misdeeds, and in which the daughter causes havoc with her sexual assertiveness and promiscuity as well as finickiness regarding the man she is to marry. However, the unfilial daughter of “Battered Trunk,” although she goes through nineteen men, is only shown as actually wanting one of them, the servant who is her lover at the end, such that her offense can be interpreted as a lack of desire for her eighteen carefully chosen husbands rather than as the arrogation of sexual prerogatives denied women. Another possible interpretation is that she was spoiled at home by her doting parents and is put off 25  Ihara, Eitaigura, pp. 39–43; Ihara, Sargent, Family Storehouse, pp. 26–29.

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by the duties demanded of a wife, although these do not figure in the reasons stated for her seeking so many divorces. If one makes the former interpretation, in terms of libidinousness she is, despite her nineteen men, very nearly the antithesis of the lustful, promiscuous daughter of “Traveling Monk,” for she will do anything to get away from the men to whom her parents keep sending her, despite their being presented as a blameless lot. Later we shall see a less ambiguously manifested imperviousness to the charms of marriage in a story from the last volume of Twenty Cases in which a young man vexes his parents and outrages Heaven by directing all of his attention to sumo and none to sex.

Charismatic Villains

Although in crucial ways their behavior is execrable, the protagonists of the first two stories in the second volume of Twenty Cases are presented in a far more ambiguous light than are the central characters of the preceding stories, and this new ambivalence extends to the stories’ moral message as well. Indeed, Twenty Cases opens and closes with unambiguously moralistic tales that mask the heterogeneous nature of the collection in between, which contains a mix of straightforward morality tales, adventure tales with a tacked-on moral message, and complex black comedies like the stories I shall now examine. “A Fine Kettle of Fish” Volume two of Twenty Cases opens with “Ware to mi o kogasu Kamagafuchi” (A Fine Kettle of Fish),26 which tells the life story of Ishikawa Goemon, a reallife bandit who was boiled alive for his crimes in Kyoto in 1594. The title consists of a punning combination of an idiomatic expression and a place name. “Ware to mi o kogasu,” literally “to burn oneself,” is equivalent to Hamlet’s “hoist with his own petard.” “Kamagafuchi” (“cauldron-shaped pool”) is the name of a section of the Kamo River near Tōfukuji, a Zen temple in southern Kyoto, where Saikaku’s story sets the execution of Goemon and his little son, despite the fact that the most reliable historical source records the dry riverbed to the south of Sanjō as the site.27 “Kama” refers to a pot, cauldron or kettle and thus functions as a kakekotoba forming both the beginning of this place name and the end of a noun phrase meaning roughly “the kettle that burns one as a result of one’s own actions.” 26  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 185–89. 27  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 189, note 7.

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The story’s prologue continues in this playful, ironic vein: In today’s world, no one digs up a pot of gold anymore. Even for those with wealth and position, there is suffering, and even for the poor and lowly, there is pleasure. [But] all human beings pray for things beyond their station, and there are countless cases from days of old of people who, through such ambition, destroyed themselves.28 Like the opening lines of the preface to Twenty Cases, the story’s initial sentence alludes to a popular tale in Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety, in this case the story of Kakkyo, who, in order to be better able to feed his mother, resolves to reduce the size of his family by burying alive his son, only to be rewarded by Heaven with a golden pot he unearths while digging the hole.29 But whereas the preface to Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan tells us that the delicacies once bestowed by Heaven on filial sons now can be found at the corner shop, the prologue to “A Fine Kettle of Fish” tells us that no one today is rewarded for filial piety as Kakkyo was. Are we to take this as an indication that nobody now attains the ethical standards of antiquity, that the age of miracles has long since ended, or that such naïve fables are to be ignored? The formulaic warning about the dangers of ambition that follows this ambiguous and suggestive assertion covers its troubling implications with a veil of moralizing that, given the positive portrayals of ambition and self-advancement in Amorous Man and elsewhere in Saikaku’s fiction, calls itself into question. In addition to evoking these questions, the first sentence of “A Fine Kettle of Fish” invites one to compare the filial Kakkyo with the extremely unfilial Gozaemon, who, as we shall see, both abuses his father and, in a scene that reads as a perverse reworking of the depiction in Twenty-Four Paragons of Kakkyo’s willingness to sacrifice his son for the sake of his mother, plunges his son into boiling oil to alleviate his own suffering. The golden “pot” in the opening sentence is designated by “kama,” the same “pot” as in the title, such that the story’s second word ties together the story of Kakkyo, the pot in which the story’s villain and his son are boiled at the story’s end and the name of the site where the story locates their execution, while simultaneously linking the villain’s killing of his son with Kakkyo’s ultimately averted plan to kill his own. The sentence’s assertion that events like those in Kakkyo’s story do not happen today suggests that, in contrast, events like the ones to be described in the horror story that follows are what we may now witness instead of the miraculous scenarios of Twenty-Four Paragons. It also contains a clever pun 28  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 185. 29   Nijūshi kō, pp. 255–56.

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that, like the references to greengrocer and fishmonger in the preface, contrasts a mercantile present with an age of miracles: “horidashi” means both literally “digging up” and unexpectedly obtaining something of value or purchasing high-quality merchandise at a bargain price.30 Thus in addition to the translation given above, the story’s opening line could also be rendered as, “These days there are no longer any bargains on golden pots.” The sentence in question accomplishes all of this in two brief clauses, thus combining the brilliant wordplay typical of opening lines in Saikaku’s prose and the relative terseness of the prose style of Twenty Cases when compared to Way of the Warrior, Five Women and especially Amorous Man: “鏐の釜の掘り出し、今の世にはな かりき。(Kogane no kama no horidashi, ima no yo ni wa nakariki.)”31 The story that follows the brief prologue is divided into two markedly differing parts. In its opening scene an elderly boatman ferries travelers across Lake Biwa from Ōtsu to Yabashi on the opposite shore. When the vesper-bells chime and the wind from Mt. Hiei makes the lamplights flicker, the passengers, fearing a storm, urge the old man to row faster. The boatman declares that even though he is past sixty, no youth of today could match his strength, and strips away his upper garments, revealing a back covered with scars and arms that look “like the limbs of a lacquer tree”32 whose bark has been sliced up to collect its sap. Amazed that anyone could have survived injuries such as those he appears to have suffered, the travelers ask him how he came to bear such scars. The boatman then gives his name as Ishikawa Godayū and begins to tell his life story. Formerly a prosperous farmer, Godayū counted on a secure old age in the care of his only son, Goemon, a lad of superior strength and “especially accomplished in the various arts.”33 However, Goemon’s interest in “the useless martial arts”34 leads to his neglect of the family business of farming and, eventually, to the downfall of both father and son. For not only does the young man begin to shirk his duties at home, he also starts to haunt the night, looking for victims on whom to practice his fighting skills. By and by greed combines with his thirst for martial excellence and he becomes “the chief bandit of the 30  Matsuda Osamu writes that the term originally was associated with the tea ceremony (Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 184, note 6). See also Ihara Saikaku, Honchō nijū fukō, in Fuji Akio, Inoue Toshiyuki, Satake Akihiro, eds., Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei, Vol. 76 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1991), pp. 414–15, note 10. (Other references to this work are to the Shōgakukan edition, unless otherwise indicated.) 31  Matsuda Osamu finds the chapter’s opening “extremely skillful” as well (Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 184, note 5). 32  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 185. 33  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 186. 34  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 186.

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province,” organizing and commanding a gang of robbers, some possessing colorful names designating their respective specialties: … Lockpick Chōmaru, Hand-bellows Kazenosuke, Hole-digger Danpachi, Monkey the Rope-slider, Master Lightfoot the Window-sneak,35 Latticesmasher Tetsuden, Cat-mimic Yamiemon, Hidden-torch Senkichi, Blade-grabber Hayawaka; Goemon assigned each duties [in accordance with his skills], and together they roamed the area, startling people from their beds and spreading fear through the populace.36 Annoyed by his father’s warnings that he must mend his ways to avoid dire consequences, Goemon angrily ties him up with rope, gathers the family valuables and runs away to Kyoto with his henchmen. Abandoned in this vulnerable state, Godayū is then found by a rival group of ruffians bearing a grudge against Goemon who break into his home and decide to settle scores by punishing the father in place of the son, slashing him mercilessly with their weapons. Despite the shame and pain to which he has been subjected, Godayū decides to go on living, but abandons farming to work as a ferryman. When Godayū finishes his story, the ferry has arrived at the opposite shore of Lake Biwa. Moved to tears, before departing, his passengers express wonder that such an evil person as his son could exist, and agree that Goemon is as wicked as King Ajātaśatru of India and the Sui Emperor Yang of China, both of whom deposed their fathers to gain the throne.37 Except for the humorous names of Goemon’s henchman and the grudging admiration evident in descriptions of his martial and organizational skills, up to this point “A Fine Kettle of Fish” hardly qualifies as parody or black comedy, but here the story undergoes a haikai no renga-like shift of the sort analyzed earlier in this study. Godayū, who has served as a first-person narrator, disappears from the story, and its tone, with a third-person narrator now describing Goemon’s adventures in Kyoto, changes radically. Goemon, we are told, rides through the capital in broad daylight disguised as a high-ranking samurai, and sets up his hideout in a bamboo grove to the east of the Kamo River. Here he establishes and presides over a school for thieves, where older, experienced criminals teach their skills to young delinquents, each of whom is assigned the specialty best suited to his character and background:

35  A free and somewhat speculative translation of “窓くぐりの軽太夫.” 36  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 186. 37  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 187, notes 14, 15.

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He had those thieves whom divine protection had permitted to reach a certain age teach the basics of crime. Dissipated youths who still had their forelocks were taught to work as cutpurses, the bolder ones learned the art of the roadside holdup, those who had a look of decency about them were told the essentials of swindling, and those who had grown up in the countryside were sent out to steal cotton. And as if that weren’t bad enough, each trained in the forty-eight secret skills of his art until he earned a license!38 In his annotations to Twenty Cases, Matsuda Osamu points out that fortyeight, associated with the forty-eight vows of Amida Buddha, is the set number of skills needed to master sumo and other arts, and that the mode in which the skills of crime are taught to these apprentice thieves comically (and, according to Matsuda, in a haikai-like manner) links this passage to the medieval culture of secret transmission in the arts.39 Eventually Goemon’s three hundred-some followers violate the rules he has set for them and wreak havoc in Kyoto, bringing the wrath of the authorities down upon their leader. As an example to all, Goemon is sentenced to be boiled alive in oil along with his seven-year-old son beside the Kamo River. When the sentence is carried out, as the heat becomes unbearable Goemon plunges his little son into the boiling oil and stands on top of him, thus protecting the soles of his feet from the cauldron’s searing hot bottom. When the onlookers laugh at him, Goemon claims to have acted to end his child’s suffering. This excuse earns him even greater hostility from those present, who taunt him, saying “If you really had such scruples you wouldn’t be where you are now,”40 and predict that in his next life he will be food for the demons of hell. “A Fine Kettle of Fish” certainly portrays Goemon as a villain, but unlike, for example, the parricidal pleasure-quarter wastrel of the first story in Twenty Cases, he is no ordinary criminal and his crimes are not simply a case of extreme filial impiety. Rather, as Goemon excels in “the various arts,” trains himself to a high level of competency in the martial arts and skillfully forms and manages a school of crime, he comes across as a paragon of evil whose accomplishments bespeak a perversion of Confucian ethics, with their emphasis on learning, self-cultivation and the nobility of teaching. Moreover, the perverted hierarchical relationships depicted in this story, between Goemon and the son he plunges into boiling oil ostensibly for the child’s benefit, and between 38  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 187–88. 39  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 188, note 2. 40  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 188–89.

Illustration 13 Goemon and son boiled in oil. Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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older, experienced criminals and the youthful delinquents studying crime under their tutelage, are not simple violations of Confucian ethics but rather constitute a sort of parody of the ideal forms of hierarchical relationships espoused by Confucianism. Furthermore, since his final punishment is a direct result of the fact that his pupils, who according to Confucian ethics owe him a deference and consideration similar to that which children owe their parents, neglect the precepts he has set for them, Goemon himself becomes a victim as well as a perpetrator of violations of Confucian ethics. These elements of parody and moral ambiguity place “A Fine Kettle of Fish” at a distance from both those stories in Twenty Cases that more straightforwardly discourage vice and, needless to say, also distance it from the naïve morality tales of TwentyFour Paragons of Filial Piety. In addition to a complex and ambiguous relationship to Confucian ethics, “A Fine Kettle of Fish” exhibits a higher level of stylistic and structural complexity than any of the stories that precede it in Twenty Cases. Furthermore, the story features a device common to Saikaku’s more stylistically intricate ukiyozōshi: allusion to works of elite genres held in much higher esteem at the time than contemporary prose fiction. Namely, the plot of the story’s first half, in which Goemon’s father reveals to a group of unsuspecting travelers his identity as the father of a well-known bandit, then tells them of his sufferings, bears in these respects a strong resemblance to the many nō dramas centering on a revelation of identity to travelers, and the featuring of a boatman in the plot calls to mind the boatmen of the famed nō dramas Sumidagawa and Funa Benkei.41 The prose style of the scene that unfolds on and around Lake Biwa also has various features that link it to the style of nō: poetic landscape description, the use of “pillow words” associated with the town of Ōtsu42 and the province of Ōmi,43 and allusions to Buddhism such as its references to the sound of vesper-bells and to Mt. Hiei, site of Japan’s most important Tendai Buddhist temple, Enryakuji. All of the above features place it squarely within the same stylistic range as the other Saikaku works examined here and at an even greater distance from the style of Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety than is the case with the other stories in Twenty Cases we have examined so far. 41  Kanze Motomasa, Sumidagawa, in Koyama Hiroshi, Satō Kikuo, Satō Ken’ichirō, eds., Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 33: Yōkyokushū 1 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1973), pp. 502–16; Kanze Nobumitsu, Funa Benkei, in Koyama Hiroshi, Satō Kikuo, Satō Ken’ichirō, eds., Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 34: Yōkyokushū 2 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1975), pp. 430–48; Royall Tyler, ed., trans., Japanese Nō Dramas (London: Penguin, 1992), pp. 82–95, 251–63. 42  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 185, note 8. 43  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 185, note 12.

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To be sure, karma and the punishment of Heaven lend themselves to conflation, but the Buddhist and Confucian elements juxtaposed in this story do not reinforce each other in any other, obvious way. Nor are Buddhism and Confucianism shown to conflict. As we shall see, other stories in the collection clearly show the two traditions either as clashing or harmonizing. “I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk” Recalling the nō affinities of “A Fine Kettle of Fish,” the title of the story that follows it, “Ryokō no kure no sō nite sōrō” (I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk)44 with its use of the verb suffix “sōrō,” common in nō but not in the Saikaku texts examined in this study, and with its reference to a traveling monk, obviously alludes to the many nō plays featuring a monk on a pilgrimage who happens upon some mysterious personage while stopping after a long day’s journey. This allusion has an incongruous effect once the reader realizes that the ensuing narrative, with its depictions of outrageous and contemptible behavior, would make inappropriate material for the loftytoned nō stage. The subtitle, “Kumano ni musume yasashiki kusanoya” (In a Grass-Thatched Hut in Kumano, a Nice Girl [Awaits]), is even more clearly ironic, for the girl in question, Kogin, turns out to be extraordinarily ruthless, unfilial and violent. The story begins when Kogin, a girl from a peasant family, is nine. A monk making a pilgrimage to Kumano approaches Kogin’s village near nightfall and encounters the child with a group of her friends. The sight of the strange monk, who is panting and tottering with exhaustion after his journey over the mountains, causes the other girls to take fright and run away, but Kogin fearlessly invites him to her family’s nearby home. There the monk lets down his guard, casually opening the bundle containing his possessions under the little girl’s watchful eyes. He tells his hosts that he took the tonsure after the death of his mother and father, and is traveling to the various provinces of the realm to make offerings for his parents at holy sites in each. After the monk leaves to continue on his journey, Kogin whispers to her father, “That monk who was just here—I saw that he had a big stack of koban in a leather purse inside his bundle. Since he’s alone, there’s no way anybody will find out. Kill him and take his money!”45 Clearly we are dealing with a special sort of precocity here, and the narrator indicates that Kogin is all the more remarkable for recognizing cash when she 44  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 189–96. 45  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 190.

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sees it, given that she lives in a remote area where “people think that dried sea bream grows on trees, and don’t know what an umbrella is for.”46 The scene recalls the incomprehension of the rustic shopkeeper paid with a gold coin in “Almanac Maker.”47 Kogin’s father follows his daughter’s advice, catching up to the monk, killing him and taking his money. The murderer hides his victim’s corpse in a swamp, where it remains undiscovered. Meanwhile, Kogin’s family grows prosperous thanks to the capital provided by the dead man’s money. By age fourteen, Kogin has matured into an exceptionally beautiful young woman with a wealth of suitors. Proud of her looks, she flits from one man to the next, ruining her reputation. When Kogin’s parents criticize this behavior she ignores their admonitions and menacingly alludes to her father’s crime, saying “We’re this wealthy and prominent now thanks to the advice I gave you.”48 At last Kogin chooses a mate and her parents arrange a marriage according to her wishes. However, Kogin then discovers a tiny, nearly invisible scar at the base of her bridegroom’s ear, conceives a disgust for it and runs away to a relative’s house in Wakayama. Due to the scandal this causes in their community, Kogin’s parents have her placed as a servant in a samurai household away from their village. There Kogin soon seduces the master of the house. When, at his wife’s urging, he eventually breaks off his relationship with Kogin, the girl murders her mistress and runs off into hiding. Here the narrator describes this ungovernable daughter and servant as “brave and strong for a woman.”49 Matsuda detects in this comment an “inadvertent” note of “praise” that here takes Saikaku “beyond the realm of everyday ethics.”50 The authorities arrest Kogin’s parents, holding them hostage and condemning them to die if their daughter does not turn herself in by a given date, which happens to fall exactly six years after the night her father murdered the traveling monk. On the night before Kogin’s parents are to be executed, their jailer, noticing her father’s surprisingly good spirits, remarks to him that even those put to death for crimes they themselves have committed usually bewail their fate, whereas he seems willing to die for the crimes of another without complaint. By way of explaining his calm resignation, Kogin’s father confesses his murder of the monk, which the narrator frames as having imposed a karmic 46  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 191. 47  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 327–28; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 146. 48  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 192. 49  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 194. 50  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 194, note 1.

Illustration 14 Kogin murders her mistress. Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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burden on the murderer. Kogin’s father ends by tersely accepting his fate, saying, “Kono hazu” (“This is to be expected”).51 The story concludes when, having heard of the execution of her parents on the day after they are beheaded, Kogin turns herself in and meets the same end, hated by one and all, we are told, for having caused her parents’ death by not surrendering earlier. Donald Keene detects a possible element of burlesque in “Traveling Monk,” but adds that “it would take a very special reader to laugh,” given the horrific nature of the events described.52 However, much as in Amorous Man we saw several instances in which pathos or horror was undermined by or seasoned with irony or humor, in “Traveling Monk” the irony in the subtitle’s reference to Kogin as a “gentle girl” appears to give permission for at least a wry smile at the extravagance of little Kogin’s evil as she incites the murder of her family’s pious guest, and at the teenaged Kogin’s absurd finickiness when she rejects her bridegroom on account of a tiny, well-hidden scar. The nine-year-old Kogin’s malevolent precociousness calls to mind passages in other works by Saikaku in which a child or a female character displays worldly knowledge, cunning, or curiosity one would not expect from someone in his or her particular position, as we have seen with Yonosuke’s sexual precocity in the early chapters of Amorous Man, as well as in his absurd display of precocious erudition when attempting to seduce the man who becomes his first lover in the novel. We have also seen a similar but subtler precociousness in Oman, the teenaged heroine of “Gengobei,”53 when she disguises herself as a boy to seduce a monk whose erotic interests have hitherto been exclusively focused on shudō, and the text may be interpreted as indicating that she has detailed knowledge of the erotic techniques of the way of youths as well.54 As we shall later see, in another story in Twenty Cases, “Muyō no chikara jiman” (An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength), the matron of a prosperous, provincial merchant family displays unexpectedly detailed knowledge of big-city male and female prostitution as she attempts, unsuccessfully, to jump-start her sumo-obsessed, problematically unlibidinous son’s interest in sex by offering

51  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 195. 52  Keene, World Within Walls, p. 187. 53  Ihara, Gonin onna, pp. 367–89; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, pp. 193–229. 54  Ihara, Gonin onna, p. 383; Ihara, de Bary, Five Women, p. 220; Ihara, Morris, Amorous Woman and Other Writings, p. 114, p. 322, note 224. De Bary mistakenly terms the preparation in question “an aphrodisiac” (see Chapter 2, note 102).

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to arrange for him to dally with Kyoto courtesans and young kabuki actors in Osaka.55 The unexpected knowledge, cunning and cynicism that the nine-year-old Kogin displays at the beginning of “Traveling Monk,” on the other hand, regards money and the violent acquisition thereof, rather than concerning sex. The absurdity of her precociousness is heightened by the reversal of the roles of parent and child as Kogin’s father follows his daughter’s advice to murder and rob the monk, a sequence of events that, moreover, comprises an inversion of the family hierarchy so central to Confucian ethics. Kogin’s first act of filial impiety is thus to morally corrupt her own father, but the spectacle of a grown man being led into crime by the advice of a little girl is unlikely to win him pity or stir moral outrage at his daughter’s unfiliality. Without either of these reactions the reader is left either amused or simply amazed. Moreover, wicked though she is, Kogin’s cleverness, boldness and initiative, summed up in the narrator’s description of her as “kenage” (“strong and brave”),56 make her a more appealing character than her father, whose murder of a monk is every bit as deplorable as anything his daughter does, but who possesses none of her dash and intelligence. Kogin’s bravery first manifests itself in a benign form when she coolly guides the strange monk to her parents’ dwelling, whereas her playmates run home in fear at the sight of him, although her apparent kindness vanishes once she sees the man’s money. Interestingly, she shares the same name with two other equally courageous but contrastingly virtuous (but with a twist) female characters in Saikaku’s fiction. One is the Kogin of “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand” in Way of the Warrior, to be examined closely in Chapter 4, who righteously avenges her elder sister’s death and is lauded for her nonetheless unauthorized vendetta, for which she must afterward commit suicide.57 The other is a wife in Buke giri monogatari (Tales of Samurai Honor, 1688),58 who tells her husband that after he commits junshi (suicide to follow one’s master into death) she will remarry, which would make her a less than ideal widow in Confucian terms, when in fact she is merely trying to make it easy for her husband to prove his devotion to his dead lord (and former lover) by committing seppuku, which she proves by quickly following his suicide with her own. Reading the narratives alongside “Traveling Monk” 55  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 275. 56  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 194, p. 194, note 1. 57  Ihara, Budō, pp. 209–16. 58  Ihara, Budō, p. 214, note 9; Ihara Saikaku, Buke giri monogatari, in Fuji Akio, Hiroshima Susumu, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 69: Ihara Saikaku shū 4 (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2000), pp. 427–31; Ihara, Callahan, Samurai Honor, pp. 118–21.

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encourages an interpretation of its Kogin as a semi-appealing paragon of evil who shows us the dark side of audacity and bravery as a complement to the portrayals in Way of the Warrior and Samurai Honor of her virtuously brave namesakes—providing a balance between opposing forces such as that which is valorized in the final Zhuangzi quotation given above—and as a character who boldly exercises her will to take what she wants in ways that readers half wish they could emulate. Perhaps more importantly, given the text’s ostensible purpose of promoting Confucian morality, the immoral behavior of Kogin’s father raises the question of the position of unethical fathers in an ethical system based on absolute paternal power, a question posed strikingly in “A Fine Kettle of Fish,” whose unfilial villain-hero abuses his father at the story’s beginning, then ends his life as a self-serving and tyrannical father. In “Traveling Monk,” one of the more syncretic tales in Twenty Cases, Buddhist and Confucian morality and practice blend harmoniously. Having taken Buddhist orders, the title character has devoted his life to temple pilgrimages for the benefit of his dead parents, thus serving as a model of both Buddhist devotion and Confucian filial piety that contrasts with the doubly impious Kogin, who causes the death of both a Buddhist monk and her parents. Both the narrator and Kogin’s father treat his death for a crime he did not commit as karmic retribution for his murder of a Buddhist monk. Furthermore, the execution of Kogin’s parents occurs on the sixth anniversary of the monk’s death (the seventh by the inclusive Japanese count), which serves as an occasion for memorial services in Japanese Buddhism, a detail that emphasizes the karmic nature of Kogin’s father’s fate.

The Duty to Procreate

“Girls and Cherry Blossoms Fallen in Their Prime” In contrast, “Musumezakari no chirizakura” (Girls and Cherry Blossoms Fallen in Their Prime),59 which opens volume three of Twenty Cases, portrays the Confucian obligation to provide one’s parents and ancestors with descendants as conflicting with the Buddhist practice of abandoning worldly ties and shunning sex and reproduction. Its title partakes of the Buddhist-derived poetics of impermanence examined in the introduction to this study, and hints at the sympathies of the narrative that follows. The story takes place in the town of Yoshino (famed for its cherry blossoms) where Hikoroku, a prosperous 59  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 213–19.

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merchant, and his wife marry off Oharu (literally “Spring”), the eldest of their five daughters (they appear to have no sons), the first four of whom are named, in chronological order, after the four seasons. Oharu soon becomes pregnant, and although various precautions are taken to assure safe delivery of her child, eventually Oharu begins to feel pain in her abdomen, then dies several days later. Naturally Oharu’s parents are devastated, but they manage to forget their sorrow after others in their community admonish them to consider that many parents lose a child, and tell them that they should count themselves lucky to have so many daughters left. However, Oharu’s death is merely the beginning of a streak of bad luck, for the following year, when they marry off their second daughter, Onatsu (“Summer”), she too dies several months after conceiving a child. Overcome by grief, Onatsu’s parents ask themselves what sort of karmic burden could account for their double bereavement. In answer to this question, a third party tells the parents that the fetus should be cut from their dead daughter’s womb, with a sickle, in order to facilitate the process of rebirth into another body. The parents follow this advice, but get members of their Amidist congregation to perform the gruesome task for them. Gradually Hikoroku and his wife forget their sorrow, and when their third daughter, Oaki (“Autumn”), reaches the age of fifteen, neighbors advise the parents to turn over a new leaf by having her marry and by adopting their new son-in-law into the family. They do so, then hand over the management of their household to the bridegroom, taking the tonsure and contentedly spending their days on pilgrimages to prominent temples. Oaki’s husband turns out to be a diligent worker and a paragon of filial piety, a detail that shows the adaptation of the Confucian (and thus Chinese) model of filial piety to the Japanese custom of mukoiri, the adoption of sons-in-law by sonless couples. This new addition to the family provides his adoptive parents with a standard of living unusually high for a remote mountain town. In this manner Oaki’s parents regain a certain happiness. However, after four years the family’s luck runs out when Oaki, too, dies after becoming pregnant. Fearing that the dead girls’ grieving parents will kill themselves, their neighbors counsel them to preserve their lives and to marry off their fourth daughter, Ofuyu (“Winter”), quickly. Stunned as they are, the parents meekly follow their neighbors’ recommendations and leave the arrangements to them. However, before the deal is sealed, a tearful Ofuyu takes the stage wearing a nun’s robes, clutching a string of prayer beads and a box containing a pair of scissors, and declares:

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It is my wish to marry the Buddha. Even before this tragedy struck our family, I decided that this world was but a dream and an illusion. Since my sisters’ deaths I have wanted to spend my days in devotions for the benefit of their souls, but I have found myself unable to leave this home and become a nun. Still, I am unwilling for grief to visit this family yet again. It is the sight of these black tresses that has stirred your hearts and made you wish for this match.60 Ofuyu then prepares to cut her hair, thus marking her transition into Buddhist nunhood, but is prevented from doing so and is told by relatives, “That would be the height of filial impiety.” An aunt takes on the job of convincing Ofuyu to marry. “If only for three days, see what it’s like to live with a man,” she exhorts, “Then, if you wish, you may leave home and become a nun.”61 Bowing under pressure, Ofuyu consents to marry. Her aunt’s suggestion that she might enjoy marriage turns out to be true, for Ofuyu and her husband grow to love each other and spend four years together in wedded bliss. Then Ofuyu, too, becomes pregnant, and before her child is born, dies. In counterpoint to relatives’ Confucianist exhortations to Ofuyu to abandon her plans to become a nun and instead to fulfill her obligation toward her parents and her ancestors to marry and bear a child, her parents’ reaction to the death of their fourth daughter is decidedly Buddhist. They blame their repeated misfortune on a karmic burden from a previous life, and devote themselves completely to strict religious (i.e., Buddhist) observance, making offerings on behalf of their departed daughters and constantly chanting the nenbutsu. The couple’s last daughter is named Otome, which literally means “young girl” or “virgin,” but may, in line with the seasonal names of her elder sisters, also serve as a pun resonating with the nominal form of the verb “tomeru” (“to stop” [v.t.]), meaning something like “this one is the last” or “Enough!”62 At this point in the story Otome reaches a marriageable age. Her parents, regretting that they caused their fourth daughter’s death by coercing her to marry instead of becoming a nun, recommend to Otome that she take the tonsure, as her sister Ofuyu had wished to do. However, Otome has other ideas, thinking, “It would be a shame, after having been lucky enough to be born as a human being, never to have a man.”63 60  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 216–17. 61  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 217. 62  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 217, note 17. 63  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 218.

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With this, Otome runs away from her parents’ home, then takes a husband of her own choosing, a highway robber, as it turns out. One night, she guides her husband to her parents’ home for the purpose of stealing from them. They throw tatami (straw mats) over her sleeping parents to immobilize them.64 The couple then makes off with the loot, but the take is small, we are told. Afterward, fleeing into the mountains along paths they both know well, Otome and her husband, spooked by the enormity of their crime, imagine the stones they pass to be people, lose their composure and, through a careless misstep, fall to their deaths in a chasm they both should have known was there. This strangely perfunctory ending draws attention to the fact that the bulk of this story does not involve filial impiety and its punishment at all, but rather the opposite. For although the unfilial villains of each story in Twenty Cases meet with a fate directly presented as or implied to be the punishment of Heaven, each of the four filial daughters of “Girls and Cherry Blossoms” suffers a death more painful and prolonged than that of their unfilial sister. Moreover, the good daughters’ deaths are a direct result of the fulfillment of their filial duty to bring grandchildren into their parents’ household, the duty of sons in China, performed here, as already noted, with a Japanese twist, by daughters who have remained in their parents’ home after entering into a mukoiri marriage. (The parents’ adoption of their son-in-law is specified only in the case of Oaki’s marriage, but context implies that her elder sisters enter mukoiri marriages as well.) In counterpoint to Heaven’s miraculous aid to the prodigiously filial sons of the tales in Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety alluded to in the preface of Twenty Cases and in “A Fine Kettle of Fish,” in “Girls and Cherry Blossoms” the consecutive deaths during pregnancy of four sisters, taken together, constitute a miraculous misfortune. Their parents attribute this extraordinary fate to karma. They are shown throughout the story as thinking and acting within a Buddhist framework, and exhibit less eagerness to push their daughters into marriage than do their relatives and neighbors. In any case, in contrast to the heroes of Twenty-Four Paragons, in this story four characters suffer as a direct result of their obedience to the rules of filial piety, and Heaven does not reward the filial piety of either these sisters or Oaki’s husband, and is limited in its influence to the task of summarily punishing Otome’s petty theft and tatamitossing at the story’s end. The sly humor involved in passing off such a story as a morality tale encouraging filial piety is reinforced by the daughters’ punning names, which undermine the extreme pathos that would otherwise accompany a story of 64  This detail is contradicted by the illustration for this scene.

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four sisters who die consecutively while pregnant. Another noteworthy, subtly comical feature of the story is the role of the surrounding community, always quick to give advice that is always wrong, pressing Hikoroku and his wife to marry off one daughter after another, thus hastening the doom of each. When examining this aspect of “Girls and Cherry Blossoms,” one must keep in mind the importance during the period in question of the goningumi system, in which villagers and townsmen were grouped together in mutualresponsibility units consisting of five households each. These neighborhood organizations, which held authority in matters ranging from moneylending to marriage and inheritance, had, since their introduction in the 1640s, been a major tool in the Tokugawa shogunate’s successful efforts to attain a level of social control unprecedented in Japanese history.65 Viewed in this light, the baleful intrusiveness of the neighbors in “Girls and Cherry Blossoms” satirically demonstrates the downside of such a system: in such matters the community does not always know best. “Competitive Storytelling Was His New Amusement” In counterpoint to “Girls and Cherry Blossoms,” in the fourth and final story of the first volume, “Nagusami kaete hanashi no tentori” (Competitive Storytelling Was His New Amusement),66 the taking of Buddhist orders is again shown as in conflict with filial piety, but in this case it is taking the tonsure, in certain contexts, that is shown as problematic. In “Competitive Storytelling” it is the protagonist’s lack of a true calling to follow the Buddhist path and his total abandonment of his parents that are at issue, rather than specifically a failure to marry and procreate, although he does leave behind a fiancée in the process of abandoning his parents. The narrator strikes an almost secular-sounding note in the story’s first line, which states that even if one chants the nenbutsu in the belief that one needs nothing else in this floating world, after a day of fasting, one gets hungry. Presumably, this means that religious devotion is no substitute for attending to the demands of the body and other practical matters. He then suggests that many today take the tonsure without a true calling, either on a whim or for economic reasons, and may enjoy the unhurried life of a monk but are completely lacking in religious knowledge and do nothing but get fat from donated rice. The story then focuses in on its main narrative, introducing a wealthy salt merchant of Osaka. He has gotten on in years without having any children, but then he and his wife are finally blessed with the birth of a son. The baby 65  Totman, Early Modern Japan, pp. 112–13. 66  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 176–80.

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grows to be a beautiful boy whose looks are praised by all, and he is his parents’ pride and joy. They make a special effort to find their son a bride whose beauty matches his, and build a splendid house for the young couple and a dwelling nearby to which they themselves can retire. The parents then set a date for their son’s wedding. Around this time the son becomes involved in competitive storytelling on topics assigned in advance, a pastime then in fashion. On one occasion he receives a set of five enigmatic topics that sink him into constant, obsessive brooding that through a series of mental associations develops into a troubling meditation on the impermanence of all things, and ultimately leads to the sudden decision to set off for a temple before sunrise, leaving behind a note to his parents stating that he has gone off to take the tonsure. When people later try to reason with him he will have nothing of it, and runs away to a distant province, disappearing from his parents’ lives with no indication of where he has gone. For five years the heartbroken parents hear nothing from their son, and when their prolonged sorrow has put them on death’s doorstep they wonder what to do with all of their wealth, since their heir has disappeared. Giving up hope of finding him they dispose of their money and property, and, it is implied, die. Meanwhile, in a temple in far-off Kyushu their son experiences a personal crisis similar to the one that induced him to become a monk, only this time he “rashly” decides to return to lay life.67 He goes back to Osaka, but his parents and his home are gone, and he must now work as a craftsman and live a much more modest life than would have been his lot if he had not abandoned his parents. Using the expression “[like] a Buddha made of mud playing in the water,” which refers to self-destructive behavior born of ignorance or stupidity, the narrator closes the story by decrying the young man’s failure to discern what is most valuable, as well as his “useless [religious] belief” and his “thoughtless religious awakening.” These brought his parents unimaginable pain, the narrator continues, then he declares the protagonist’s behavior a peerless example of filial impiety.68 “Competitive Storytelling” thus presents us another scenario in which the Buddhist impulse to leave the world conflicts with the social and familial imperatives of Confucianism, but in this case the narrative comes down on the side of the latter, at least when the urge to take the tonsure is ill-considered, 67  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 180. 68  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 180.

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as it is in this case both because of the boy’s parents’ dependence on him as an only child and because what he takes as a religious awakening is actually only a mental crisis, as is supposedly proven by his change of heart years later. In the story’s introductory section the narrator draws a distinction between a true Buddhist vocation and taking the tonsure out of material self-interest; the narrator then performs a sort of bait-and-switch by telling the story of a child of wealth who presumably reduced his level of material well-being by becoming a monk without his parents’ support, motivated not by greed or laziness but rather due to a psychological disturbance he mistakes for a religious awakening. In the context of the frequent invocations of the Buddhist concept of impermanence in Saikaku’s fiction and its numerous approving accounts of characters taking the tonsure in response to an awakening to that impermanence (especially in Way of the Warrior), it is striking that in this story this one character’s perception of impermanence is portrayed as pathological, with the mental process by which he arrives at this state described step by step. This has the extraordinary effect of calling into question anyone’s Buddhist awakening, for how can one be sure that one is not simply suffering a disorder of the heart/ mind (which I designate thus in order to reflect the unity of thought and feeling implicit in the word “kokoro”)? These portrayals of conflict between Buddhist and Confucian attitudes and practice should be considered within the context of the ongoing critique of Buddhism in Confucianist discourse during the early Tokugawa period, examined in detail in Herman Ooms’s Tokugawa Ideology. Confucianist criticism of Buddhism reached a popular audience with the publication in 1638 of Kiyomizu monogatari, a bestselling kanazōshi written by Asayama Irin’an, a former Buddhist monk.69 A work of didactic fiction, Asayama’s book criticizes, among other aspects of Buddhism, Buddhist monasticism, characterizing it as a form of useless idleness. Defending Buddhism, an anonymous rebuttal to Kiyomizu monogatari, entitled Gion monogatari, was in turn published in 1643. Ironically, this appears to have stimulated demand for Asayama’s book, which was reprinted two years later.70 Any examination of Tokugawa-period debates over the relative merits of Buddhism and Confucianism is of course complicated by the syncretic nature 69  Donald Keene writes that the book reputedly sold three thousand copies, and dates the transformation of kanazōshi into a commercial enterprise from the time of its publication (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 156). 70  Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early Constructs, 1570–1680 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 151–61; Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 220–21.

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of Japanese religious practice through most of Japan’s recorded history. Indeed, as was the case with other aspects of Chinese culture, Japan’s Buddhist clergy served as a conduit for the introduction of Confucian texts. Not surprisingly, the blending of Confucian, Buddhist and/or Shinto beliefs and practice is evident in many of the tales of Twenty Cases, such as in “Traveling Monk,” as detailed above. In both “Girls and Cherry Blossoms” and “Competitive Storytelling,” on the other hand, Buddhist and Confucian practice are placed in opposition to one another. Given that Twenty Cases was published more than forty years after Kiyomizu monogatari had introduced such an opposition to the medium of popular fiction, it is not surprising that this should be portrayed as a source of conflict in two of its stories. By depicting Buddhist and Confucian practice as blending harmoniously in “Traveling Monk,” while portraying the two traditions as in conflict in “Girls and Cherry Blossoms” and “Competitive Storytelling,” Twenty Cases reflects the complexity of religious practice and discourse in earlyTokugawa Japan.71 On the whole, the prevailing sensibility in the four works examined in this study is Buddhist,72 but as is evident when considering “Girls and Cherry Blossoms” and “Competitive Storytelling” together, in depicting Buddhist/Confucian conflict these works eschew the easy answers of didacticism and refuse to come down decisively on either side. “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength” The Confucian imperative to reproduce receives an especially humorous treatment in the penultimate story in Twenty Cases, “Muyō no chikara jiman” (An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength).73 Here filial impiety manifests itself in part as an unwillingness to copulate and thus continue the family line. Son of a prosperous merchant family in Sanuki province, the protagonist Saibei also shows an excessive interest in sumo, an activity unworthy of someone of his station, and more importantly, one that makes him neglect his duty to marry, procreate, and prepare to take over the family business. “Untoward Pride” opens at a series of sumo bouts near the protagonist’s home in Shikoku featuring both local talent and wrestlers from the Kamigata. 71  Daniel Struve makes similar observations in his section on “the dialogue of ideologies” (Ihara Saikaku, pp. 218–19). 72  Someya writes that Saikaku had little interest in or admiration for Neo-Confucian discourse, and that he was “closer” to the doctrines of commoner Buddhism than to those of Confucianism (Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 141–42). 73  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 274–78. One could also translate this title as “Pride in His Useless Strength.”

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The venue is packed with onlookers and the narrator tells us that the matching of metropolitan skill with rural strength makes for a thrilling spectacle. It starts a vogue for sumo in the area, and cowherds and firewood cutters are soon exhausting themselves practicing the forty-eight moves of sumo, blithely risking serious injury, all in hopes of acquiring skills the narrator judges “useless.”74 Among these new sumo enthusiasts is Marugameya no Saibei, young scion of a long-established chōnin family in the money-changing trade, who takes “Takamatsu no Araiso” as his wrestling name. As someone well known in society, it does not befit him to indulge in such a pastime no matter how much he enjoys it, the narrator opines. The boy’s father agrees: “When it comes to hobbies, the koto, go, calligraphy and painting of course make a good impression,” his father sensibly admonished, “as well as things like the tea ceremony, kemari, short-bow archery and nō chanting. But it just isn’t proper for you to strip off your clothes and battle it out, risking life and limb. You must give this up at once, start associating with the right sort of companions and learn to read the Four Books.”75 Here Matsuda notes that sumo was considered a low-class hobby,76 whereas the first four alternative pastimes suggested by Saibei’s father were the most appropriate pursuits for warriors and gentlemen.77 The Four Books are, as one might expect, Chinese Confucian texts: The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects of Confucius and Mencius. Women are better at handling this sort of issue, the narrator informs us, and after appealing to her son to give up his unseemly hobby and prepare for taking over the family business so she and her husband can retire, Saibei’s mother proposes that he indulge in some Kamigata sex tourism, which she apparently does in order to sweeten the deal, to distract him from sumo and to spur his interest in sex and thus in marriage, which will soon be on the agenda. However, she does not get the reply for which she was hoping: “Since this is already your nineteenth spring,” his mother said, “take a trip to the capital to see the cherry blossoms, and since we’ve been saving up money for this sort of thing, while you’re there, visit Shimabara and go 74  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 274. 75  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 274–75. 76  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 275, note 15. 77  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 275, note 14.

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see every single tayū in the quarter. Then go meet some actors in Osaka, and if some young lad among them strikes your fancy, pay off his bond on the spot. Then buy him a house in this place called, uh, MitsuderaShin’yashiki or something, and make it into an intimate little hideaway for the two of you. Even if you end up spending one or two thousand ryō, you won’t make a lasting dent in our funds. Just leave everything to Mamma.” It was quite an offer, but Saibei would have nothing of it, replying, “In all the world, for me there is no other pleasure than sumo.”78 A number of the family’s business assistants listen in on this conversation, and they are appalled, all thinking, “If I had parents like that and could get laid to my heart’s content, I could leave this world with no regrets. Wow, the young master sure doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it!”79 Saibei is left to pursue his hobby and grows in strength and bulk, such that at age nineteen he looks as if he were thirty. His family decides to have him marry early, thinking that this will cause him to have a change of heart about his current obsession. A suitable match is found for him and the two are married, but Saibei refrains from having sex with his bride even once. When his former wet nurse is sent to plead with him about this state of affairs, he tells her, “I would hate to lose any strength when I am at the height of my powers. By the bodhisattva Hachiman, the goddess Marishi-ten and Fudō Myōō, even if I am consumed in fire for it,80 I don’t like women!”81 Saibei thus continues to sleep alone, “treating his wife as an ornament,”82 and training until he is the best wrestler in Shikoku and everyone is afraid to grapple with him. This accomplishment goes to his head, which does not endear him to those around him. Then at last he meets his match in a man whose strength makes up for what he lacks in technique, and who simply picks Saibei up and then throws him down, such that, as the narrator expresses it, punning on his wrestling name (which means “rugged shore with a tall pine”), “It was almost as if he was lodged in the sand [of the wrestling ring] like a wrecked ship buried in [the sand of] a rugged shore.”83 78  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 275. 79  Ihara, Nijū fukō, pp. 275–76. 80  An alternate rendering of this phrase is “It would make my body hot [to sleep with a woman]” (Ihara, Teruoka, Gendaigoyaku Saikaku zenshū, Vol. 8, p. 117). 81  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 277. 82  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 277. 83  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 278.

Illustration 15 “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength.” Saikaku to ukiyozōshi kenkyū, Kasama Shoin.

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Saibei is badly injured and despite the best of care he makes little progress in recovering. He is angry with himself, and since he now attacks people at the slightest provocation, the servants are afraid to go to his sick room, so his parents have to massage his feet and take away his urine and excrement, such that this man “whose divine protection had run out” now becomes known as “[his] parents’ punishment.”84 Saibei’s offense against filial piety is twofold, involving disobedience of his parents’ commands to give up his supposedly vulgar hobby, and a concomitant rejection of sex and thus reproduction due to his professed lack of interest, his channeling of erotic energy into athletic competition and his fear that sexual intercourse will sap his strength. This fear is rooted in the physiological notions of that time and place, reflected also at the end of Amorous Man’s first chapter, where, after listing the prodigious numbers of Yonosuke’s male and female sex partners up to the age of fifty-four, the narrator expresses wonder that Yonosuke has survived so long after so wantonly squandering his semen.85 With the wealthy chōnin parents’ (and the narrator’s) conception of sumo as a vulgar pastime and with the conflict that results, we have a reappearance in “Untoward Pride” of the wealthy chōnin snobbery and status anxiety of Amorous Man. Sumo is described here as “useless,” as were the martial arts in general in “A Fine Kettle of Fish,” but most of the gentleman’s pastimes that are suggested as appropriate alternatives to sumo, each of which has a samurai or aristocratic pedigree, are of practical use only in that they can help advance or maintain social status. Although in the context of refusing to have sex with his wife Saibei professes to dislike or even hate women (in the original this sentiment is expressed with the word “iya”), he passes up a chance for sex with other males as well when he refuses his mother’s offer to pay for a high-budget sex tour of Kyoto and Osaka, which she apparently hopes will help cause her son to abandon sumo in favor of (eventually marital) sex. Here as earlier we see “the two ways of love” portrayed not as opposites or mutually exclusive but rather as related to and potentially even reinforcing each other. With this the second-to-last story in Twenty Cases we have been presented a full range of issues related to sexual behavior and its interface with the duties prescribed by filial piety. In the first two stories of the first volume, sons’ sexual self-indulgence with prostitutes brings financial ruin and death. “Untoward 84  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 278. 85  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 23; Ihara, Drake, Sensuous Man, in Shirane, Early Modern Japanese Literature, p. 50; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 106. The line in question is omitted from Hamada’s translation.

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Pride” comically reverses this scenario with its protagonist’s unfilial refusal to have sex even with his wife, prefigured by his refusal of his mother’s proposal that he amuse himself with prostitutes and kabuki actors. We have already seen this narrative strategy of using opposing plot lines at or near the beginning and end of a collection of stories in Five Women, whose first and last stories depict, respectively the punishment and reward of a pleasure quarter wastrel and a young woman from a wealthy family who pursues him. We shall see it again in Way of the Warrior, whose first volume begins with a story in which two wakashu attached to prominent samurai nenja cooperate to commit a pre-emptive junshi,86 and whose final volume opens with a story in which two grown men who had served their lord in a similar capacity outlive him and become (comically) bitter rivals.87 Saibei’s mother’s sex tour proposal derives some of its comedy from its specificity; Mitsudera-Shin’yashiki is in fact the quarter of Osaka in which many kabuki actors were housed during that period. Matsuda comments that “this is a mother with quite a bit of information,”88 and such specific knowledge regarding the particulars of big-city kabuki-actor prostitution may have struck contemporary readers as unusual in the matron of a provincial merchant family; this detail seems to serve no other purpose than to highlight the level of Saibei’s mother’s knowledge regarding the subject in question, which would indicate that the fact that she possesses such knowledge would itself have been noteworthy. The mother’s knowledge and her sex-tourism proposal, along with Saibei’s professed preference for sumo over sex or any other pleasure, reverse the elsewhere normal opposition between lustful youths and parents who try to rein them in from or punish them for their sexual excesses, as in “Sleeves Drenched,” the first part of “Seijūrō” and the portion of Amorous Man in which the nineteen-year-old Yonosuke is disowned for his incessant frequenting of prostitutes and the resulting expenditures and neglect of his duties. In “Untoward Pride” the business assistants’ shock on hearing Saibei pass up his mother’s generous offer adds to the comedy of the scene by highlighting the eccentricity of Saibei’s rejection of such a proposition. Of all the unfilial villains in the stories we have examined, Saibei is the hardest to hate and his villainy is the most ambiguous and problematic, for a major component of his offense consists of an excess of discipline manifested both in his total sexual abstinence and his single-minded devotion to sumo. In the latter he resembles Goemon, the martial arts expert and accomplished crime 86  Ihara, Budō, pp. 21–30. 87  Ihara, Budō, pp. 283–92 . 88  Ihara, Nijū fukō, p. 275, note 21.

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educator, except that Saibei’s energy and discipline are channeled into an activity that is not illegal or unethical per se, but rather is simply deemed unseemly for a young man from a wealthy family, and, more importantly, puts his health at risk (as does, incidentally, the derring-do of the samurai we shall see both lauded and ridiculed in Way of the Warrior). The placement at the beginning and end of Twenty Cases of stories whose unfilial sons exhibit the extremes of sexual license and sexual abstinence draws attention to the variety of sexual issues featured in the stories in between. In these we are introduced to female characters with whom sexual relationships prove highly problematic as well: the willful rejecter of husbands in “Battered Trunk,” who only seems able to desire an inappropriate object; Kogin, who in contrast willfully pursues multiple men and willfully rejects one; and the sisters of “Girls and Cherry Blossoms,” four of whom lose their lives as a result of fulfilling their duty to marry and reproduce, and one of whom marries an inappropriate man against her parents’ wishes. The range of sexual offenses against filial piety featured here bespeaks a Confucian drive to enlist and channel desire toward narrowly defined ends, and suggests that Confucianism construes a lack of desire as just as much an offense as giving free rein to excessive desire. The pervasive irony of some of these stories casts doubt on the desirability of this commandeering of desire, as does reading them alongside Amorous Man, in which ten-year-old Yonosuke uses “stinking of Confucius” as an epithet for excessive severity, and in which the happiest moment of the novel comes with the announcement of the death of Yonosuke’s father, an event that leaves him with a fortune to spend on prostitutes. Amorous Man, Way of the Warrior and Five Women all in their own way privilege the vagaries of desire over its regimentation, and in Twenty Cases this same sensibility is dialogically juxtaposed with the text’s stern moralizing. The varying and inconsistent treatment of the theme of filial piety and its opposite in Twenty Cases illustrates the difficulties involved in the wholesale acceptance of any system of ethics and implies that such systems, however useful they may seem in some situations, can never prove sufficiently subtle to deal exhaustively with the complexities of human desires and interactions. In this manner Saikaku’s Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan calls to mind Zhuangzi’s criticism of Confucianism’s certainties. Morally ambiguous rather than amoral, this collection of stories dispenses what Milan Kundera terms “the wisdom of the novel” and defines as “the wisdom of uncertainty,”89 a sort of wisdom, as we have seen, in plentiful supply in Saikaku’s fiction. 89  Kundera, L’art du roman, p. 18; Kundera, Asher, The Art of the Novel, p. 7.

CHAPTER 4

The Brave, the Bad and the Ridiculous: Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Introduction The samurai are a model for the people, an example shining mirror-like above them, as Mirror Mountain towers above Ōmi Province, unclouded in this spring of the Tokugawa …1 So begins the first story in Budō denraiki (Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior, 1687). However, the samurai characters in the stories that follow are a decidedly mixed bag, portrayed alternately as brave, cowardly, naïve, cunning, honest, treacherous, loyal, quick to anger, absurdly violent, lecherous, capable of extreme devotion and self-sacrifice, and abusive of their power over both commoners and fellow samurai of lesser status. Although ostensibly set in the period preceding the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1600, as Saikaku scholar Taniwaki Masachika has demonstrated, a number of seemingly intentional anachronisms allow for an interpretation of these stories as thinly veiled depictions of contemporary conditions.2 As delineated in the introduction to this study, with its system of hereditary status categories, according to which the wealthiest merchant theoretically owed deference to the poorest samurai, Tokugawa-era society was shaped by two competing hierarchies: an official hierarchy based on the status-group into which one was born, and a de facto hierarchy based largely on wealth. As portraits of the politically dominant class of Saikaku’s day, the samurai, written by a member of the economically dominant class, prosperous urban commoners, and largely for an audience of his peers, Saikaku’s samurai narratives enrich our understanding both of the dialectic between the Tokugawa era’s two 1  Ihara, Budō, p. 21. (References are to the Shōgakukan edition except where otherwise indicated.) 2  Ihara Saikaku, Budō denraiki, in Taniwaki Masachika, Fuji Akio, Inoue Toshiyuki, eds., Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei, Vol. 77 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989), p. 6, note 9; Taniwaki Masachika, “Budō denraiki kaisetsu,” in Taniwaki Masachika, Fuji Akio, Inoue Toshiyuki, eds., Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei, Vol. 77 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989), pp. 571–89; Taniwaki, “Saikaku no jishu kisei to kamufurāju.” Regarding similar strategies in theatrical pieces of the era, see Hibbett, Floating World, p. 24. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004344310_006

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competing social hierarchies and of commoner attitudes toward the samurai. With its widely varying portrayals of the samurai and depictions of shudō love affairs crossing the lines of status-group and rank, Way of the Warrior is especially instructive with regard to these issues, and also has broad implications for the ongoing scholarly discussion over the extent to which, if at all, one can discern criticism of Tokugawa feudalism3 in Saikaku’s fiction. This chapter aims to contribute to this discussion by demonstrating that Way of the Warrior evinces a blend of admiration for the bravery, cultural attainments4 and style of the samurai with a contrasting frustration at the limits placed on commoners and occasional samurai abuses of power, as well as with contempt for those samurai who do not live up to the ideals of the warrior ethos.5 In this light and that of the precedents set by earlier fictional works by Saikaku such as those analyzed in the first three chapters of this study, it will interpret certain portions of Way of the Warrior as implying a desire on the part of prosperous chōnin to transcend the purely economic identity allotted them. Furthermore, it will argue that the collection as a whole impels the reader toward the reluctant conclusion that even some admirable aspects of the warrior ethos are obsolete in the peaceful, mercantile society of its day. Way of the Warrior and Saikaku’s warrior narratives in general have been the object of increased scholarly attention and a positive critical reassessment. Someya Tomoyuki uses his analyses and appraisals of Saikaku’s bukemono to redress scholarly and critical slighting of these in favor of his chōnin narratives, writing that his warrior tales evince greater understanding of samurai society than Saikaku has been given credit for. Moreover, Someya has problematized characterizations of Saikaku as primarily a “realist” by focusing on the idealism and romanticism inherent in his works’ depictions of erotic relationships between males in samurai milieus.6 Sasaki Akio singles out Way of Warrior as the most successful realization of what he posits as Saikaku’s “desperate desire to represent the real world with its chaos and contradictions and in all its hugeness and diversity,” a desire evident, says Sasaki, in Saikaku’s marathon solo performances of rapid haikai linked-verse composition and, afterward, in his fiction. Sasaki goes on to write that, taken as a unified whole, the

3  For an explanation of my use of this term, see Introduction, note 67. 4  Hibbett, Floating World, p. 16. 5  Donald Keene, for his part, writes that in his warrior narratives “Saikaku expressed almost uncritical admiration” for the samurai (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 189). 6  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 9–16, 99.

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thirty-two stories in Way of the Warrior “open up an incomparably vast world [to the reader].”7 As noted earlier, the diversity of subject matter, points of view and value judgments in Saikaku’s fiction noted by Sasaki, Someya and others, as well as the fusion of literary styles and of materials drawn from multiple genres examined throughout this study, recall the blending of multiple voices, literary styles, points of view and genres that Bakhtin views as defining characteristics of early novelistic discourse in Europe.8 They also correspond to a diversity in scholarly opinion regarding the stance of Saikaku’s fiction toward the samurai-dominated Tokugawa social order, which ranges from Jeffrey Johnson’s statement that Saikaku “clearly delighted in overturning all hierarchies”9 to Howard Hibbett’s assertions that although one can perceive “an occasional glint of irony” in Saikaku’s portrayals of samurai,10 he “[did not] question the principle that crimes violating the feudal hierarchical system were especially heinous”11 and “was of course no more critical of feudal institutions and capricious economic policies (so far as these were known) than of the harsh edicts of the shogun.”12 Limiting his scope to the courtroom narratives of Saikaku’s Honchō ōin hiji (Trials in the Shade of a Cherry Tree, 1689), Mark Silver writes that they purvey “an ideology of infallible [Tokugawa-regime] justice […] in perfect accord with the image projected as a matter of policy by the administrators of the actual Tokugawa era […] justice system,” and goes so far as to write that these stories “look suspiciously like official propaganda or the results of censorship.”13 Writing of another collection of warrior tales by Saikaku, Buke giri monogatari (Tales of Samurai Honor, 1688), Caryl Ann Callahan takes the middle ground regarding Saikaku’s general stance toward the Tokugawa social order, stating, “That Buke Giri Monogatari is not a panegyric of giri [honor] and the bushi [samurai] does not mean that it is a bitter social satire. Saikaku

7  Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 71–73. 8  Bakhtin, “Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,” pp. 409–11. 9  Johnson, “The Carnivalesque in Saikaku’s Œuvre,” p. 43; Johnson, “Turnabout,” p. 344. 10  Hibbett, Chrysanthemum, p. 68. 11  Hibbett, Chrysanthemum, p. 67. 12  Hibbett, Chrysanthemum, p. 68. Similarly, in his analysis of stories in Five Women, Donald Keene warns against supposing that Saikaku wished to criticize the Tokugawa regime, and writes that “Saikaku had no wish to liberate the chōnin (townsman) class from the restrictions imposed on it by the samurai” (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 179). 13  Mark Silver, Purloined Letters: Cultural Borrowing and Japanese Crime Literature, 1868–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), pp. 24, 26.

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was basically neither a didactic nor a polemical writer.”14 As mentioned earlier, Daniel Struve, in turn, writes of a “dialogue of ideologies”15 in Saikaku’s fiction, including those of the samurai and chōnin, in which none can claim hegemony.16 Yano Kimio views Way of the Warrior in particular as critical of the warrior-dominated Tokugawa social order, writing that further analysis is needed to determine whether one should perceive in these tales the “tragedy of samurai helpless to resist the irrationalism that held sway in samurai society,” an effort to lampoon a warrior class who “were obsessed by individual honor to the point of ridiculousness,” or both.17 He also points out the hostile reaction to Way of the Warrior in the preface of the laudatory Kokon bushi kagami (Warrior Paragons Past and Present, 1693),18 and typifies that text’s reverent approach as the polar opposite of Saikaku’s “cold, penetrating gaze” directed at samurai society.19 Close examination of the scholarly works cited above and the various Saikaku narratives to which they refer is likely to win over Japan scholars of any discipline to the current received wisdom of literary studies (in the West, at least): that it is futile to attempt to discern a consistent authorial intent behind such texts, especially over the course of a literary career or in works that were subject to politically motivated censorship. For example, if one accepts both Taniwaki’s assertion that Way of the Warrior is a “camouflaged” portrait of Tokugawa-era samurai and Mark Silver’s characterization of Trials in the Shade of a Cherry Tree as depicting the era’s justice system as infallible, the contrast between the latter work and the first story examined below, which ends with the depiction of a monstrous miscarriage of justice that is never redressed, demonstrates the lack of a consistent stance in this regard in Saikaku’s œuvre.20 Similar, seemingly deliberate inconsistencies are often detectable in individual Saikaku texts as well, as Jeffrey Johnson has eloquently pointed out.21 The first chapter in this study has demonstrated how, in two separate chapters,

14  Caryl Callahan, “Tales of Samurai Honor: Saikaku’s Buke Giri Monogatari,” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1979), p. 5 (translator’s introduction). 15  Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 218–45. 16  Struve, Ihara Saikaku, p. 222. 17  Yano Kimio, “Budō denraiki: Katakiuchi o gyōshi suru,” Bungakukai: Kaishaku to kanshō, Vol. 58, No. 8 (1993), p. 99. 18  Yano, “Katakiuchi,” p. 94. 19  Yano, “Katakiuchi,” p. 99. 20  Ihara, Budō, pp. 148–61. In the context of his analysis of Saikaku’s Worldly Mental Calculations, Donald Keene observes, “Obviously Saikaku has no consistent philosophy” (Keene, World Within Walls, p. 203). 21  Johnson, “Turnabout,” pp. 336, 341.

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Amorous Man declares itself in agreement with the spirit behind the Tokugawa regime’s proliferating sumptuary regulations, but does so in an immediate context and a wider one that both obviously run counter to this spirit. One must keep in mind both this precedent of seemingly deliberate equivocation (repeated, as I have shown, in other fictional works by Saikaku) and its implications of dissatisfaction with limits placed on chōnin self-assertion when examining Way of the Warrior’s portrayals of interactions across the lines of rank and status-group, which feature prominently in a number of the stories analyzed in this chapter. Recent historical scholarship has tended to challenge earlier characterizations of the Tokugawa regime’s status-group system as a rigid caste system.22 Indeed, as for the supposed division of commoners into, in order of rank, peasants, artisans and merchants, Saikaku’s fiction tends to confirm the emerging consensus that this was a matter of Confucian theory rather than legal practice, and that the main status-division was that between samurai and commoners.23 David Howell has written extensively about opportunities for political power open to commoners and of chinks in the barriers to mobility between status-groups. However, Howell also notes the difficulty under the Tokugawa status-group system of using wealth to enter the ruling class, and gives evidence that many prosperous commoners desired to do so and that the shogunal and domain authorities exploited this desire but seldom satisfied it in anything but a symbolic fashion.24 Depictions in Saikaku’s fiction of interactions, amorous and otherwise, across the lines of status-group and rank should be read against this historical backdrop. As a collection of vendetta tales, Way of the Warrior invites comparison with the various fictionalized retellings of that most famous samurai vendetta, that of Asano Naganori’s forty-seven loyal retainers, who in 1703 avenged the death of their lord and soon paid for it with their lives. Whereas in the story’s best-known version, Kanadehon chūshingura (1748), a puppet play later adapted to other media such as kabuki, all is sacrificed for the sake of loyalty to one’s lord, in Way of the Warrior family and lovers trump lords and masters, except where one’s lover and one’s master are one and the same. The thirty-two 22  Beerens, Friends, pp. 144–45, 179–205, 276–77; Ōguchi, “Foreword,” pp. xiii–xiv; Mark Metzler, Gregory Smits, “Introduction: The Autonomy of Market Activity and the Emergence of Keizai Thought,” in Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Gregory Smits, eds., Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 6–7; David L. Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 21, 24–25, 39, 54, 57–58; Moriyama, Crossing, pp. 7, 261–62. 23  Howell, Geographies, pp. 24–25; Metzler, Smits, “Introduction,” pp. 6–7. 24  Howell, Geographies, pp. 57–58, 60–61.

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stories in Way of the Warrior deal with both authorized and unauthorized vendettas. In early-modern Japan, a samurai whose elder, male family member was killed could request and receive official permission to exact revenge.25 Anyone who carried out a vendetta for which no such permission was granted risked execution for murder. Therefore, in these stories, those who carry out unauthorized vendettas usually commit suicide afterward, or run away to another province. Despite their illicit nature, Way of the Warrior portrays its unauthorized vendettas as motivated by at least partially laudable notions of loyalty or honor. As noted earlier in this study, much of the fiction produced for the publishing industry that emerged at the beginning of the Tokugawa period and for its audience of urban commoners and urbanized samurai parodied classical texts from elite genres. Other fictional works were didactic, promoting virtues such as frugality, filial piety or female chastity. Saikaku’s fiction differed from that of his immediate predecessors in blending sometimes subtle parody of the classics of an earlier age into narratives that portrayed the conditions of Saikaku’s day, and by weaving learnedly allusive, poetic passages together with sections featuring plainer diction. As we have seen, parody in Saikaku’s works sometimes takes the form of a subtly undermined moral didacticism, such as in his stories of wicked children in Twenty Cases, ostensibly meant to encourage filial piety through cautionary depictions of its opposite, but in which the unfilial sons and daughters sometimes display admirable qualities, and the parents they victimize sometimes seem to deserve their fates. Similarly, Way of the Warrior, whose stories are laced with allusions and references to works by, for and/or about the samurai elite (Taiheiki, various nō dramas), as well as the court aristocracy (The Tale of Genji) and the Buddhist clergy (chigo monogatari), lauds the samurai ethos then proceeds to problematize it. Variously parodic, ironic or seemingly reverent, its literary allusions and references function at times to borrow the cachet of the source texts and at others to undermine them and, in the case of classics associated with the samurai, to lampoon or critique the behavior and ideology of the class that produced them. This sets Way of the Warrior apart from Amorous Man and Five Women, whose references to the classics of Heian-period aristocratic literature, even when comical, do not function, I would contend, as an attack on their prestige or on the social group that produced them. Judging by the tales that follow, the opening passage of the first story in Way of the Warrior positing the samurai as paragons proves neither wholly earnest nor exclusively ironic. There are many striking displays of bravery and loyalty 25  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), p. 54, note 3.

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on the part of the samurai characters in the stories of this collection, but at other times they are more notable for qualities that are supposedly the antithesis of the samurai way. Furthermore, displays of bravery and loyalty by the samurai characters in these stories often come across as foolhardy, pointless, or exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness. As a result it is impossible to pin down the position of this text on matters such as the violent defense of one’s personal honor, since, depending on the passage in question, Way of the Warrior variously portrays this aspect of the samurai ethos as laudable, regrettable or absurd. The stories examined in this chapter are arranged thematically rather than in order of appearance in Way of the Warrior, and are broadly divisible into two groups. Although praiseworthy qualities are displayed by at least some samurai characters in all of these stories, notably by those who do away with the miscreants among their ranks, in the first group of stories portrayals of samurai characters as treacherous, behind the times, rash, extravagantly cruel, and alternately cowardly and foolhardy are especially prominent. One or more shudō relationships figure in each of the stories in the second group, with some of these featuring conflict rooted in the jealousy and envy of outside parties who lust after another man’s wakashu. (In one story a man’s unwillingness to allow his own beloved youth to slip from his arms into adulthood leads to violence.) Depictions of shudō in these stories partake of both the idealism of which Someya writes and, in counterpoint, of the often nasty realism typical of the stories in the first group, such that shudō becomes an arena for the most noble and ignoble samurai behavior. The final two stories analyzed below possess especial significance in the context of this study and its extensive treatment of the interplay in Saikaku’s fiction of various social levels and the cultural phenomena associated with them, as in these tales shudō serves as a medium for social convergence across the lines of status-group and rank. Following the analyses of individual stories in Way of the Warrior, the concluding section of this chapter will examine the implications of this collection as a whole regarding chōnin interactions with and attitudes toward samurai in Saikaku’s time.

Part 1: Samurai Behaving Badly

“Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion” The third story in the fourth volume of Way of the Warrior provides a striking example of interplay between the competing voices discussed above. It also features the temporal masking of depictions of current conditions that

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Taniwaki discerns in Way of the Warrior, as well as conflict between characters representing, respectively, the spirit of a money-centered present and that of a warlike past, which we shall encounter elsewhere in Way of the Warrior as well. In “Mufunbetsu wa mikoshi no kinobori” (Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion),26 the scene is set in Kumamoto by means of a passage of unattributed dialogue, in which someone apparently new to the city asks another who the owner of a particularly splendid house is. The other answers:27 That is the home of Ōkabe Gengozaemon, a newcomer who has been busily making a name for himself. In three years his land grant went from a paltry twenty-five koku to two thousand. These days even when someone doesn’t know the way of the warrior, if he’s good with an abacus and heralds himself with the words “bottom line” he can find a good position wherever he goes, whereas a retainer from a distinguished family that has served his lord for generations is sure to see his allotment reduced. The world has changed in many ways, and in the future, those who pass for samurai will probably wear money-scales at their waists instead of swords.28 After this introduction, the action then shifts to the garden of the house of the upstart Gengozaemon, whom we have just heard so unflatteringly described. It is midsummer and his only son, three-year-old Kohachirō, takes a fancy to some brightly colored leaves high in a maple tree planted on an artificial hill. Nagging for the leaves, the boy sends a male servant up the tree to pick them, thus setting the plot in motion. For meanwhile, next door, Yasumori Tozaemon, a samurai of rigid temperament, is home enjoying his day off. He has opened wide the doors of a room overlooking his garden and settled into a private conversation there with his wife. One thing leads to another, and hoping to ease the stress caused by his work, the two soon find themselves in an intimate embrace. Predictably, the servant in Gengozaemon’s garden catches sight of all this from his perch high in the maple tree. He then says or thinks (the original does not specify which) something that can be translated as either “Those two

26  Ihara, Budō, pp. 148–61. 27  As I have done with Twenty Cases in Chapter 3, since there is no full, published English translation of Way of the Warrior available I hope to give readers a sense of the tone of its stories by including translations of this and other passages. 28  Ihara, Budō, p. 148.

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appear to be married, but they really seem to be enjoying themselves,” or “Those two appear to be married, and they really seem to be enjoying themselves.”29 The servant does not remain undetected. Tozaemon sees that he and his wife are being watched. He complains to her about this invasion of privacy, and asks if any word was sent from next door warning them that the servant would be climbing the tree and thus putting himself where he could peer inside their home. When she replies that there was no such warning, Tozaemon says of his powerful neighbor: I already hated the way he always arrogates to himself our lord’s authority and even makes light of samurai who have been in service here for ages. But by letting this happen without sending word, now he’s really started to walk all over us.30 With that he takes up a musket and shoots at his neighbor’s servant, who has already climbed halfway down the tree but now falls dead to the ground. When Gengozaemon hears about this he says, “Naturally it was careless on our part that no one sent word, but such an overreaction as this is unforgivable.”31 He rushes next door and soon both he and Tozaemon have drawn their swords. However, no real duel ensues, because the blade of Gengozaemon’s sword gets stuck in the doorframe and Tozaemon then takes advantage of his helplessness to cut him down. Tozaemon takes flight and kills two of his dead neighbor’s young retainers as he makes his escape. Years later, when Kohachirō is fifteen,32 his mother tells him of the circumstances of his father’s death, and the boy resolves at once to avenge him. He gains authorization for a vendetta from the local daimyo, who deplored the loss of such an able administrator when his father died. After lengthy wanderings ending with the death of both his companions and his mother at the hands of bandits, he enters the service of a lord who is then revealed to him as his father’s killer in disguise. Kohachirō confronts him and after a brief duel kills him. Taken into custody for the grave crime of killing his own master, Kohachirō tells the authorities that he was carrying out a legally authorized vendetta. They send an envoy back to Kumamoto to check Kohachirō’s story, but meanwhile the old daimyo there has died. With his father’s benefactor out 29  The source of this ambiguity is the particle “ga.” 30  Ihara, Budō, p. 149. 31  Ihara, Budō, p. 150. 32  Again, these ages are given according to the traditional East Asian count, such that in most cases age fifteen would correspond to age fourteen by the Western count.

Illustration 16 “Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion.”  Waseda University Library.

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of the picture Kohachirō has no one left to protect him, and officials who still resent his father’s high-handed manner tell the envoy that they have never heard of Kohachirō, and rudely send the envoy away. Kohachirō is therefore sentenced to death, and since he is found guilty of murdering his master, which along with the murder of one’s parents was punished more severely than other murders, he is subjected to the humiliation of being executed by a hinin (outcaste) rather than by another samurai, and is presumably, as was the practice in such cases, killed in the manner know as nokogiribiki, which involved the use of a saw, followed by crucifixion.33 Like the rest of the stories in Way of the Warrior, “The Height of Indiscretion” is ostensibly set before the founding of the Tokugawa shogunate, as the detail of samurai receiving land grants rather than rice stipends would indicate. However, one of this story’s central themes, the rise of the samurai bureaucrat with limited military experience, is a phenomenon of the long period of domestic peace ushered in by the Tokugawa.34 This works to confirm Taniwaki Masachika’s interpretation of the pre-Tokugawa settings of Way of the Warrior as “camouflage” laid over a critical portrayal of contemporary samurai,35 necessary in a period when published or theatrically performed depictions of politically sensitive current events were forbidden, although the thinnest of veils could suffice to make such a narrative acceptable, as in the case of Kanadehon chūshingura (1748), in which the story of the Akō vendetta is reset in the Muromachi period. The ambiguous treatment in “The Height of Indiscretion” of other samurai’s hostility toward the number-crunching upstart Gengozaemon embodies one aspect of Bakhtin’s description of what he terms the dialogic nature of the (European) novel, namely that no single authoritative voice within the narrative determines how events are to be interpreted. Most criticism of Gengozaemon is made by other characters, not the narrator. Near the end of the story the narrator does refer to the late Gengozaemon’s highhandedness as an established fact, but such behavior on his part is never directly depicted, whereas the misdeeds of his critics are. In addition, although he has no direct part in the peeping incident that triggers the conflict with Tozaemon, he is shown as reasonable enough to acknowledge that his household is at fault even though he cannot accept his neighbor’s reaction to this. This bespeaks

33  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), p. 127, note 30. 34  Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 195–378. 35  Taniwaki, Saikaku no jishu kisei to kamufurāju, pp. 117–31.

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a personality different from the brashly arrogant one that some of the other characters ascribe to him. Along with the simple fact that he is from outside their province, the main traits of Gengozaemon that irk his critics and enemies are his lack of respect for established privilege and his despised competence in financial matters, both of which traits chōnin readers might be expected to identify with. Furthermore, the story’s shining example of samurai persistence, fighting skill and bravery is none other than the son of the supposedly bureaucratic and unwarlike Gengozaemon, who, in a final ironic twist that undermines the initial criticism of Gengozaemon, is finally done in not by superior swordsmanship but rather by the bureaucratic chicanery of his late father’s enemies. Another Bakhtinian feature of this story and others in Way of the Warrior is the use of comedy to bring the material of epic, such as accounts of samurai derring-do in Heike and Taiheiki, down to earth.36 I am referring of course to the inherently comical peeping scene, with its spectacle of the usually excessively formal Tozaemon rashly deciding to have sex with his wife in an exposed area and then flying into a rage when he suffers the consequences. “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer” Comedy features even more prominently in the fourth story of the fifth volume of Way of the Warrior, “Kotatsu mo ariku yotsuashi” (The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer),37 here manifested in a contrast between extremes of timidity and reckless bravery among the same group of samurai, with the former linked to their status as warriors in an age without war. The story opens somewhere in the provinces with five samurai whiling away a long winter night playing hyakumonogatari, the hundred-stories game. This consists of lighting a hundred paper lanterns, then telling a hundred ghost stories, extinguishing one lantern after each story finishes. When the last light is put out, a ghost or monster (“bakemono”) is supposed to appear. In the process of setting up a room for this activity the five samurai friends remove the foot-warmer there, apparently to open up space. As the game progresses, the men become increasingly afraid, to such an extent that when they hear mice scurrying in the attic they wonder if the house has been struck by lightning. By the time of the ninety-seventh and ninetyeighth stories we are told that they are sitting so close together that their noses are bumping against each other. When only one story is left they look into each

36  Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” pp. 13–21. 37  Ihara, Budō, pp. 197–203.

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other’s eyes, their palms sweaty, feeling as if some unseen hand has grabbed them by the scruff of the neck. Then from the veranda they hear a scratching noise that sounds as if it is being made by some creature with long claws. Although on the verge of fainting in terror, the five men draw their swords and stand up, but none dares to open the paper screen leading outside. Instead, they put holes in it by wetting the paper with their tongues and peer out of them to see the quilt-covered foot-warmer frame that they had placed there at the start of the evening jump down from the veranda and into the garden. The samurai then politely exhort each other to accept the honor of dispatching the mysterious creature: “Aren’t you going to kill it, sir?” asks one. “No, please let me allow you to do so,” another replies. “My sense of decorum restrains me from presuming to take that upon myself,” someone objects.38 Finally the host of the night’s festivities, who happens to possess superior martial skills, runs to get a spear, then dashes outside and skewers the creature in the foot-warmer frame.

Illustration 17 “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer.”  Waseda University Library.

38  Ihara, Budō, p. 199.

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His companions all vie with each other to congratulate him, and it is suggested that this feat of bravery be reported to their lord. The host, whose name is Tomoeda Tameemon, says that this is just the sort of event that people might doubt the truth of, so he asks his guests to write up an affidavit describing what they have witnessed and to stamp it with their seals. A solemn document is composed stating that Tameemon has killed a bakemono (shapeshifter, monster, ghost). All the guests stamp it, then someone asks that the body of the freshly killed apparition be revealed. When the quilt is removed from the foot-warmer frame they all see that the creature that caused them such terror was in fact a dog, the pet of the household. Apparently the dog crawled inside the quilt-covered foot-warmer frame to keep warm and tried to get out after it cooled off. Realizing their mistake, the friends all laugh uproariously, then the guests call it a night and go home. Naturally, the story cannot end there; a distorted version of these events soon becomes the talk of the town: Since ours is a peaceful age and there are no bloody events in which a warrior can prove his mettle, it is said that lately in a certain place a group of distinguished samurai killed a dog with a spear, then drew up an affidavit and used this as a pretext for requesting an increase in the size of their land grants. From now on there will be no need to keep your sword sharp enough to take a human head, since if you’re just killing a dog a dull blade will do the job.39 The account does not name any names, but people are able to guess who is involved, much to the embarrassment of the five friends who told ghost stories that night. Later, one of the friends, Toshima Yoshizaemon, complains to another, Hanasaki Namiemon, that the dog-slaying Tameemon’s pride is to blame for making all of them a laughingstock. Overhearing this, Tameemon says the rumor is an attack on his honor alone, and asks who it was who told it to Yoshizaemon. Just then, a certain Shinomura Sankurō shows up and excitedly begins to repeat the rumor to the three men, not knowing that he is in fact speaking to the subjects of the rumor themselves. Tameemon then says: It is most fortunate that you have come here, for the coward of whom you speak is none other than myself, and his dishonored companions are present as well. Just a moment ago I had decided that to rectify this 39  Ihara, Budō, pp. 200–201.

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sorry state of affairs I would challenge to a duel anyone who repeated this rumor to me, then you arrived to tell the very same tale. Surely someone else is responsible for concocting this story, but I can’t expect you to say who it is. Be that as it may, I regret having to trouble you, but it is you whom I choose as my opponent.40 Sankurō can of course not back down from this challenge. He, Tameemon and their respective supporters meet to do battle the following night. Yoshizaemon and Namiemon are there to back Tameemon, and in all thirty-two men are involved in the fighting. Fifteen are killed, including Yoshizaemon, as well as the hapless rumor-repeater Sankurō and one of his sons. The latter are killed by Tameemon, who then absconds to Kyoto accompanied by Namiemon and Wahei, one of the other men present at the ghost-story party. Sankurō is survived by another son, the twelve-year-old Sanpachi, who was too ill to fight at the time his father and brother were killed. He obtains official permission to pursue a vendetta against his father’s enemies. Accompanied by a cousin, he eventually runs across Wahei and Namiemon in Kyoto. Caught off-guard, they reveal the whereabouts of Tameemon to save their lives, saying hypocritically, “We samurai ought to help each other, and after all, it’s because of that man that the two of us have had to wander so far from home.”41 That very evening Sanpachi and his cousin track down and kill Tameemon, who, as his betrayers have foretold, has left his hiding place to earn a living, as he regularly does, by reading the military epic Taiheiki on the street and taking contributions from passersby. Reading aloud from this text and other military epics was in fact a common occupation among masterless samurai.42 In a manner similar to the dialogue at the beginning of “The Height of Indiscretion,” in which a character criticizes the increasingly mercantile nature of the samurai in an age of peace, in “Foot-Warmer” the rumor on which the story turns states that it is because the realm is at peace that warriors are driven to treat dog-killing as a feat of bravery. As in the first story, this key detail is clearly anachronistic if one takes seriously the ostensible setting of Way of the Warrior in the war-torn period preceding the Tokugawa era. Moreover, as in many other stories in the collection, this anachronism appears to be deliberate,43 since Ihara Saikaku can hardly have been ignorant of the frequent warring that immediately preceded the establishment of Tokugawa hegemony. This and 40  Ihara, Budō, p. 201. 41  Ihara, Budō, p. 203. 42  Ihara, Budō, p. 203, note 16. 43  Taniwaki, Saikaku no jishu kisei to kamufurāju, pp. 117–31.

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various details in other stories encourage a reading of Way of the Warrior as commentary on contemporary reality rather than as historical fiction. The opening depiction of samurai cowering in fear at their own ghost stories is an obvious slapstick satirical portrait of warriors gone soft in an age without war. Tameemon, the only member of this sorry group who is brave enough to attack the “bakemono” that they believe is plaguing them, sows the seeds of his own destruction with his self-important insistence on an affidavit attesting to his deed. This first demonstration of Tameemon’s bravery turns out to be pointless, and the contrast between his and his companions’ alarm at the harmless actions of a pet dog and their subsequent rush into an honor-driven bloodbath makes their display of physical courage in the latter case verge on the ridiculous. The pair of Tameemon’s guests from the ghost-story party who flee with him to Kyoto display renewed cowardice and now also treachery when they tell his enemies where to find him. The final irony comes when Tameemon is reduced to begging strangers for money while reading aloud of the feats of warriors who lived and died in a time when there was a real war to fight; Taiheiki, the military epic from which he reads, recounts the war between Emperor Godaigo and the Ashikaga shogunate in the 1300s. This metafictional moment recalls Gengobei’s self-referential performance onstage as well as Bakhtin’s observations with regard to the degradation of materials drawn from epic genres in novelistic discourse,44 a process literally enacted by the down-and-out samurai Tameemon. The third story of volume three, “Daija mo yo ni aru hito ga mita tameshi” (They Saw that Great Serpents Really Do Exist),45 begins with a scene much like the one that gives “Foot-Warmer” its name in that it contrasts the courage of a single samurai with the comical cowardice of his fellows. A party of samurai takes a boat out on a pleasure cruise in the sea off Sakai. When a large dragon appears, churning up the water, all but one of the passengers dissolve into tearful whimpering over their terrible fate. The single brave samurai among them stands at the bow of the boat, holds out his lance, stares at the dragon and calls out loudly, “What is your true form? One who would take on a strange shape to stir the waters during this peaceful reign must be nefarious indeed!”46 This verbal challenge both drives away the dragon and serves to flatter the Tokugawa, as do lines in the first story of Way of the Warrior, quoted above. Furthermore, this allusion to the Tokugawa peace provides yet another confirmation of Taniwaki’s assertion that the real setting of these stories is the 44  Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel,” pp. 13–21. 45  Ihara, Budō, pp. 113–20. 46  Ihara, Budō, pp. 115–16.

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Tokugawa period and not the Warring States period, and reinforces, in the context of the other characters’ exaggerated demonstrations of fear, implications elsewhere in Way of the Warrior, such as in “Foot-Warmer,” that in this time of peace many samurai have lost their martial spirit. “A Swordsman Struck Down with Poisoned Saké” With depictions of slander, deadly treachery toward both a guest and later a friend, and quivering cowardice at both the sound of thunder and the prospect of dueling, of all the stories in Way of the Warrior, “Dokushu o ukedachi no mi” (A Swordsman Struck Down with Poisoned Saké)47 presents perhaps the widest variety of conduct unbecoming a samurai. In a second half that differs strikingly from the first this is largely offset by shows of extreme magnanamity by samurai characters toward their adversaries. On inheriting lordship over Hida province, Moriwaki Ichimaru has his high retainer Horiyama Nakatsukasa summon the samurai of his domain to put on a display of the various martial arts in which they individually specialize. Beforehand, participants are to declare in writing what skills they will demonstrate. When the written declarations are submitted, Toyama Shiraemon, Sakano Yōsuke and Otomi Takinoshin are on duty in the great hall of the castle, where Shiraemon comments that although one Kumai Gosuke has put together a long list of skills he will perform, he, Shiraemon, has never seen Gosuke so much as pick up a bow. The three have a big laugh over this, which angers Gosuke’s cousin, who happens to be on duty in an adjoining room. On the way home he informs Gosuke, who thinks he must do something to redress this insult. On the following day the demonstration is held, and Gosuke in fact astounds everyone with his vastly superior skill in a variety of martial arts. The new lord is so impressed that he rewards Gosuke by increasing his stipend by one hundred koku. All of this of course unsettles the three men who have made fun of Gosuke. Three days later they receive a letter from him challenging them to a showdown. They are sure that each of them would be killed in a duel with such a skilled warrior, so they decide to send him a letter in which they deny having mocked him and suggest that someone who wants to cause them trouble has lied about them. Gosuke is not sure how to reply to this, and decides to sleep on the matter. Meanwhile the three who have received Gosuke’s challenge hole up at Shiraemon’s place, huddling together, sweaty-palmed, and in constant fear 47  Ihara, Budō, pp. 224–36.

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that Gosuke could arrive any minute. The following day they send a servant to Gosuke’s place to ask for his reply. Gosuke thinks it possible that his cousin misheard, and if the men are such cowards that they will lie to get out of a fight, then they are unworthy adversaries anyway, so he accepts their excuses and lets the matter drop. The three men then celebrate their salvation with congratulatory cups of saké. Afterward, however, whenever they run across Gosuke they feel uncomfortable, and they hear that the story of their excuse-making makes the rounds. They decide to invite Gosuke over for a party ostensibly meant to mark their reconciliation with him, but with the actual purpose of providing them an opportunity to poison their guest. Gosuke is reluctant to go, but in order not to feed lingering resentment between him and the three, he accepts their invitation. They poison him, he begins to feel ill, then on returning home he writhes about in agony, begins vomiting blood and soon dies. The doctor suspects foul play, but is not certain enough to denounce the culprits. Gosuke’s only son, Goshichirō, inherits his father’s position, but since he is still a boy he only receives half of the stipend that his father was given. Thus the stage is set for a vendetta, although it takes place only after further complications. The three poisoners are delighted to have accomplished their mission without getting caught. They treat each other like brothers and pledge to help each other no matter what. Summer arrives, and while gathered at Shiraemon’s house the day before Boy’s Day, someone mentions that Shiraemon’s servant Sekinai is good at pate-shaving, so they decide to get freshly shaven in preparation for the festivities. An evening thundershower breaks out when Takinoshin’s pate is half shaven. He has always been terrified of lightning, so he jumps up and runs for cover, hiding his head under his haori, lying facedown in a corner of the room and chanting “Kuwabara, kuwabara”—“Mulberry grove, mulberry grove,” as was customary when one wanted to ward off lightning. Shiraemon and Yōsuke try to scare him even more, and continue to tease him after the shower has ended. Then they call him a coward. This infuriates Takinoshin, who objects that fear of lightning has nothing to do with the business of being a warrior and asks who are they to talk, since it was they who hatched the cowardly plot to poison Gosuke, of which he claims to have silently disapproved. All three put hand to sword, and Takinoshin’s companions fear that he will fall out with them and tell their secret, so they cut him down, two against one. They then hit the road and go into hiding in Nagashima in Ise province. Takinoshin’s only son, Kakunojō, receives official permission to pursue a vendetta and goes looking for his father’s killers. He runs into them by chance

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as they are out earning money by going door to door performing nō chants. He kills them with no trouble, then returns to Hida with their heads. When he arrives at home he wants to tell his mother the whole story, but she cuts him short, saying he cannot stay there because the poisoning of Gosuke has become public knowledge and Gosuke’s son, Goshichirō, left two days earlier to track down his father’s two surviving murderers as well as Kakunojō, as a stand-in for his late father. Mother, son and one servant then go into hiding in Samegai in Ōmi province. In the meantime, while staying at an inn in Toba in Ise province, Goshichirō overhears someone in the next room telling of a vendetta that appears to involve Kakunojō. He is disappointed that two of his intended targets are now already dead, leaving him with only Kakunojō to kill. While passing through Samegai on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the day of the annual heavy cleaning, in front of a shabby house Goshichirō notices weapons and other objects that seem out of place in such a dwelling, including a lantern adorned with Kakunojō’s family crest. He asks a local about the residents of the house, and hears that the man there is a masterless samurai from outside the province whom this informant has never happened to see. Goshichirō withdraws to a roadside temple, puts on chain mail there and sends his servant to reconnoiter. The servant then reports back saying that it is indeed Kakunojō who lives in the house. Goshichirō bounds into the house, announces himself and states his purpose. Kakunojō is in the bath, but makes ready to fight immediately. However, Goshichirō tells him to take his time getting dressed and preparing himself for battle. After Kakunojō does so, they fight outside, with Kakunojō’s mother watching from behind the window blinds. When Goshichirō’s sword pin pops out and blade falls from handle, Kakunojō looks to be on the point of taking advantage of this, but his mother shames him from doing so, reminding him of his opponent’s magnanimity on finding him in the bath. After Goshichirō fixes his sword the two continue to fight, then Kakunojō flinches when he loses three fingers, and Goshichirō seizes this opportunity to cut him down. Kakunojō’s mother sheds no tears as she praises her dead son for fighting a good fight. She speculates that Kakunojō has suffered divine punishment for his father’s violation of warrior ethics, and that Goshichirō has in turn received divine protection for the same reason. She praises both her son and his killer for their fine performance, and says that Goshichirō’s father must now at last be happy. In a final display of samurai virtue that clearly surpasses that of her son, she enjoins Goshichirō to mourn for her son, and gives him the haori she recently made for Kakunojō. Goshichirō thanks her and returns home, then goes off to live as a hermit.

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In a manner that recalls the haikai no renga-like shifts in narrative trajectory in parts of Amorous Man, the tales in Way of the Warrior are inevitably divisible into (at least) two distinct parts: the story of the event triggering the vendetta and that of the vendetta itself, the two often being of markedly different tone, and the contrast is particularly stark in tales that begin on a comical note, such as with the depictions of extreme samurai cowardice in “Poisoned Saké” and “Foot-Warmer,” both of which are followed by bloody confrontations with unusually high body counts. Significantly it is a samurai woman who exhibits the highest level of warlike honor and sang-froid in the second half of “Poisoned Saké,” the first half of which features especially pathetic specimens of samurai manhood. This is a pattern we shall see repeated later in “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand,” as well as with the self-sacrificing former prostitute (of unspecified status-group origins) in “Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar.”

“He Took Her, Sight Unseen, Then Ran Amok on Their Wedding Night” In addition to displaying, as do other samurai characters in Way of the Warrior, the faults of rash violence and cowardice, the target of the vendetta in “Minu hitogao ni yoi no mufunbetsu” (He Took Her, Sight Unseen, Then Ran Amok on Their Wedding Night)48 is also guilty of an embarrassing level of gullibility, and is unwilling to accept the consequences. Moreover, he is tricked by a woman who represents the un-idealistic practicality of the chōnin. This plot feature brings to the surface the subtext of class conflict implicit in the numerous unflattering portrayals of samurai in Way of the Warrior, which we shall later see made even more explicit in “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love.” The story opens in Kumamoto, where a widow who has shaven her head and taken the nun-like name of “Myōshun” has won renown as an expert acupuncturist, a profession she learned from her late husband. Her services come to be especially sought after by the women of the samurai quarter. Among her patients is Otane, the younger sister of a samurai named Zenrenji Geki. Although already eighteen, Otane has no immediate prospect of marrying, and the anxiety this causes her brings chest pains, which Myōshun is called in to treat. The treatments eventually prove effective, for which the girl’s brother is very grateful. Myōshun regularly receives gifts from her patient’s household, which considerably raises her standard of living. 48  Ihara, Budō, pp. 70–77.

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Fukuzaki Gunpei, an accomplished, good-looking and well-mannered samurai serving the same lord as Otane’s brother Geki, is at age twenty-six also still unmarried. When he, too, starts receiving treatments from Myōshun he asks her if she knows any girls of marriageable age. Myōshun describes Otane to him as if she were a great beauty, and Gunpei begins to pine for her, sight unseen, and tells Myōshun he wants to marry the girl. Myōshun then serves as go-between, and soon is leading a bridal procession to a lavish wedding at Gunpei’s house. The groom is happy until he sees that his bride is far less attractive than what he had imagined from Myōshun’s description. He becomes very angry, summons Myōshun and tells her: You’re the sort of person that robs people in broad daylight. If you weren’t a woman I wouldn’t let you leave here alive, but in exchange for my sparing your life, take that woman right back to Geki’s house before the evening is through.49 In reply to Gunpei’s rash command, Myōshun opens a box to reveal two hundred koban (gold coins) and says: Although [Otane’s family] hasn’t promised to do so, since they’re so well off they are giving you these koban. You should go with the flow of the times; having a good-looking woman does nothing for your household finances. I haven’t done anything that’s not in your best interest.50 Gunpei is not impressed; he ties up Myōshun with rope, shoves her back into her palanquin and has Otane’s trousseau and household implements piled up outside her brother’s gate. As for Otane herself, the shame of this rejection is more than she can bear and she commits suicide right there at Gunpei’s house. Gunpei’s behavior and the consequent death of Otane are more than her brother Geki can tolerate, so he rides to Gunpei’s house to fight him. Armed retainers try to block his way, but he kills two of them and wounds four or five more before he is stabbed from behind by a houseguest. The neighborhood is thrown into an uproar by these events, and in the commotion Gunpei and the rest of his household escape the scene, with Gunpei killing Myōshun in passing. At this time Geki’s younger brother Hachikurō is away on a pilgrimage in the mountains of Kumano, accompanied by one Wada Rinpachi. As they tramp 49  Ihara, Budō, p. 72. 50  Ihara, Budō, p. 73.

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through deep snow, Rinpachi hurts his foot and begins to lag. Hoping to spur him on to their destination, Hachikurō teases him, but Rinpachi takes this amiss and draws his sword to fight. As the two men’s clashing swords send up sparks Geki’s ghost appears, separates them and chides them for dueling over such a trifling matter. He tells of his death and says that Hachikurō must not throw away his life before he has taken revenge on Gunpei. Impressed by this spectral visitation, Rinpachi recovers from his snit and offers to serve as Hachikurō’s second in the vendetta. After two years spent looking far and wide for Gunpei, the pair hear that he has taken refuge with a relative serving as a Buddhist priest in a remote location. The two travel there stealthily and learn that Gunpei has changed his name to “Dōden” and taken on the outward trappings of a monk. With no religious motivation whatsoever he has holed up in a hermitage where he neglects even to install a Buddha-image, and he is constantly plagued by his cowardly fear of being discovered by his enemy. Hachikurō and Rinpachi break into Gunpei’s hermitage, and Gunpei, devoid of his former courage, joins his hands in supplication and begs for his life, claiming to have been spending his days praying for the late Geki. Hachikurō points out that Gunpei has a short spear on hand with which to defend himself, and takes this as evidence that his supposed entrance onto the Buddhist path is a sham. He tells Gunpei to stand up to fight, so Gunpei grabs his spear, but Hachikurō then cuts off Gunpei’s right hand. In a belated show of boldness, Gunpei takes the spear from his severed hand and attacks Rinpachi, killing him. After finishing off Gunpei, Hachikurō clings to the corpse of his dead friend and mourns his fate. He then cuts off his own topknot, thus taking the tonsure, after which he becomes a hermit and spends his days praying for both his brother Geki and his friend Rinpachi. The final sentence of “Sight Unseen” indicates that the events of the story took place long ago, but as Taniwaki Masachika points out, the story’s setting is obviously contemporary, given details such as Myōshun’s reference to the newly mercantile nature of society.51 Myōshun is a paragon of chōnin practicality whose useful and highly valued skills contrast sharply with the fighting abilities of samurai like Gunpei, which in the stories of Way of the Warrior are more often employed in ill-considered outbursts than in the maintenance of public order. Her one, slight misdeed—her misrepresentation of Otane’s appearance—is presumably motivated by a laudable affection for the girl and thus seems forgivable. 51  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), p. 56, note 3.

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Gunpei’s heedless taking of a bride he has never seen lends itself to the commercial metaphor of carelessly purchasing uninspected goods. Both this blunder and his shunning of Myōshun’s sage advice to go with the flow of the times indicate that Gunpei is the obsolete product of an era that ended with the establishment of peace and the triumph of commercial values. If one takes at face value the ostensible premise of Way of the Warrior, that “the samurai are a model for the people,”52 one would expect that in this confrontation of an honor-driven samurai with a coin-counting chōnin the samurai would receive the more sympathetic portrayal. But the opposite is the case, with Gunpei shown as, in effect, blaming his recklessness on another and refusing, in spectacular fashion, to accept its consequences, thus bringing disaster to himself and many others. Taniwaki Masachika sees “more than a little satire” in the story’s depiction of samurai caught up in an uncontrolled escalation of violence triggered by a trifling misunderstanding.53 In a further display of samurai misbehavior, Rinpachi’s violent reaction to his friend’s teasing mirrors in miniature Gunpei’s rampage after his hopes of marrying a beautiful bride are dashed. The name Gunpei takes when he becomes a sham monk adds a further touch of irony to “Sight Unseen”: “Dōden” (道伝) is written with the second and third characters of the collection’s title, Budō denraiki (武道伝来記), of which a clumsy but relatively literal translation would be “A Record of the Transmission of the Way of the Warrior.” Gunpei thus refers to himself as a “transmitter of the way” of the Buddha, but he is of course no paragon of that “way” or of the “way of the warrior,” and “transmits” neither. “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand” “Onna no tsukureru otokomoji” (A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand),54 the first story of the sixth volume of Way of the Warrior, presents us with both a savage satire of samurai behavior and a fulsome “bringing low” of materials drawn from a classic of elite literature, in this case The Tale of Genji, in a manner that lampoons the pretentions to aristocratic refinement of the story’s male protagonist. However, the extreme cruelty this story portrays could easily distract one from its humorous and satirical dimension. The male protagonist of “A Man’s Handwriting” is a seventy-year-old highsamurai official named Izumi Yoshitsura. He retires to a palatial residence in Kyoto, taking the Buddhist name of “Zuimu” (随夢), which one could translate roughly as “He follows his dream.” 52  Ihara, Budō, p. 21. 53  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), p. 53, note 23. 54  Ihara, Budō, pp. 209–16.

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The mode of retirement in question is referred to in texts of this period as “inkyo.” The head of a household entering into inkyo turned the management of his worldly affairs over to a son, if he had one, or to a trusted servant. In Saikaku texts inkyo is usually accompanied by shaving one’s head or cutting short one’s hair and taking a Buddhist name, thus taking on, symbolically at least, the life of a Buddhist monk or nun. In most schools of Japanese Buddhism at the time, monks were of course supposed to be celibate, but this was not necessarily the case with inkyo. For example, married men whose wives are still alive are shown as continuing to live with them after entering inkyo. The newly retired Zuimu leaves his worldly affairs in the hands of two longstanding retainers and devotes himself to fine living. Old as he is, he has multiple concubines, whom he names after chapters in The Tale of Genji. He spends his time having sex with and being pampered by these women and his female servants as well. The situation is described in highly poetic language that sets the passage off from most of Way of the Warrior: Wandering hither and yon among his concubines’ chambers, he spent day and night in a wantonness that reached its zenith even as the sun climbed high at noon, lolling upon tasseled pillows behind orchidscented curtains, prevailing upon his ladies to stroke his head and rub his feet as he drifted between dreams and wakefulness, inebriated with the sweetest dew imbibed from golden cups, with nothing to do but taste pleasures that are simply not of this world. Such must have been the life led at Huaqing Palace in China. Together his ladies played jeweled kotos made from a paulownia tree of that faraway land in whose branches a phoenix once dwelled, but even when their music reached ears beyond the mansion’s walls, the jaded residents of the capital paid it no more heed than the sound of wind whistling in the pines. And no one bothered to ask who had built this fine abode.55 Despite his advanced age and the admonitions of the trusted retainers who run his household, Zuimu grows ever more shameless and unreasonable in the demands he makes on concubines and maidservants alike, who thus come to dislike him. However, everything changes when he concentrates his attentions on a beautiful and sweet-tempered seventeen-year-old girl among his concubines named Ichihashi. Soon she has a monopoly on both his affections and his bedchamber. The other women of the household are only too happy to 55  Ihara, Budō, pp. 209–10.

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be relieved of their sexual duties, and gleefully while away the hours together singing and playing parlor games. There is one exception, however, a servant named Usugumo, who resents having been set aside for another woman. Hoping to bring about the downfall of her rival, she writes love letters to Ichihashi in a masculine style of handwriting, dropping them here and there around the house. At first all are swept up with the dust on the floor, unread, but at last Zuimu gets hold of one in which the fictitious lover alludes to an equally fictitious tryst he has enjoyed with Ichihashi. Furious, Zuimu sends the head maidservant, Kohata, to interrogate Ichihashi regarding the letter’s contents. Ichihashi convinces Kohata that she knows nothing of the matter, and Kohata laughs it off as a rival’s forgery. But Zuimu will have none of this. He has Ichihashi led into the mansion’s maple garden, where the ladies of the house quake in fear as they wonder what is in store for her. Ichihashi herself shows no fear, even when Zuimu has her robe stripped from her. The women of the house are appalled at their master’s behavior. Ichihashi declares that it is now pointless for her to go on living, presumably because of the humiliation she has suffered, but says that she again wants to assert her innocence before she dies. Zuimu then tells her to tear the fingernails off one hand as a sign of her sincerity. She complies, then as blood trickles from her raw fingertips, Zuimu orders her to cut off her fingers. She ignores this last command. Her subjectless final sentence can be interpreted as meaning either “You have sunk lower than a beast,” or “That would make me lower than a beast.”56 She implies that her spirit’s resentment of Zuimu will continue beyond her death, then stretches out her neck. Zuimu himself beheads her. When word of Ichihashi’s death reaches her parents in Fushimi, just to the south of the capital, they are of course devastated, but her father, an impoverished eye doctor, is too ill with rheumatism to avenge her. Ichihashi is also survived by a younger sister, the sixteen-year-old Kogin, who has run away to live with her lover, a Shinto priest, with whom she leads a blissful existence. All contact between her and her family has ceased, but when she learns of her sister’s death she resolves to avenge it. Kogin leaves a cryptic note for her lover explaining that she must go away and might never return, and that he is under no circumstances to notify her parents that she has departed. She goes to Kyoto and manages to find a job as a servant in Zuimu’s household. As beautiful and charming as was her sister, she does her best to please everyone in her new home and makes a good impression on all. 56  Ihara, Budō, p. 214.

Illustration 18 Zuimu prepares to kill Ichihashi. Waseda University Library.

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Soon she is summoned to Zuimu’s bedchamber. Kogin waits until he is relaxed and enjoying an unguarded moment, then she stabs him in the chest. “I’m Ichihashi’s younger sister! You’re my sister’s enemy,”57 she declares, then without missing a beat she delivers a coup de grâce. She straightens her clothes, sits on top of Zuimu’s corpse (we shall see this elsewhere as well), then stabs herself in the chest, dying with a smile on her lips. Her vendetta against Zuimu, unparalleled in history, wins her lasting fame, we are told. Afterwards it is revealed to the whole household that this chain of events was set into motion by Usugumo’s forgeries, and she is beheaded by one of Zuimu’s retainers. The violence and cruelty depicted in this story could easily draw one’s attention away from its most distinctive feature, which is its wittily satirical treatment of the cultural aspirations of the samurai. Despite having gained de facto control of the country by the Kamakura period, the warrior class were seen even in Saikaku’s time as the cultural inferiors of the imperial court aristocracy. Zuimu, whose name refers to following one’s dream, literally follows his dream to duplicate the elegance and amorous accomplishments of the fictitious Genji, building himself a large mansion like that to which Genji retires, and naming his concubines after chapters in The Tale of Genji. But in his constant sexual importuning of the women of his household he outdoes Genji himself, only in the worst way, acting as a parody of the aging Genji chasing after the unwilling Tamakazura in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Tale. Much as Genji serves as a model of courtly elegance to the likes of Zuimu, the courtiers of Genji’s day and the narrator of The Tale of Genji looked to the imperial court of Tang China as the gold standard in such matters. Likewise the narrator of “Handwriting” links the pleasures Zuimu enjoys in his mansion to those savored by the Tang emperor Xuanzong with his celebrated concubine Yang Guifei in the palace the emperor built near his capital at Chang’an. However, the residents of aristocratic Kyoto are unimpressed, and fail to take notice either of Zuimu’s fine residence or the beautiful music issuing from it. Zuimu’s shift from promiscuous enjoyment of the beautiful women with whom he has populated his mansion to an exclusive focus on Ichihashi and, subsequently, Usugumo’s jealousy and vengefulness together present an obvious parallel with the first chapter of The Tale of Genji, in which Genji’s mother becomes the object of both the emperor’s obsessive love and his other ladies’ resentment and spite. In addition, both “A Man’s Handwriting” and the opening chapter of Genji contain references to the Yang Guifei story.58 (Earlier we 57  Ihara, Budō, p. 216. 58  Murasaki Shikibu, Genji monogatari 1, pp. 17–18; Murasaki Shikibu, Tyler, Genji, p. 3.

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have seen Xuanzong and his palace indirectly referenced in Life of an Amorous Man.59) Here the satirical element lies in the fact that whereas in the first chapter of Genji all of the emperor’s ladies miss his attentions, in “A Man’s Handwriting” all but one of ersatz court aristocrat Zuimu’s women are apparently relieved to be rid of him. Worse yet by far, try as he may to emulate Genji, when Zuimu is tricked into thinking he has been cuckolded he lashes out with most un-Genji-like ferocity at the woman he supposedly loves, providing his household and the reader with a gruesome spectacle that would be totally out of place in the imaginary world of the Shining Prince, given that Genji scrupulously avoids depictions of bloody violence. No matter what his pretensions to aristocratic courtliness, the story seems to say, an angry samurai will ultimately resort to such violence. Genji himself does not remain unscathed by this satire. The Tale of Genji’s frequent invocations of its hero’s grace, sensitivity and beauty mitigate its descriptions of his often coercive philandering. By making Zuimu’s exercise of force over the women who share his bed grotesquely explicit and by showing this brutal samurai villain and would-be “Genji” as trying unsuccessfully to take on the cultural trappings of a court aristocrat, “A Man’s Handwriting” draws attention to The Tale of Genji’s concealment of its own underlying brutality. The language used by the narrator to describe Zuimu’s behavior is also parodic of that of The Tale of Genji. Doubly honorific verbs, those featuring two honorific suffixes rather than the usual one, are used in The Tale of Genji to describe the actions of characters of particularly high rank, such as Genji himself. In this story such verb forms are used to describe Zuimu’s actions when his behavior is particularly deplorable, such as when he refuses to listen to his retainers’ admonitions to tone down the demands he is making on the ladies of his household, “he did not listen” being expressed with an august-sounding “kikiiresasetamawazu.”60 Such grammatical parodying of The Tale of Genji occurs in the first chapter of Amorous Man as well, in which the precocious seven-year-old protagonist’s actions are described using such double honorifics as he sexually harasses one of his family’s maidservants.61

59  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, p. 243, note 26; Ihara, Siary, L’homme qui ne vécut que pour aimer, p. 373, p. 407, note 12. 60  Ihara, Budō, p. 210. 61  Ihara, Ichidai otoko, pp. 21–22.

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Part 2: Shudō High and Low

“Women Who Played the Bamboo Flute with Secret Intent” “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand” is unusual among the stories of Way of the Warrior in that a female character executes the vendetta in question completely on her own. Instead of single-handedly delivering the fatal blow, women are typically shown as either encouraging or cooperating in a vendetta, as in “Omoiire fuku onna shakuhachi” (Women Who Played the Bamboo Flute with Secret Intent),62 a story noteworthy for the unusual makeup of the group that pursues the vendetta: the bereaved girlfriend of the youth whose killing is being avenged, her son by the deceased, the male lover of the deceased, and the girlfriend’s former wet-nurse. The story opens in Hiroshima in the province of Aki, where a teacher of kemari, a game long associated with the imperial court, has arrived from Kyoto and started a craze for this aristocratic sport. It is the day of the Tanabata festival, celebrating the annual meeting of the stars Altair and Vega, personified as the Cowherd and the Weaver Princess, lovers allowed only one night together each year. The holiday is also the occasion for kemari matches, and at a gathering devoted to this game we are introduced to a youth of eighteen named Torikawa Muranosuke, younger brother of Torikawa Haemon. At eighteen, Muranosuke is on the cusp of adulthood, but his still-unshaven forelocks mark him as one who has not yet undergone the male coming-of-age ceremony, genbuku, and he retains a boyish beauty described in a manner implying that his looks attract the erotic interest of adult males. As dusk gathers, the ball is kicked awry and lands in a neighboring flower garden. Muranosuke goes to fetch it, and parting the bamboo grass at the garden’s edge he sees that the ball is caught in the branches of a bush clover. He then beholds the elegantly dressed young daughter of the family next door, who in celebration of Tanabata has written a poem on a paper mulberry leaf and, as an offering to the Cowherd star, floats the leaf on a stream flowing through the garden. Muranosuke finds the girl as beautiful as the Weaver Princess. He asks her to retrieve the ball, which she does, not objecting to dampening her kimono in the dew. Holding the ball, the girl reaches out into the dark in the direction from which the boy’s voice came; he takes hold of her hand, they look into each other’s faces and instantly fall in love. The girl is then joined by a large number of maidservants, which obliges Muranosuke to go back to the kemari party. However, after the playing has stopped, he lingers there longer than the other guests in hopes of seeing the 62  Ihara, Budō, pp. 63–70.

Illustration 19 Muranosuke meets Kogō. Waseda University Library.

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neighbor girl again. When at last he returns to the edge of the garden he is not disappointed. The two arrange a tryst. On a dark night Muranosuke climbs over a high wall to enter her family’s compound, and the girl leads him into her room with the aid of a key she has stolen. The pair pledge eternal love, sealing their vow by biting their little fingers and mixing their blood, and by writing solemn oaths on each other’s underclothes. The lovers continue these risky meetings through summer and fall and into the winter, when the girl discovers she is pregnant. Meanwhile, the girl’s father, Fujisawa Jindayū, who has been on duty in Edo, visits his brother in Hamamatsu on the way back home, and there he agrees to marry off his daughter, whose name we now learn is Kogō, to his brother’s nineteen-year-old second son Shinpei, a strong, sturdy lad with good prospects. Moreover, Jindayū is to adopt the boy into the family, as is to this day customary in Japan among couples who have no sons. This will allow Jindayū to retire, leaving his position and duties to Shinpei. When Jindayū returns home with Shinpei in tow, everyone is overjoyed to learn of this arrangement, except for Kogō, who, while conceding that to break this betrothal would be a breach of filial piety, tells her mother that she wishes to become a Buddhist nun, and suggests that her parents find Shinpei another bride. She does not reveal her true reasons for refusing this match. In spite of her mother’s repeated efforts to change her mind, Kogō will not be persuaded to marry her cousin. Despite parental efforts to cover up Kogō’s refusal, Shinpei eventually finds out about it. At first this brings only a modicum of resentment on his part, but when he happens to see Muranosuke stealthily approach for one of his meetings with Kogō, Shinpei puts two and two together and decides to take revenge. He and a servant of his ambush and kill Muranosuke as he returns from Kogō’s side. When Kogō learns of this she grabs a sword and goes out to try to kill Shinpei, but her former wet-nurse stops her, telling her she will have another chance to deal with her lover’s killer, but that first she must leave home (i.e., to avoid the consequences of having her pregnancy discovered). In the confusion caused by the killing of Muranosuke the two women run off, disappearing without a trace. Word of Muranosuke’s death and the reasons behind it get out, and the scandal brings scorn to Muranosuke’s name and causes Kogō’s father to be put under house arrest. Shinpei leaves town. Kogō and her former wet-nurse make their way to Akashi in Harima province, where an acquaintance lives. There they learn to eke out a living by weaving crêpe cloth. When Kogō goes into labor she prays for a son who will avenge his father’s death, and swears that she will commit seppuku if she gives birth to

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a girl. She does bear a son, whom she names Muramaru. At age nine she sends him to a temple in nearby Suma to study, and by and by he grows into a beautiful youth of thirteen, “gazed upon by priest and layman alike.”63 Since her son has now reached an appropriate age for pursuing a vendetta, Kogō tells him of his father’s fate. Muramaru declares that he will set out for Hamamatsu, find his father’s killer there and bring back his head as a gift, but his mother and her former wet-nurse insist on accompanying him on his quest, and reveal they have both learned to play the bamboo flute, an instrument normally played by men, with this in mind. They have done this so that they can pass themselves off as komusō, wandering mendicant Zen monks who play the flute and wear sedge hats that cover their faces, a convenient disguise for those traveling incognito. As part of the disguise the women cut their hair short, and they prepare to fight by wearing chain mail under their clothes and carrying concealed daggers. The three make their way east, pausing at the landmark temple Ishiyamadera in Ōmi province east of Kyoto, where they admire the room where Murasaki Shikibu supposedly wrote the “Suma” and “Akashi” chapters of The Tale of Genji. The two women are especially impressed by the fact that “in the past there was such a woman.” After leaving the temple, the three run across a samurai of about forty who is asking some local(s) about nearby places of interest and using a portable ink brush set to jot down the answers. He is wearing traveling clothes and accompanied by a single attendant. The samurai sees Muramaru and whispers, “The look in his eyes, the crinkly hair at his temples, the turn of his waist— this boy’s the very image of him!” Thereupon his servant says, “It must be Muranosuke’s ghost.”64 This grabs the attention of the other party, who all stop and look their way, but still hesitate to speak. Then when Kogō comments to her former wet-nurse that she prefers the views of her home province’s scenic island Itsukushima to the famed eight views of Ōmi, the samurai asks if they are from Hiroshima. Still trying to hide their identity, the others reply that they are from Harima, but the stranger notes that they speak like people from Aki province. Then when he asks if the boy is a relative of Torikawa Haemon, they are too overcome by tears to reply. The stranger tearfully gives his name as Ōtani Kannai, and says that he was Muranosuke’s (fictive) “brother,” using a term (“kyōdaibun”) that during the period in question normally indicated a shudō relationship.65 Kannai, too, has 63  Ihara, Budō, p. 68. 64  Ihara, Budō, p. 69. 65  Ihara, Budō, p. 70, note 1.

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been searching for Muranosuke’s killer to no avail, but has recently learned that Shinpei is in the mountain village of Yoshino, where Kannai is now headed to avenge the death of his beloved. Muramaru’s party tell their whole story, and weep together. The two parties then join forces and proceed to Yoshino, where they find Shinpei. With Kannai there to back him up, Muramaru kills Shinpei, then they all leave the village with no further trouble. Like “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand,” “Bamboo Flute” contains multiple passages alluding or referring directly to Genji, but without a trace of satire or parody. Kogō raises Muramaru in Akashi and sends him to school in Suma, which are the settings of the two chapters of Genji with those names. Muranosuke’s first look at Kogō recalls various kaimami (literally “peeking through the fence”) scenes in which the hero of Genji spies on some attractive girl or woman, and the ensuing love affair is conducted, as is typical in Genji as well, through secret meetings in the young woman’s family home—only now we are not dealing with the relatively tolerant world of Heian courtiers as described in Genji, in which premarital sex is an integral part of courtship and illicit affairs may earn its hero exile, but not death. Placing the lovers’ initial meeting in the context of kemari, a game featured in Genji as well, transposes one more cultural trapping of the Heian-period imperial court to the contemporary (i.e., early Edo-period) milieu of the samurai. Attributing the fashion for this sport in the provincial castle-town of Hiroshima to the arrival of a kemari master from the imperial capital, Kyoto, the main setting for Genji (and of “Handwriting”), further emphasizes the fact that we are again dealing with a recontextualization and, in relative terms, a “bringing low” of tropes associated with Genji, the Heian period and the imperial court aristocracy, in terms of both class (since the samurai ranked lower than imperial court aristocrats) and geography. The fact that such references, which transfer the prestige imperial court culture to a provincial samurai without ridiculing or sullying the former, occur in a work that also contains the sort of parody of Genji and satire of samurai cultural pretensions that we have seen in “Handwriting,” demonstrates the usefulness to analysis of Saikaku’s fiction of Tzvetana Kristeva’s model of a parodic continuum and her characterization of parody in premodern Japanese as not primarily an attack on the prestige of source texts.66 With their diverse treatment of the premarital sexual exploits of girls still under the authority of their families of birth, the portrayals of the female protagonists of “Seijūrō,” “Greengrocer’s Daughter,” “Gengobei,” “Traveling Monk” and “Bamboo Flute” confirm Someya’s and Sasaki’s observations, cited earlier, regarding the multiplicity of points of view that they regard as enriching 66  Kristeva, “ ‘Hajime ni’ ni kaete,” pp. 13–14, 17.

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Saikaku’s fiction.67 As for Kogō, the narrator of “Bamboo Flute” does not condemn her in the least for carrying on a premarital affair right under her parents’ noses, for going against their wishes after her betrothal in absentia is sprung on her (there are of course extenuating circumstances), or for harming her parents and family with her actions. Furthermore, the story’s reference to Kogō’s and her wet-nurse’s admiration for Murasaki Shikibu as a woman of exceptional achievement both highlights the Genji-like elements in the story and puts a positive spin on the independence, toughness and initiative shown by these two women. In contrast to the simplistic Confucian morality tales that Twenty Cases references (but does not emulate), the story reads like an object lesson in situational ethics, in which to be a good quasi-widow to her late quasi-husband, Kogō must become a very unfilial daughter indeed, and then, ironically, raises her son from birth to commit the ultimate act of filial piety, samurai version, and kill his father’s killer. Ultimately, despite Kogō’s initial sexual indiscretion and the trouble she causes her family of origin, her steadfast pursuit of the man who killed her lover and the father of her child qualifies her as a sort of paragon of samurai virtue, female version. The descriptions of Muranosuke’s adolescent beauty in the opening scene of “Bamboo Flute” teasingly foreshadow the shudō element in the story’s denouement. Just when we think we are to be presented with a story centered on a shudō relationship like the stories from the collection we shall examine next, Muranosuke’s role shifts from object of the adult male gaze to male subject gazing longingly at a female object of desire. The shudō theme resurfaces in descriptions of his son in early adolescence as attracting the adult male gaze, and it is the resemblance between this son and his fetching, late father that triggers the exchange of confidences between the two parties seeking to avenge the father’s death, an exchange that reveals to the son and his mother the whereabouts of Muranosuke’s killer. Moreover, the story differs from “Greengrocer’s Daughter” in that whereas Kichisaburō’s relationship with its title character is portrayed, after the fact, as a betrayal of his nenja (which the nenja nonetheless forgives), in “Bamboo Flute” we are given no indication that the narrator or the characters view Muranosuke’s pursuit and conquest of a female lover when he was already in a shudō relationship as constituting disloyalty toward his nenja, or duplicity toward his girlfriend, for that matter. When Muranosuke’s long-bereaved male and female lovers meet, no resentment or shock of realization must be overcome, and the two immediately become allies in the pursuit of their quarry. Although ultimately the execution of the vendetta follows convention in that it is Muranosuke’s son who wields the sword that kills his 67  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 460; Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 72–74.

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father’s enemy, the story’s portrayal of the older partner in a shudō relationship tracking the killer of the younger, as opposed to the reverse, is unusual, and implies especial devotion to his beloved on the part of this nenja. The fact that Kannai has no qualms about revealing his erotic relationship with Muranosuke to strangers whom he clearly suspects of having some familial connection to his dead lover appears to confirm the social acceptability of such relationships in the Japan of Saikaku’s day, as detailed in the introduction to this study, and the initial description of Muranosuke in “Bamboo Flute” illustrates a number of the conventions of shudō described there: Among those in attendance was Torikawa Haemon’s younger brother, Muranosuke. He was eighteen, and although corners had been shaven into his hairline, the flower [of his youthful looks] still sent forth the fragrance of the way of beauty.68 The “way of beauty” in question is of course the way of pursuing beautiful youths, shudō. At eighteen Muranosuke should by rights undergo genbuku any day now, and the corners shaven into his hairline are a harbinger of the fuller shearing to come; he is therefore a legitimate and inviting object for the desire of adult males, but not for long, and the description, by using the anticipation of beauty’s disappearance to heighten its appeal, both foreshadows Muranosuke’s death and partakes of the same aesthetics of evanescence as do countless descriptions of cherry blossoms and numerous other portrayals of wakashu in Japanese literature, such as in the stories that follow. “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa” The very first story in Way of the Warrior centers on a shudō relationship, but it is atypical of those depicted in the collection both in that it is a ménage-àtrois and given that the text gives the age of the nenja as fifty-five, which is well beyond the ages of nenja in other stories, whether these be stated or can be approximated by considering various narrative details. The story’s title, “Shintei o hiku Biwa no umi” (Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa),69 plays on the name of Japan’s largest lake, which it was given due to the supposed resemblance between its shape and that of the biwa, a lute-like instrument related to the Chinese pipa. As befits the first story in a work like Way of the Warrior, in “Heartstrings” the opening sentences are packed with significant details. As mentioned earlier, warriors are held up as a model for the 68  Ihara, Budō, p. 63. 69  Ihara, Budō, pp. 21–30.

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people of the realm to emulate, despite the fact that their behavior in the stories to follow largely belies this statement. The glorious reign of the Tokugawa shoguns is then invoked in a reference to the season, which is spring, and the setting of the story is given as the town of Azuchi, once but no longer the capital of the warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582). The action is subsequently introduced with “at that time,” a phrase that the context renders ambiguous. Is the story set in Nobunaga’s time, or during the reign of the Tokugawa? Taniwaki Masachika interprets this ambiguity as deliberate, meant to both camouflage and indirectly hint at the fact that it is present circumstances that are being depicted.70 The story begins with a description of how Hirao Shuri, a samurai of distinguished lineage, becomes a Buddhist monk at the age of fifty-five, taking the name of “Ganmu” (眼夢) which combines the character for “eye” and that for “dream.” The second character links this name to “Zuimu,” the name adopted by the aging lecher of “A Man’s Writing from a Woman’s Hand,” which, like this story, involves sexual relationships with household employees. Before entering the life of a monk, we are told, Hirao Shuri lived as a playboy and avoided taking on burdensome duties. He eventually sees that all worldly matters are illusory, as described in the following passage: Led by the Buddha, he looked out over Lake Biwa and saw it as the proverbial lake of birth and death, and perceived in the dugout boats that plied its surface the vow of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas to ferry all sentient beings to the shores of paradise.71 Shuri, becoming Ganmu, then cuts himself off from society, letting his household and its grounds go to seed, a process described in a poetic passage employing the tropes of wabi-sabi (the bracing and melancholy aesthetics of desolation and decay). Ganmu’s property lies on the shore of Lake Biwa, and he spends his days secluded in a hermitage there, studying Zen. Here the story backtracks to recount events prior to Ganmu’s entry into seclusion, when he is still named Hirao Shuri. With no desire to leave behind descendants, he has never married or had children, but in order not to be alone in his old age he takes two beautiful sixteen-year-old boys into his household, Morisaka Uneme and Akitsu Sakyō. Both are the sons of masterless samurai from prominent families, and they are very much alike in appearance and disposition. All day long they never leave their master’s sight, and at night 70  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), p. 6, note 9. 71  Ihara, Budō, p. 21.

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the two boys lie on either side of him, sharing with him the greatest intimacy. However, these are admirable youths, we are told, whose relationship with their master is not merely sexual, for they both show great concern for other duties demanded of them by the way of youths, shudō. They thus serve their master with the utmost diligence and enthusiasm and are more than willing even to sacrifice their young lives in order to conform to his will. Furthermore, they fervently hope to have the chance to serve their master even after their forelocks are shorn four or five years in the future, which will mark their entry into adulthood and end their sexual relationship with him. Uneme and Sakyō write a sacred vow stating their intention to serve their master even as adults, and are sadly disappointed when his entry into seclusion brings their plans to naught. They fear that they will never be able to meet him again. When they hear that, all alone in his hermitage, their master has fallen ill, they become desperately worried and perform all manner of prayers and religious observances in hopes of bringing about a recovery. They consider going against Ganmu’s commands and breaking into his hermitage to see him again, but then think up a more subtle approach. On the night when the autumn moon is at its most beautiful, the two boys hire a boat and boatman, disguise themselves as fishermen by putting on straw raincoats and hats, then sail out onto Lake Biwa, one playing a koto, the other a biwa. They head for the shore next to Ganmu’s hermitage and, accompanying themselves on their instruments, sing a melancholy song alluding to their desire to see their master again: If the wild goose but have a heart, Let him tell our sorrows in his cries, As he wings his way through autumn skies– ’Tis not the waves that wet our sleeves.72 Awakened by their music from a light sleep, Ganmu emerges to investigate. Charmed by their song and by the scene before him, he in turn briefly sings an excerpt from a poem by the Chinese poet Du Mu (803–853) to the strains of the koto. He then indicates that such beautiful sights and sounds as he is enjoying now are merely illusions that distract one from one’s Buddhist practices, and he begins to shut his door.

72  Ihara, Budō, p. 23.

Illustration 20 Ganmu serenaded. Waseda University Library.

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Uneme and Sakyō then take off their hats and straw raincoats and declare who they are. They beg to be allowed to serve Ganmu as disciples, leaving behind shudō for the Buddhist path. They express their regret at having interfered with Ganmu’s austerities, but say that since he appears not to be in the best of health they wanted to see him, in fear that he might not be long for this world. Ganmu is moved by the boys’ entreaties, but takes his feelings to be nothing but a reawakening of sexual desire. He is afraid that a simple refusal will not convince Uneme and Sakyō to leave him alone. Begging the gods to forgive him he decides to resort to a lie in order extricate himself from this situation, and gives the boys a cruel scolding that he knows they do not deserve. He declares that Uneme and Sakyō have no business coming to see him, saying that they disobeyed him constantly during their years together and failed to observe the proper protocol in their relationship with him. Because of his feelings for them and because as someone planning to enter the Buddhist path he thought he should be kind and gentle, he overlooked their misdeeds in the past, he says, but now he sees that he must repudiate them and refuse any contact with them, not only in this life but for seven lives. Stunned, Uneme and Sakyō burst into tears. They cannot remember having done anything wrong in their years with Ganmu, but they decide that there is no use in asking him to explain just what their misdeeds were, and go home in a daze. They decide that Ganmu looks as if he will soon die (presumably as a result of the austerities to which he has subjected himself). They want to join their master in death, committing suicide according to the medieval Japanese warrior tradition known as “junshi,” but have been commanded repeatedly never to do this. Then it occurs to them that if they kill themselves before Ganmu dies, they will accomplish their goal without being disobedient. They set a date for their deaths, upon which they dress in white kimonos, enter a room and nail the door shut. There they slit open their bellies, each making two parallel cuts, then face one another and run each other through with their swords. Alerted by an exclamation of “Now!,” the signal the two youths give each other to make the fatal thrust, other members of the household immediately break down the door to find them dead, their eyes half open, smiles on their faces, and the hair at their temples still neatly smoothed back. When Ganmu hears of this he breaks his vow of seclusion and leaves his hermitage, but he is too weak to walk, so must be carried to the corpses of Uneme and Sakyō. Devastated, he declares that he had repudiated the boys for the sake of their own lives, presumably because he thought that this would prevent them from committing suicide if he himself died. Overcome with admiration for the boys’ display of samurai spirit, he says that he should follow their example and snatches up Sakyō’s dagger to kill himself. He is dissuaded

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from doing so by the others’ warnings that this would cause a scandal. (Junshi involved suicide in response to the death of one’s superior, but as in shudō, here a reversal of roles was not the done thing.) Nonetheless, within three days he is dead of natural causes. Afterwards, Sekiya Tameemon, a samurai who served in Ganmu’s household, starts a rumor that Sakyō had actually tried to back down from his suicide pact with Uneme, but that Uneme had held him to it and slit open his belly for him. Tameemon’s reasons for spreading this lie are jealousy and revenge. He earlier tried to coax Sakyō into having an affair with him, which would of course have meant betraying their master, and when a polite refusal was not effective, Sakyō humiliatingly rejected his advances where others could hear him. “The loss of face should have made it unbearable to Tameemon to go on living,” the narrator comments, “but in contrast to his usual audacity, he showed great cowardice by simply letting the matter lie.”73 However, he continued to nurse his resentment toward the boy and started maligning him after his death. The rumor makes its way around the province, then at a gathering hosted by Uneme’s younger brother, Motome, Tameemon says meaningfully, “Among the followers of shudō there are different levels.” He then goes on to exorbitantly praise his host’s late brother. Motome is unimpressed: You have praised my brother too much, Tameemon. As for the true quality of their hearts, neither Sakyō nor Uneme was in any way inferior to the other. Furthermore, in some ways Sakyō outclassed Uneme. He was a youth who would not have suffered by comparison to anybody. Moreover, it is against the commands of heaven to be spreading groundless stories about a comrade who has left this world. You have said these things in front of a large group of people, so you won’t be able to deny them later. I will tell Sakyō’s younger brother Sazen about this, and I swear by the bodhisattva Hachiman you won’t get away with it.74 “What impudence!”75 Tameemon bursts out as he stands up, but Motome draws his sword and cuts him down, then calmly sheaths it and leaves for Sazen’s house. While Motome is telling Sazen of what has just happened, Tameemon’s only son Jirōkurō runs in brandishing a spear. Sazen parries the attack with his sword. Motome pulls out a small mirror, smooths the hair at his temples back into place and casually watches the fight. When servants from Tameemon’s 73  Ihara, Budō, p. 28. 74  Ihara, Budō, p. 29. 75  Ihara, Budō, p. 29.

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house show up, Motome bars the gate and tells them, “We’ll give you Jirōkurō’s corpse.”76 This frightens away the servants. Sazen finally manages to kill Jirōkurō. He and Motome then collect their families and escape from the province “at a leisurely pace.”77 As a relationship between an adult male and a teenaged boy, a shudō relationship was inherently hierarchical. This hierarchical aspect is highlighted and problematized in various ways in this story as in other shudō-themed stories in Way of the Warrior. First of all, the age gap between the boys and the fifty-five-year-old Shuri/Ganmu is greater than is usually the case in contemporary depictions of such relationships. This, the fact that as pages the youths are essentially his employees, and the fact that there are two of them, all work to emphasize the exploitive nature of the relationship. In contrast to the portrayal of Uneme and Sakyō as unambiguously virtuous, their master is shown as not altogether admirable. After leading a wasteful and self-indulgent life the master then enters the Buddhist path and thus at last performs a virtuous act, but in order to pursue the path he has chosen, he crushes two people who have served him with utmost enthusiasm and selfless devotion. Furthermore, he does so by denying that they have displayed the admirable qualities whose fruits he himself has in fact enjoyed. His assertion after their deaths that he repudiated them to protect them comes too late to be convincing. His young pages, on the other hand, reach perfection in their efforts to serve him in and out of bed, violate his commands only once, with their charming serenade at his hermitage, and show great ingenuity both on that occasion and in planning to join their master in death without disobeying the prohibition on following him in death. The relationship between Uneme and Sakyō also throws into relief the hierarchical nature of shudō relationships. The two are identical in age and nearly identical in character and appearance, and dialogue and thoughts coming from their corner are never specifically attributed to one or the other. It is as if they were one person with two bodies, and their nature as doppelgänger is even alluded to by the grisly yet playful narrative touch of having each make two parallel slits in his belly, a pattern designated in the text as “nimonji” (“the Chinese character for ‘two’ ”), which Fuji Akio tells us is unusual in seppuku, a single horizontal cut (“the character for ‘one’ ”) or two cuts intersecting at right angles (“the character for ‘ten’ ”) being the norm.78 The boys’ overwhelming sameness and equality highlights the impossibility of a conventional shudō 76  Ihara, Budō, p. 30. 77  Ihara, Budō, p. 30. 78  Ihara, Budō, p. 27, note 17.

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relationship between them. However, the description of the sleeping arrangements in their master’s bedchamber raises the question of what, if anything, the two youths are doing to each other when their master is having his way with them. Given the context in which Uneme and Sakyō become companions, their death scene, in which they drive swords into each other’s bodies and die with smiles on their faces, is particularly evocative, and although, to rephrase the comment regarding cigars attributed to Sigmund Freud, swords are sometimes just swords, in this case they resemble something else. Ganmu’s name links him to the title character of “The Tale of Genmu,” an example of the chigo monogatari (acolyte tale, more literally “child story”) genre mentioned earlier, whose protagonists typically reach enlightenment after loving a boy and then losing him to an early death, an experience that brings home to them the ephemerality of all phenomena and the uselessness of emotional attachment to anyone or anything.79 In “Heartstrings,” on the other hand, Ganmu’s initial enlightenment as he gazes out over Lake Biwa and its confirmation when he rejects his pages’ entreaties to join him in his austerities precede and ultimately lead to their deaths, thus turning the standard plot of the chigo monogatari on its head. In “Chigo in the Japanese Imagination,” Paul S. Atkins writes of how in both “The Tale of Genmu” and the chigo monogatari “A Long Tale for an Autumn Night,” the beloved youths in question are in the end revealed to be manifestations of bodhisattvas, a plot twist that, as Atkins puts it, makes their deaths “not truly tragic because they were not really human, and their deaths were instruments in grander plans to bring the monks who loved them (or thought they loved them) to experience enlightenment.”80 However, in “Heartstrings” there is no such softening of the tragic deaths of the youths Ganmu shoves aside as obstacles on the path to enlightenment, for they remain human to the end.

“Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar” The cowardice of Tameemon’s servants and Motome’s oddly timed and dandyish display of vanity provide a touch of comedy at the end of the heart-rending “Heartstrings.” In contrast, a comic scene opens “Nozukue no keburikurabe” (Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar),81 79  Childs, Rethinking Sorrow, pp. 31–52, 143–47; Childs, “The Tale of Genmu,” pp. 36–54; see also Introduction, note 104. 80  Atkins, “Chigo in the Japanese Imagination,” p. 955. 81  Ihara, Budō, pp. 283–92.

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which, as the opening story of Way of the Warrior’s eighth and final volume, serves as a complementary bookend to volume one’s opening story, which we have just examined. Here again we are presented with a high-ranking samurai who has enjoyed the charms of not one but two beautiful youths, but at the opening of “Dueling Flames” the boys’ master and lover, the lord of Tanba province, has already died, and the boys, who wanted to follow him in death but were forbidden in his will to do so, are now “binan” (美男, “beautiful men,” as opposed to Uneme and Sakyō’s designation as “bidō” [美童], literally “beautiful children”) in their early thirties. Flush with the large stipends given them by their late master, they throw their weight around, and in further contrast to the youthful heroes of “Heartstrings,” who did everything as one, Kunimi Motome and Itani Kyūshirō behave as rivals vying to outshine each other. (The fact that one of them shares a name with Uneme’s younger brother in “Heartstrings” provides one more link to the earlier story.) Their competitiveness manifests itself in a most unseemly context when they quarrel over which of them will be the first to offer incense at their master’s funeral. The late lord’s elder retainers deplore Motome and Kyūshirō’s lack of decorum, but appease them by ordering a second incense altar installed so that the pair may make their offerings simultaneously. However, this measure only temporarily eases the tension between the two men. In the midst of the ceremony Kyūshirō steps on the hem of his hakama when attempting to stand up, stumbling and falling spectacularly. He thinks he perceives a slight smirk on the part of one or more of Motome’s retainers, and in retaliation waylays and kills Motome after the funeral. Kyūshirō then flees the province, leaving no trace, and his name becomes mud for having chosen such an inappropriate occasion to kill his rival. Motome leaves behind two sons: eleven-year-old Ryōnosuke and Toranosuke, aged seven. Three years later the boys obtain official permission to pursue a vendetta, and then wander the country with two family servants for nine years in search of their father’s killer, to no avail. They then receive word that Kyūshirō is hiding out in Dewa province under the protection of a friend or family member (the Japanese word in question can mean both), so the brothers and their servants head there to find out more, disguising themselves as peddlers. One evening late in spring, while reconnoitering on the outskirts of the local castle town in his disguise as a dealer in small articles and gadgets, Toranosuke gets caught in the rain, and worse yet encounters a group of low-ranking samurai who have gotten drunk while blossom-viewing and are now rampaging through town, brandishing branches torn from cherry trees and trying to pick

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fights with passersby. Toranosuke hesitates to run away from these ruffians, but cannot risk endangering the successful completion of the vendetta, so he steps aside under the eaves of a house there. A beautiful young woman invites him inside. She turns out to be a prostitute whose charm and refinement contrast with her rustic surroundings, and the two begin an intense love affair. During one of their trysts the woman, assuming that as a peddler of gadgets he must include dildos among the items he sells, asks Toranosuke to show her one. When he replies that he has none, she indicates that she does not believe him and says she will get it herself. She opens the box in which Toranosuke supposedly carries his goods, and finds nothing but a dagger there. She then tells him that from the start she knew he was no ordinary merchant, and asks to hear his real story. Toranosuke obliges, and the prostitute reveals that she herself knows where to find Kyūshirō, since she has recently rejected employment in the household where a high retainer of the local daimyo has sheltered Kyūshirō under an assumed name. She proposes to work there in order to help Toranosuke avenge his father’s death. This causes Toranosuke to shed tears of gratitude and draws the two even closer to one another, but things become more complicated when after the woman enters Kyūshirō’s service he takes her as his mistress. When she bears him a son, Kyūshirō makes her his wife, and she considers denouncing Toranosuke to her new husband, but then decides to stand by Toranosuke to the bitter end. When she learns that Kyūshirō is about to visit a temple to observe the anniversary of his father’s death, traveling hidden in a trunk to avoid detection, she recognizes this as a “heaven-sent” chance for Toranosuke to kill Kyūshirō and sends Toranosuke word of the upcoming journey. On the appointed day Ryōnosuke, Toranosuke and their two servants ambush Kyūshirō’s party en route to the temple, cutting down the servants carrying the trunk holding him. Opening the lid, they exhort Kyūshirō to get up and fight, but he is “unable” to stand up, so once their patience runs out they behead him and send the headless corpse onward to the temple, carried in the trunk by the brothers’ own servants. The sight of the headless corpse naturally comes as a great shock to the priests waiting for Kyūshirō, but when the dead man’s widow shows up at the temple she adds to their surprise by remaining undisturbed by the news. She tells those present her whole story, then, quoting a proverb to the effect that a woman’s womb is merely the temporary shelter of some man’s offspring, she kills her baby and herself, much to the regret of all present. Ryōnosuke returns to Tanba “to wash away his father’s shame [at having met defeat at Kyūshirō’s

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hands],”82 i.e., by bringing home Kyūshirō’s severed head, and Toranosuke becomes a monk and prays for the woman he loved. “Dueling Flames” undercuts the pathos of “Heartstrings” by travestying several aspects of the earlier story’s depiction of its earnest young protagonists. Like Uneme and Sakyō, the latter story’s Motome and Kyūshirō wanted to commit junshi and were forbidden to do so, but they lacked the foresight and casuistic brilliance that led the other pair to precede their master in death. Uneme and Sakyō act together to offer their lives to their master simultaneously, each killing the other in the same instant; Motome and Kyūshirō simultaneously offer incense for their dead master, but this simultaneity is not, as in Uneme and Sakyō’s case, the result of admirable cooperation between two who might easily have been rivals, but rather is an externally imposed compromise meant to quell their petty and ill-timed squabbling. Having made their sacrifice, Uneme and Sakyō leave behind bodies stilled at the height of their youthful beauty, pretty as a picture in their bloodstained whites, wearing looks of serenity, their feat admired by all; Kyūshirō, after making his offering, stumbles clumsily in the midst of a solemn ceremony, and both he and his rival win the opprobrium of all present with their scandalously inappropriate behavior. Furthermore, their deaths are far from ideal for a samurai, since Motome loses his life to his rival, thus bringing his family shame, and Kyūshirō is later too afraid to fight for his life, and so is slaughtered like an animal cowering in its nest. Moreover, he is brought down with the help of a woman of low status, a prostitute, who shows much greater fortitude than he and also kills his infant son. In addition to the negative portraits of the two samurai characters Motome and Kyūshirō, the story features a scene of random violence perpetrated on innocent chōnin by saké-fueled samurai lowlifes. The choice that Toranosuke’s lover must make between loyalty to him, her husband of the heart, as it were, and loyalty to the man to whom she is formally married recalls the situational ethics of “Bamboo Flute.” Here, a woman paradoxically proves her loyalty to a man by going so far as to marry another, which under other circumstances would constitute betrayal of the first man, and by then betraying the second man and killing their child. But in contrast to the heroine of “Bamboo Flute” she is so compromised and traumatized by the experience that afterward she feels compelled to commit suicide. The portrayal of the superannuated wakashu of “Dueling Flames” is antithetical to the falling-blossom aesthetic that typically suffuses descriptions of shudō relationships both in Saikaku’s works and in other texts, in which virtuous youths are regularly killed off at the zenith of their physical beauty, 82  Ihara, Budō, p. 291.

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or gravely assume adult responsibilities after their lovely forelocks are scattered like springtime blossoms or autumn leaves. Not so the aging erōmenoi of “Dueling Flames”; they may be binan, but according to the standards of the time they are well past their aesthetic peak, yet they persist in trying to make hay off their long-finished erotic relationships with the now dead daimyo. With its parallels to “Heartstrings,” “Dueling Flames” in effect offers an alternative ending to the earlier story, implying that if its youthful protagonists had gone on living they might have presented such an unsavory spectacle as that of Motome and Kyūshirō. “Dueling Flames” thus continues Way of the Warrior’s dialogic pattern of offsetting flattering portrayals of the samurai with their opposite. “A Youth in His Prime, Splendid as the Bush Clover in Miyagino” Motome and Kyūshirō are the only junior partners in a shudō relationship given a negative portrayal in Way of the Warrior, and they receive this unflattering treatment long after they have graduated from wakashu status. However, pederastic desire on the part of adult males leads to violence in several stories in the collection, such as in the latter part of “Heartstrings,” described above, and the second story in volume seven, “Wakashuzakari wa Miyagino no hagi” (A Youth in His Prime, Splendid as the Bush Clover in Miyagino).83 In Miyagino near present-day Sendai, despite their reduced circumstances, the rōnin Hagiyama Shōgoemon (his surname means “bush clover mountain,” which links it to a pun in the title) and his wife live happily due to the joy brought by their beautiful young son Shōnosuke. When Shōgoemon suspects that his years are reaching their end he entreats his friend Tagoshi Benzaemon to look after his son when he himself is gone. Benzaemon does not forget this request once his friend dies. He is well-acquainted with Yashima Jūrōemon, a high retainer of the local daimyo, Senkai Uemon, a devotee of shudō. Knowing of the daimyo’s tastes, Benzaemon tells Jūrōemon of Shōnosuke’s beauty, and Jūrōemon manages to place Shōnosuke in Uemon’s service after the boy’s father dies. Uemon falls deeply in love with Shōnosuke, who stays by his master’s side day and night. But Uemon is not the only one to take a fancy to Shōnosuke, for one of the boy’s colleagues in Uemon’s service, Hatagawa Kurōji, chafes with desire for Shōnosuke from the moment he first sees him when the boy is presented to their lord. He makes numerous amorous overtures in letters to Shōnosuke, who tactfully declines his advances. Kurōji then tells the boy that he will get what he wants “by the tip 83  Ihara, Budō, pp. 258–64.

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of his sword.”84 The following day he ambushes Shōnosuke, but the boy fights back and kills his assailant. Apparently fearful of how Uemon will interpret the incident, Shōnosuke flees to the home of Benzaemon, who vows to protect him. Uemon declares that since Kurōji died with no brothers to avenge him, he must put aside his feelings for Shōnosuke and punish the boy himself. Because Uemon’s retainer Jūrōemon brought Shōnosuke into his service, he is given the responsibility of seeing to it that he is captured. On two separate visits, Jūrōemon tries a gentle approach with Benzaemon, whom everyone assumes to be hiding the boy, telling him on the second occasion that Uemon is likely to praise Shōnosuke rather than punish him once the boy tells him in person what happened. But when Benzaemon refuses a second time to cooperate, Jūrōemon feels obliged to kill him. The elderly Benzaemon is no match for him and thus is easily dispatched. Benzaemon’s death sets into motion the vendetta of this story, for his younger brother Benzō is now obliged to kill Jūrōemon, whom Uemon has placed under protection at a secret location. Benzō puts together a band of supporters, including Shōnosuke, and tracks down Jūrōemon. However, Shōnosuke kills himself just before the the band confronts Jūrōemon, explaining in a suicide note that he has accompanied the group this far because of the gratitude he owes his late foster father, but that he cannot participate directly in an attack on the man who helped him find a position in Uemon’s service. After mourning Shōnosuke’s death and burying him, Benzō’s group then joins battle with Jūrōemon and his protectors. The men of both sides acquit themselves honorably, and Jūrōemon demonstrates especial bravery, but in the end he is killed by Benzō. As in various other stories in the collection, in “Bush Clover” one is confronted not with a simple vendetta but rather with a complex chain reaction of violence. In each such case, the samurai code of loyalty and honor functions as the precondition for such a chain reaction, and either samurai misdeeds or a simple misunderstanding sets them off. Uemon’s callousness toward his beloved in the name of order recalls that of Ganmu toward his two wakashu in the pursuit of Buddhist enlightenment. Benzaemon’s efforts to have Shōnosuke put in service to Uemon present a striking spectacle to the modern reader, Japanese or Western, and one that we shall see again later: that of a father or father substitute working to place a youth in a sexual relationship with a powerful man, in each case with disastrous consequences. 84  Ihara, Budō, p. 259.

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“ ’Tis Pity His Forelocks Have Scattered before the Wind off Mt. Hakone” Whereas in “Bush Clover” Kurōji resorts to violence in an attempt to gain sexual access to a beautiful youth, in the second story of the eighth and last volume a nenja suddenly deprived of his beloved’s favors flies into a violent rage. “Oshi ya maegami Hakone yamaoroshi” (’Tis Pity His Forelocks Have Scattered before the Wind off Mt. Hakone)85 takes place in Odawara, a castle town near the mountain of the title, where the beauty of the youth Kishinosuke, son of the commander of the archers Mizuki Kishiemon, causes all who lay eyes on him to burn with desire. Many are those who have tried their luck with him when no one else was looking, but it is Matsue Seigorō, a young man on the fast track serving the same lord, who becomes Kishinosuke’s lover. The two are inseparable and filled with passion for one another, and they are oblivious to the impermanence of all love affairs. Kishinosuke is now seventeen, and Seigorō rues the passing of each day, knowing that his beloved must soon submit to genbuku and thus bring to an end the sexual side of their relationship. Kishiemon is old and tired of working and wants his son to undergo this coming-of-age ceremony as soon as possible so he himself can retire when his son takes over his post. One day he commands Kishinosuke to get ready for genbuku, stating that he has felt out the daimyo on this matter and informed him that the ceremony would soon occur, but since Seigorō opposes his beloved taking this step, the boy manages to delay the inevitable for half a year. This angers his father greatly, but as Kishinosuke notes to himself, custom dictates that he cannot simply do as he pleases without considering the wishes of his lover, and he finds himself wanting to ask his father, who still knows nothing of the relationship, if he had a similar experience when he was a youth. Kishinosuke confides in an older retainer and has him tell his father about his predicament. When he learns the reason for his son’s hesitancy to shear his forelocks and enter adulthood, Kishiemon has a colleague, Tobio Yoshichiemon, ask Seigorō for his consideration in the matter. Yoshichiemon politely conveys this message to Seigorō when the latter is on night duty. But Seigorō does not give his assent in the matter, and persists in his refusal even after Yoshichiemon explains why the genbuku has to go forward, so Yoshichiemon tells him that the ceremony will be performed that evening regardless, then walks out on him. Yoshichiemon goes to Kishiemon and tells him that he has informed Seigorō that the ceremony must be performed, but neglects to tell him of Seigorō’s 85  Ihara, Budō, pp. 292–98.

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resistance, saying that there was “no particular problem.”86 He does however encourage Kishiemon to take advantage of Seigorō’s being tied down with night duty by performing the ceremony immediately. Kishinosuke’s father follows this advice, and the boy’s forelocks are shorn, compared by the narrator to willow shoots cut down by a sharp wind. The next morning, upon leaving duty at the castle, Seigorō runs into Masukawa Makiemon and Hoshimura Kurōhachi. He invites them home to catch up on things, and after sharing jokes and gossip “about the two paths of love”87 (i.e., the pursuit of women and that of youths) one of the visitors praises Kishinosuke’s beauty and speaks of the desire to have youths keep their lovely forelocks forever. Not yet knowing what his guests already know, Seigorō heartily agrees and then tells of how he has been pestered to assent to Kishinosuke’s genbuku by the boy’s “impatient” father and his go-between, but has continued to withhold his approval. Just then Kishinosuke arrives, wearing a raincoat and headscarf as protection against the cold, intermittent showers of the season. He leaves on the scarf, which Seigorō criticizes as rude, at which Kishinosuke chuckles nervously. Makiemon then alludes to the possibility that Kishinosuke is hiding a newly-shaven pate. This arouses Seigorō’s suspicions and he forcibly removes the scarf to see that, as the narrator describes it, “a strong wind” has turned Seigorō’s beloved boy into “a withered, blossomless tree of a man.” “Can you really have changed that much?” Seigorō asks,88 and one of his guests tries to salvage the moment by joking metaphorically that the village of Yoshino is more bewitching at the end of spring than it is earlier in the season when its famed cherry blossoms are at their peak. This does not manage to defuse the situation, and Seigorō gets cross and loses some of his graciousness as a host, so the two guests decide to leave before things get worse. Kishinosuke then pulls out something wrapped up like a gift from inside his kimono and presents it to Seigorō; it is his shorn forelocks. Seigorō throws these aside and demands to know who told Kishinosuke he could undergo genbuku. The boy, now a man, replies that the previous night Yoshichiemon, after talking with Seigorō, came to his family’s house and said that the ceremony should go ahead while there was nothing to block it. To this Seigorō says the equivalent of “Heartless bastard!”89 as he pulls Kishinosuke toward him and stabs him to death. 86  Ihara, Budō, pp. 294–95. 87  Ihara, Budō, p. 295. 88  Ihara, Budō, p. 297. 89  Ihara, Budō, p. 297.

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Seigorō then proceeds to the house of Yoshichiemon, whom he finds at home. He complains that by causing the genbuku to proceed despite his objections, Yoshichiemon has made him lose face in front of all who know him. With that he draws his sword and attacks Yoshichiemon, who as an elderly man has a tough time defending himself against the youthful Seigorō. Just then Kishiemon shows up on official business and, not knowing that his son has been killed, steps in to defend his friend and colleague. But Seigorō cuts down both of the older men and dispatches them with coups de grâce. As he is about to escape, Yoshichiemon’s retainer Kameemon arrives and kills Seigorō with a blow that slices deep into his body. Aside from presenting us with another example of hotheadedness and the socially destructive pursuit of sexual gratification on the part of a samurai character, thus reconfirming the irony of Way of the Warrior’s opening characterization of the samurai as a model for the populace to emulate, “Forelocks” offers intriguing clues regarding the status of shudō relationships in the Japan of Saikaku’s time. Seigorō and Kishinosuke keep their relationship private enough that the boy’s father at first knows nothing of it (perhaps they do so to avoid the third-party jealousy that causes so much trouble in other stories here), but when Kishiemon is told that his son has a male lover who is standing in the way of the desired genbuku ceremony, his reaction implies that a boy’s lover’s feelings were to be taken into consideration in such situations, and that communication between a boy’s parents and his lover regarding such a relationship, here indirect, was not out of the ordinary. The relationship is also portrayed as public to the extent that Seigorō’s visitors know of it and Seigorō himself believes the shaving of Kishinosuke’s forelocks against his, Seigorō’s will, has caused him to lose face in society. With its references to willow shoots, mountain winds and the flowering cherries of Yoshino, both in its title and at various points in the narrative “Forelocks” partakes of the aestheticization of evanescence examined in the introduction to this study. Seigorō fails to learn the Buddhistic lesson inherent to this ukiyo aesthetic, attempting to cling tightly to what he should let slip away, and thus brings disaster to himself and all other parties concerned. This points out the difference between the spirit of ukiyo and that reflected in the phrase carpe diem, to which it bears a superficial resemblance, but which implies a most un-Buddhist death-grip on the sources of one’s pleasures.

“Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One Would Expect to Hear the Pounding of a Stone Mortar Instead” The fourth story in volume six, “Ishiusu hikubeki hanyū no koto” (Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One Would Expect to Hear the Pounding of a Stone Mortar

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Instead),90 also features a parent’s involvement in a youth’s relationship with his nenja, but in this story the behavior of both wakashu and nenja is exemplary, and it is fate, the samurai code and the actions of a seemingly rash and unjust lord that cause both the boy and his lover to be destroyed. Like “Bamboo Flute,” the story is also notable for its striking recontextualization of tropes taken from The Tale of Genji, which, like that in “Bamboo Flute,” falls within the broad definition of parody adopted in the introduction to this study, but unlike the Genji allusions in “Handwriting,” does not result in comical incongruousness or constitute an attack on the source text. These three tales thus together serve as an example of the coexistence of a wide range of allusive or parodic modes in the same text, a trait typical of both Saikaku’s fictional works and the whole of haikai poetry, the genre in which Saikaku began his literary career, which, as noted earlier, borrows the tropes and forms of waka poetry while systematically violating the courtly rules of decorum governing that genre, often, but by no means exclusively, to comic effect. In a province designated as “Koshi” (which can refer to a number of provinces in the Hokuriku region)91 its lord, Mashikura Jibunodayū, sends an order to his page Akanishi Senpachi to put to death Senpachi’s comrade Desaki Shingohei. Jibunodayū has given no reason for this punishment, and when Senpachi asks him what Shingohei’s crime is, Jibunodayū simply commands him to carry out the order and provides no explanation. Senpachi is close friends with Shingohei and wants nothing less than to harm him, but an order is an order, so he goes to Shingohei’s house, trades a few words with him, then informs him of the command he has been given and swiftly dispatches his host. Before leaving he explains the reasons for his actions to Shingohei’s understandably shocked and upset staff. The dead man’s household is soon confiscated. Sadly, this leaves Shingohei’s widow in the lurch, for her parents are dead and she is pregnant. She considers suicide as a way out of her now straitened circumstances, but instead makes an arduous journey to the home of a friend or relative at the foot of Mt. Ariake in today’s Niigata prefecture. There she gives birth to a son without the aid of a midwife. Seamstresses are rare in this remote area, so she finds work as one and raises her son, Shōnosuke, as best she can. Despite the poverty and isolation in which he is brought up, Shōnosuke’s elite origins show through in both his manner and his elegant features. This causes his mother to bewail their fallen

90  Ihara, Budō, pp. 236–44; Ihara, Mathers, Comrade Loves, pp. 41–47. 91  Ihara, Budō, p. 237, note 8.

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state, but she and her son manage to amuse themselves singing and playing the koto together. The ways of this fickle world are such that Senpachi ends up losing his lord’s favor through some slight misstep and thus becomes a rōnin. By coincidence, he at last is taken into service in a castle town near the village where Shingohei’s widow and son live. When out on an excursion with a comrade one day, he hears faint strains of koto music that he first dismisses as the sound of the wind in the pines, then on coming closer he clearly hears koto playing of a refinement unexpected in such a rustic area, and singing as well. The music is in fact coming from the humble mountain abode sheltering Shōnosuke and his mother. Intrigued, Senpachi draws nearer to take a look around and sees a woman of about thirty-five, Shōnosuke’s mother, who “looks good for her age”92 despite the sadness and resentment toward the world that are evident on her face. Beside her he sees a youth, Shōnosuke, who is copying something written in kana in his mother’s hand. Senpachi is astounded by Shōnosuke’s unadorned beauty, and marvels at the pair’s elegance amid such humble surroundings. He decides to get an even closer look and gets himself invited inside for a smoke. The effect of Shōnosuke’s charm and beauty is such that Senpachi returns home in a daze. He falls deeply in love with the youth and begins to see him surreptitiously. His attachment to Shōnosuke deepens, and the two trade solemn vows of love. Senpachi takes his beloved to the castle town and makes efforts to advance the boy’s career. He also provides financial assistance to Shōnosuke’s mother. A year passes and Shōnosuke’s mother begins to suspect that her son’s lover is the man who killed her husband, so she asks him about his family background. In answering he speaks of his life in earlier years, and in so doing confirms her suspicions. She then tells Shōnosuke that Senpachi is his father’s killer, and while conceding that he acted under orders from their lord, she exhorts her son to avenge his father’s death by killing Senpachi. Shōnosuke replies that although it is regrettable that he and Senpachi entered into a relationship without knowing of this situation, since Senpachi was acting on orders it is his former lord, Jibunodayū, rather than Senpachi himself whom he should kill. Furthermore, he says he could not possibly kill a

92  Ihara, Budō, p. 240. In the Mathers version of the story, which, like the rest of Comrade Loves is translated from Ken Satō’s French translation (Ihara, Mathers, Comrade Loves, p. x), the woman is simply described as “a very beautiful woman of about thirty-five” (Ihara, Mathers, Comrade Loves, p. 45).

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man who has shown him so much kindness, and tells his mother to rethink the matter. Shōnosuke’s mother then says she cannot expect him to kill his own lover, but asks if it really conforms to the way of the samurai to shift one’s loyalty from one’s father to a man with whom one has entered into a fictive kinship through a vow of brotherhood (as was the custom in shudō relationships). She then takes up a dagger and says she herself will avenge her husband. Shōnosuke stops her and promises to kill Senpachi, but secretly thinks to himself that he cannot do so and must devise some sort of subterfuge to get out of this predicament. Senpachi shows up and asks Shōnosuke why he looks so unhappy. Shōnosuke tells all and Senpachi says that it is in fact he who killed the boy’s father, then tries to settle the matter by throwing away both his swords, stretching out his neck and asking Shōnosuke to cut off his head. Shōnosuke is torn apart by this sight, and asks Senpachi to take up his long sword again (i.e., to defend himself). Shōnosuke’s mother has been watching from the next room and tells her son she has witnessed his and his lover’s display of great honor and integrity and suggests that the two of them drink farewell cups together since this will be their final night with each other. She then brings out a pair of unglazed saké cups for them, and late into the night the two enjoy each other’s company in the usual manner. In the next room Shōnosuke’s mother dozes off. Awakening the next morning, she sees that the two are still together in bed and shouts at them “Shirkers!”93 However, this brings no reaction, so she approaches their bed, but still they do not wake up. She then pulls back the covers and sees her son and his lover lying together facing the same direction, skewered on a single sword that Shōnosuke has run through Senpachi’s chest and out his own back. His mother cannot bear to take a second look, and she, too kills herself on the spot.94 In “Koto Music” there are no obvious elements of comedy or parody and no clear villainy, since the reader cannot be sure that Jibunodayū behaved unjustly in ordering Shingohei killed, although Senpachi’s fall from favor for a “slight mistake” can be taken together with the earlier punishment to indicate 93  Ihara, Budō, p. 244. In the Mathers version this is translated as singular and directed at her son, which is plausible (Ihara, Mathers, Comrade Loves, p. 47). 94  Ihara, Budō, p. 244. The Mathers version also portrays Shōnosuke (written “Shynosuke”) as having dealt the death blow, but reverses the positioning of the two lovers, such that “Shynosuke” is described as having driven the sword through his own torso and into the chest of Senpachi (written “Senpatji”) (Ihara, Mathers, Comrade Loves, p. 47).

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a tendency for unwarranted severity on Jibunodayū’s part. Like Muranosuke’s first look at Kogō in “Bamboo Flute,” Senpachi’s discovery of Shōnosuke resembles the kaimami scenes in The Tale of Genji, most especially the one in the fifth chapter, in which Genji first sees the little girl he will raise to be his wife. Similarly to the corresponding passage in “Bamboo Flute,” the scene is taken from the context of aristocrats of the Heian-period imperial court and reconfigured in the milieu of contemporary samurai, in this case with a refined young boy hidden away in the wilds as the object of voyeurism and desire rather than an aristocratic girl in the same situation. And again, as in the case of “Bamboo Flute,” this recontextualization does constitute a lowering of register from that of the original, i.e., from an aristocratic milieu to that of samurai, but not a coarsening, and does not result in laugh-inducing incongruousness. “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand,” as noted earlier, also makes obvious references to Genji, and shares with “Koto Music” the trope of refined koto music issuing from places unseen, then dismissed as the whistling of wind in the pines. But whereas in “Handwriting,” a blackly comical satire of samurai pretensions to cultural sophistication, the music remains ignored by passersby, in the latter story, which highlights the nobler side of the samurai ethos, the hearer comes closer and wonders at its refinement. The amorous adventures of both stories’ latter-day Genjis end bloodily, in the first case as a result of Zuimu’s unjustness and cruelty, whereas in the latter case the two lovers’ manner of death is the ultimate sign of their devotion to each other, to the code of shudō and to the samurai code of honor. Their deaths, with their willed simultaneity, invite comparison to those of Uneme and Sakyō in “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa,” whose oddly symmetrical relationship as the quasitwin beloveds of their aging master is emphasized by the method with which they choose to end their lives: face to face, as if looking in the mirror, each running the other through with his sword. In “Koto Music,” on the other hand, the bodies of the two lovers, who have been connected to one another according to the conventions of the asymmetrical and, in a physical sense, unidirectional shudō relationship, are now linked by a single sword, thrust, to be sure, by the wakashu, but entering his body from that of his nenja. “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love” As does “Sight Unseen” with its account of the samurai Gunpei killing the commoner Myōshun, “Hatsutakegari wa koigusa no tane” (Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love)95 also features a samurai character who abuses his power in victimizing a chōnin. The story highlights the hierarchical 95  Ihara, Budō, pp. 120–27.

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nature of shudō by pairing a wealthy chōnin nenja with a high-status samurai youth, and in the process brings the topic of conflict between chōnin and samurai even more explicitly and dramatically into play than is the case in “Sight Unseen.” In one of its scenes an arrogant, deceitful and boastful samurai makes use of his martial skill and privileged status, which gave samurai authorization to cut down commoners at their own discretion, to intimidate and humiliate a sympathetic chōnin character. In another passage another, equally sympathetic chōnin character is depicted as thinking of a member of the warrior class as a “samurai beast” and planning to kill him. “Early Mushrooms” resolves its inter-class conflict with a denouement that provides the collection’s single instance of a samurai specifically avenging the death of a chōnin. The story’s opening scene is set in autumn in the mountains outside a provincial capital, where we are introduced to Numasuge Hannojō, a samurai youth of unparalleled beauty. He has come out to attend a mushroom-hunting party, and there he meets an adult samurai, Takekura Banzō, who, motivated by desire, has followed him there. The following day Banzō visits Hannojō in his home and declares his love for him. Hannojō indicates that he is flattered, but already has a lover. Banzō boldly asks him who his lover is, and Hannojō takes offense and refuses to tell him. Banzō easily finds out from another source that Hannojō’s lover is Notoya Tōnai, a wealthy chōnin and a machiyakko,96 one of a sort of urban tribe of swaggering, dandyish playboys of chōnin status who often clashed with samurai. Tōnai has won quite a reputation and counts many samurai among his followers, and other samurai think that for a chōnin he is a splendid fellow. He and Hannojō have been dear to one another97 since they met three years earlier. After learning that Tōnai is Hannojō’s lover, Banzō, a practiced swordsman, goes to Tōnai’s house to confront him: Banzō called Tōnai out to the street, positioned himself as if preparing to draw his sword and said, staring fiercely, “You act pretty high and mighty for a chōnin. Get down on your knees!” Shocked, Tōnai replied, “No one talks to me that way. Do you have some sort of official authority?” Putting his hand to his sword, Banzō said, “I hear that you’ve had the audacity to degrade the son and heir of Lord Numasuge by making yourself 96  Here designated by the equivalent “machiroppō.” 97  It is not clear whether their relationship is supposed to have been sexually consummated early on or in the love scene later described as happening a year before that point in the narrative, or if what we have here is a plot inconsistency.

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the boy’s lover. I daresay that even the goddess Marishi-ten, [patroness of warriors], is appalled by this. She, however, does not deign to appear before mortals. I, on the other hand, have come here on the order of the great bodhisattva Hachiman. Today I have had the special privilege of seeing the lovely form of young master Hannojō, and even received a cup of saké from his hand. It appears that from now on I, Takekura Banzō Taira no Masazumi, a descendant of Emperor Kanmu, shall serve as that fine lad’s protector. From this, the twenty-eighth day of the eighth month, I strictly forbid you to set one foot outside of that gate there. What you have done is outrageous! Unspeakable! If you move even one inch right now, your head is going to say goodbye to your shoulders. So what do you have to say for yourself? Tell me now!” Banzō held out both of his swords, right there on the street in broad daylight, with passersby stopping to watch. It’s no wonder that Tōnai’s chest began to pound. He felt as if he had been struck by lightning and began to shake. “Do as you see fit, but I beg you to spare my life,” he said as tears welled up in his eyes. Banzō took pity on him and left for home.98 Believing Banzō’s account of his meeting with Hannojō, Tōnai becomes furious with his beloved and sees no point in living now that he expects to be the laughingstock of town. He bursts into Hannojō’s home, accuses him of betrayal and draws a dagger. Hannojō jumps back and tells Tōnai he can explain eve­rything. Tōnai refuses to listen and attacks, wounding Hannojō in the right shoulder. Hearing the commotion, his family’s retainers and servants rush in and “cut Tōnai into little bits.”99 Hannojō is crushed by the loss of his lover and as a result of his wound becomes gravely ill. He is haunted by the thought that Tōnai died thinking that he had betrayed him. Crazed with rage at the man who lied about him and caused his lover’s death, he repeatedly tries to drag himself out of his sickbed to go kill Banzō. His feelings are detailed in an apparently interior monologue that is of a length unusual in Saikaku’s fiction: Thinking back on it, I must say, Tōnai, you acted far too rashly. If I hadn’t been hurt when you started flailing away with that dagger, I would not have had to see our servants kill you before my very eyes. Regrets can help nothing now, but tomorrow it will be a year since the night you brought me secretly to your room. I opened the window at its 98  Ihara, Budō, pp. 123–24. 99  Ihara, Budō, p. 124.

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east side and rolled up the blinds facing south, and we whispered tender words there, and no one knew of the bed we shared but the katsura tree on the sinking moon. With cups of saké steeped with the dewy chrysanthemums by the fence, we pledged to make our love last forever, even if we had to find the elixir of everlasting life to do so. But sadly, unexpectedly, we have parted, and those words have become but a dream. When you vanished like the dew, not knowing how my heart longs for you, how you must have resented me! Now I cannot tell you of the constancy of my heart—oh, what a wretched world this is! Because of Takekura Banzō’s odious deeds things have come to this pass, and though we swore that if one of us must die we both would die together, I have let you die without me. What karmic burden brought me this sad fate? Come to think of it, my dear brother Tōnai, although you died at the hands of others, your real enemy was Banzō. By the three treasures of the Buddha path, I have let too much time pass already; I will not let him escape!100 Meanwhile, Tōnai’s younger brother, Tōhachi, who is sixteen, blames Hannojō for his brother’s death. He thinks of him as the “samurai beast” (侍畜生)101 who betrayed his brother, and he decides to kill him. Preparing to meet the death that will await him if he attacks Hannojō, he bides his time and waits for the right opportunity. Then, much to Tōhachi’s surprise, Hannojō comes to visit, and Tōhachi thinks that his chance has arrived. When Hannojō meets Tōhachi he immediately bursts into tears, saying, “I am ashamed to come see you face to face. The only reason I have allowed myself to go on living this long is so that I could give you this.”102 Hannojō tears open the sleeve of his underrobe, throws an object wrapped in cloth before his host, then stabs himself in the chest with a dagger and dies. When Tōhachi opens the bundle on the floor, he sees that it is the severed head of Takekura Banzō, which has been washed and made presentable. Tōhachi regrets having hated Hannojō and planned his death. The story ends as Tōhachi becomes a monk in order to pray for the dead lovers Hannojō and Tōnai.103 100  Ihara, Budō, pp. 125–26. 101  Ihara, Budō, p. 126. 102  Ihara, Budō, p. 126. 103  Considering “Early Mushrooms” and other, similarly tragic stories in Way of the Warrior, I cannot concur with Howard Hibbett’s assertion that in all of Saikaku’s fictional works, even his vendetta tales, he “maintains an air of detached gaiety” (Hibbett, Floating World, p. 40).

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Many of the stories in Way of the Warrior focus on power dynamics between characters of differing social standing, and in “Early Mushrooms” we see such a dynamic across the line dividing samurai from commoners. Presumably this called for especial caution, and in fact, the setting of the story appears to be another measure taken to camouflage the contemporary-issues aspect of the stories in Way of the Warrior, for machiyakko were to be found not in provincial towns but rather in large urban centers. They were also an early-Tokugawa phenomenon, so the inclusion in this story of a machiyakko character constitutes another detail belying the supposedly pre-Tokugawa setting of the collection.104 Banzō, who makes much of his pedigree and invokes samurai privilege and even the warrior class’s patron divinities during his excruciating public humiliation of Tōnai, is perhaps the most unflattering representative of his statusgroup in Way of the Warrior. He is also the most self-conscious regarding his position as a samurai. The opposite number of the lying, covetous and power-abusing Banzō is Hannojō, who comes across as a sympathetic character in large part because of his deferential and benevolent behavior toward two chōnin: his lover and his lover’s brother, and also because he avenges his lover by killing the cruel and deceitful fellow-samurai Banzō. “Early Mushrooms” brings attention to the hierarchy inherent in shudō by partially reversing it (as does the story we shall examine next), placing the socially inferior chōnin in the superior position—within the context of the shudō relationship—of nenja, with a socially superior samurai youth taking the subordinate role within the relationship. The hierarchical ambiguity of their particular version of the shudō relationship is emphasized by a sentence stating that they have been together for three years when their trouble with Banzō starts, in which the love of one of the two for the other is designated with a form of the verb “kawayugaru” (“kawaigaru” in modern Japanese), which denotes the tender feelings of a superior for an inferior. The verb’s subject is not given, but normally in such a context it could be assumed that it is the nenja. However, in their notes to two different editions of Way of the Warrior, both Taniwaki Masachika105 and Fuji Akio designate the wakashu Hannojō as the subject, with Fuji indicating that this is discernible from their difference in social rank.106 The doubly honorific form of the verb (“kawayugaraserare”) can be taken as indicating that its subject is the youth, who comes from a highranking samurai family, but the fact that both annotators took the unusual step

104  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), pp. 96–97, note 11. 105  Ihara, Budō (Iwanami edition), p. 97, note 15. 106  Ihara, Budō, p. 123, note 19.

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of assigning it a subject indicates that the use of this verb to describe the feelings of a wakashu for his nenja is unusual. Given that shudō was so strongly associated with the samurai, Tōnai’s choice of a samurai wakashu as his beloved and his decision to pursue the way of youths in the first place together constitute an effort to emulate the ways of the samurai and symbolically raise himself to their position. The description of Tōnai as a machiyakko indicates that this desire for symbolic social advancement is manifested in his stylish clothes and swaggering demeanor as well. Banzō thus has more than one reason for wanting to humble Tōnai, since he is both a rival for the affections of Hannojō and a member of a subordinate status-group who has tried in multiple ways to rise above his station. This aspect of Tōnai’s character recalls the dandyish posturing of the chōnin who frequent the pleasure quarters in Amorous Man and other Saikaku works. Moreover, as is the case both with Yonosuke, the protagonist of Amorous Man, and with the title character of “Gengobei” in Five Women, for Tōnai a pederastic relationship provides a context in which to mimic the samurai ways codified in the conventions of shudō, to associate with a samurai on an intimate basis, and to receive the benevolence of an individual samurai. And as we have seen, in Five Women’s “Greengrocer’s Daughter” an erotic relationship between a chōnin girl and a samurai youth performs a similar function. One is thus confronted with multiple stories in Saikaku’s œuvre in which benevolence, self-sacrifice and erotic love on the part of a samurai for a chōnin from a prosperous family serves as a sort of validation of the worth of the chōnin in question and implicitly raises the possibility of a wider social, cultural and affective convergence between prosperous chōnin and high-ranking samurai. Although the convergence of the economic and the political elites that they suggest does not constitute the overturning of hierarchy that Johnson associates with Saikaku, paired with the portrayals of samurai abuse of power in Way of the Warrior and read in the light of Amorous Man’s ironizing with regard to the spirit of sumptuary regulation, it does bespeak dissatisfaction with a system in which samurai status trumped chōnin wealth. Given shudō’s status as a “way” or discipline enveloped in a mystique of samurai prestige, the pursuit of shudō by chōnin characters in Saikaku’s fiction, as does their pursuit of stylish, refined living in the pleasure quarters, points to a desire on the part of wealthy commoners to transcend the purely economic function allotted them in a society where samurai had a monopoly on political power. As was briefly touched upon in Chapter 1, the title character of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, written about a century later and half a world away, decides to become an actor when he determines that, for a young man born into the bourgeoisie of a Germany still dominated by petty

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nobles (whose status in some ways resembled that of high-ranking samurai), a career in the theater is the best way both to cultivate qualities that are aspired to for reasons that are not purely economic and to come into contact with real aristocrats.107 For chōnin men of Saikaku’s day, taking on a role in the social space provided by shudō, with its code of chivalry and samurai overtones, or in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto, Osaka or Edo, with their complex etiquette, theatricality and ostentatious luxury, would have served a similar function, and despite the emphasis on money in Saikaku’s chōnin-focused fiction, his works also take as a key subject chōnin efforts to achieve some sort of personal glory that, even as it is facilitated by wealth, transcends the purely economic, efforts that also call to mind the commoner cultural aspirations and pursuits described by Ikegami, Beerens and Moriyama.108 “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama” Like “Early Mushrooms,” “Ginmi wa okujima no hakama” (The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama)109 complicates—and thus throws into relief— the conventional hierarchy of the shudō relationship by pairing a wakashu of high social standing with a nenja in a much lower position, but unlike the lovers in “Early Mushrooms,” in this case both are samurai. The intrigue surrounding their love affair is especially complex as it is rooted in the desire of not one but two unscrupulous (and politically powerful) outside parties who covet the youth in question. Boat inspector Murashiba Yojūrō is the nenja of the beautiful youth Itoga Umenosuke, son of a high-ranking official. Yojūrō’s rank is low but he is handsome and respected by all the boatmen. Still, he feels nostalgia for the higher rank he once held in another province, and he is troubled by the gap in social position between him and his beloved, which is, moreover, the topic of unkind gossip. However, the depth of Yojūrō and Umenosuke’s love for one another more than compensates for such annoyances. Meanwhile, after just one look at Umenosuke, the son of the local daimyo eagerly seeks to take him into his service. This overjoys the boy’s father, who encourages his son to accept this prominent man’s overtures. However, 107  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Munich: Goldmann, 1990), pp. 302–5; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, trans. Eric A. Blackall (in cooperation with Victor Lange), Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 174–76. 108  Ikegami, Bonds of Civility; Beerens, Friends; Moriyama, Crossing. 109  Ihara, Budō, pp. 180–89.

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Umenosuke sends back a cool reply. He tells Yojūrō nothing of the situation, but rather decides on his own that to serve at the side of the daimyo’s son (who would implicitly have sexual access to him) would be to betray his lover. So the following morning he feigns illness and stays in his room, much to the disappointment of his father and the vexation of the daimyo’s son. The daimyo’s son then speaks with his servant Tokura Shinroku about Umenosuke’s alleged illness. Unbeknownst to the daimyo’s son, sometime earlier Shinroku himself also fell in love with Umenosuke and expressed his feelings to the boy in a letter. But Umenosuke rejected his advances, saying he was already spoken for. When Shinroku persisted, the boy tried to soothe him by saying, “I won’t forget the depth of the feelings you have expressed for me,” but this merely reinforced Shinroku’s longing for him. Shinroku then spied on Umenosuke and Yojūrō, spread gossip about them and grew horribly resentful. Shinroku tells the daimyo’s son that Umenosuke is the beloved of Yojūrō, that Umenosuke is only pretending to be ill and that he will never serve the daimyo’s son as long as Yojūrō is alive. So the daimyo’s son proposes that he and Shinroku contrive to have Yojūrō executed. As a first step the daimyo’s son brings Yojūrō into his own service, making him assistant monitor of his household’s female servants. The supervisor of the maidservants happens to be Shinroku’s aunt, Nozawa. Yojūrō has been placed in this sensitive job in hopes that he will somehow trip up and provide the conspirators with a pretext for executing him, but he turns out to be impeccable in the performance of his duties, so Shinroku asks his aunt to lay a trap for Yojūrō. Late one night Nozawa steals Yōjūrō’s hakama when he leaves it behind on a trip to the privy. The following morning he reports the loss of his hakama, but by then Nozawa has planted the garment on the sharpened stakes topping the wall surrounding the garden in the maidservants’ quarters, and has made up a story about a “suspicious man”110 prowling through that restricted area of the household the night before. This gives the daimyo’s son the pretext he has been waiting for, and he has Yojūrō beheaded, with his hands tied behind his back like a common criminal (i.e., as if he were not a samurai) in order to add to his humiliation. The daimyo’s son then forcefully summons Umenosuke before him, expresses his displeasure at Umenosuke’s earlier resistance to serving him, then explains the situation with more candor than tact:

110  Ihara, Budō, p. 185.

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Illustration 21

“The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama.”  Waseda University Library.

However, once I heard of your predicament, all was forgiven. As for Yojūrō, to solve matters I had a trumped-up charge brought against him, and he was executed this morning, so he’s no longer standing in the way. Now you must serve me.111 Umenosuke conceals his horror, denies that he and Yojūrō were ever lovers and tells the daimyo’s son that a “sycophant” must have made up the story for his consumption. This infuriates Shinroku, who seals his own fate by stepping forward and revealing himself as the source, saying that everyone in the domain knew about Yojūrō and Umenosuke’s relationship. Umenosuke later waylays Shinroku and kills him and two of his attendants. He then sits on Shinroku’s corpse and commits seppuku, implausibly sawing off his own head after slitting open his belly. Umenosuke leaves behind a note explaining his motives, which moves to tears those who read it: 111  Ihara, Budō, p. 187.

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In this path, there is indeed no distinction between high and low. For example, a lovesick emperor of the realm once tootled his cares away on a humble reed-pipe. Needless to say, when we of humbler station throw our lives away for love, they are lighter to us than dust in the wind, even if it means our bodies will be cut to pieces by blades glinting and cold as frost. But as samurai our word, once given, weighs oh so heavily upon us. Here lies one who knew not love, who wantonly concocted false charges against one loyal and true, and murdered him. Rather than linger in this world of beasts covered in human skin until my vow of love is but a faded memory, I have trampled down all barriers in my way to join my lover, laying my pillow beside his and my bedclothes over his as he travels through the land of death. With the sword of love I have killed the enemy of my dear brother, and woken myself from the dream that is this floating world.112 The “path” in question here would be easily interpretable as designating shudō except for the fact that the example given is a heterosexual courtship. “Hedate,” the word I have rendered as “distinction,” can also be translated more literally, but here less idiomatically, as “barrier.” However, in one respect “barrier” is a more appropriate translation, in that what is being described is a collapsing of distance and a de-emphasizing, but not an absolute elimination, of hierarchy. The emperor alluded to is Yōmei (?-587, reigned 585–587). According to texts such as the kōwakamai113 entitled Eboshi ori, while still a prince he disguised himself as a flute-playing herdsman to woo Tamayohime, the daughter of a wealthy farmer in Bungo province, who bore him a son, the future regent Shōtoku Taishi.114 In The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture, Franco Moretti writes of how in both Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice the protagonists find happiness by learning to trust characters who occupy a higher social position and who ultimately prove their benevolence: Wilhelm Meister puts his faith in the secret Society of the 112  Ihara, Budō, pp. 188–89. 113  A dramatic genre that developed during the Muromachi period. 114  Ihara, Budō, p. 188, notes 10, 11. Umenosuke’s note bears comparison with the defense mounted by the high-status samurai heroine of Tales from the Provinces’ “A Love-Poem on a Folding Fan” of her decision to elope with a low-ranking samurai man. Richard Lane, who includes a translation of the story in “Saikaku and Boccaccio,” presents it as evidence of Saikaku’s egalitarianism. (Ihara Saikaku, Saikaku shokoku banashi, in Munemasa Isō, Teruoka Yasutaka, Matsuda Osamu, eds., Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, Vol. 67: Ihara Saikaku shū 2 [Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1996], pp. 108–11; Lane, “Saikaku and Boccaccio,” pp. 111–18; Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, pp. 161–62.)

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Tower, whose members are aristocrats, and marries the sister of one of its members. Elizabeth, the middle-class heroine of Austen’s novel, overcomes her distrust of the much wealthier Darcy, whom she marries. Moretti writes that these works and others of the same period embody a “desire for a mechanism of social advancement able to reconcile, rather than estrange, the two dominant economic classes of the epoch.” Moretti characterizes this desire for reconciliation between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie as, in part, a desire for the “elusion” of an equivalent of the French Revolution in the authors’ home countries.115 A similar dynamic can be discerned in “Early Mushrooms” and “Striped Hakama.” In these stories, as in “Gengobei,” shudō serves as a “mechanism of social advancement” that, in a manner reminiscent of heterosexual marriage between parties of differing social status, brings together in the closest way possible men of low rank with youths of high rank. Significantly, the role of each man as nenja allows him to assume a position of superiority over a social “better” in the limited context of an erotic relationship. To develop further the assertion of the avenging wakashu of “Striped Hakama” that there is no barrier/distinction between high and low in the way of love, in these two stories the “way” that is shudō allows for a blurring or even a reversal in the context of an intimate relationship of social hierarchies that pertain outside of that context. The avenging by the stories’ high-status wakashu of their lower-status nenja’s deaths is simultaneously an act of benevolence toward a person who is one’s inferior in the context of society at large and an act of duty toward one’s superior within the context of a two-person relationship, for it was the duty of a samurai to avenge the wrongful death of a male to whom he was bound as an inferior in a relationship that was inherently hierarchical, as was that of lovers following the conventions of shudō. In contrast to the destiny of the analogous characters in the novels Moretti cites, in both “Early Mushrooms” and “Striped Hakama” the nenja is killed and his narrowly circumscribed social advancement undone as a result of abuse of power by a third character who, like the wakashu, occupies a social position superior to that of the nenja. The revolutionary potential inherent in this scenario is blunted by the faithfulness shown and vengeance exacted by the high-status wakashu of both stories, who prove that at least some members of the dominant group can be trusted to show benevolence, even to the point of sacrificing their lives for social inferiors. However, both stories surely skirted the limits of acceptable discourse at the time they were published, “Early Mushrooms” by presenting the reader with a sympathetic chōnin character who is preparing 115  Moretti, Way of the World, p. 63.

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to kill a high-status samurai, “Striped Hakama” by leaving the impression that Shinroku is killed as a substitute for the daimyō’s son, who, as Yano Kimio points out, is the true culprit here.116 Such a substitution was of course necessary in order to avoid a sympathetic portrayal of a samurai killing his lord, a crime held to be particularly wicked by the Tokugawa authorities and one especially dangerous to the maintenance of the Tokugawa social order. Similarly, in “Early Mushrooms,” Hannojō’s final gesture of offering Banzō’s severed head to Tōhachi, the younger brother of the man whose death Banzō has caused, not only proves Hannojō’s benevolence toward his chōnin lover and that lover’s surviving brother, but also prevents from occurring the promised spectacle of a chōnin character, Tōhachi, pursuing a vendetta against a high-status samurai, Hannojō himself.

Samurai and Chōnin

With their extremes of samurai villainy and samurai heroism, and with their promise of rapprochement between those of high and low station, “Early Mushrooms” and “Striped Hakama” encapsulate in heightened form the tensions underlying the whole of Way of the Warrior, tensions that imply an ideal chōnin reader who both feels admiration for the samurai and chafes at the barriers imposed on his self-advancement by a status-group system that places samurai in a position of supremacy, a reader who, shut off from attaining significant political power peacefully and harboring little or no hope that those of his class can do so violently, wishes to achieve some level of cultural and social convergence with the samurai by mimicry or through mechanisms of social advancement such as the milieus of tea ceremony, haikai poetry or other arts in which prosperous chōnin could associate on a quasi-equal footing with samurai.117 The composite image that emerges from the dialogic juxtaposition of positive and negative portrayals of the samurai in Way of the Warrior is of a class of people who, at their best, demonstrate qualities that, although admirable, are outmoded and at times laughable in the age of peace ushered in by the Tokugawa, and who, at their worst, fail miserably to live up to their own ideals, engage in needless violence and willfully abuse their power over each other and over commoners. This militates for an ironic reading of the narrator’s opening assertion that the samurai serve as a shining model for the rest of the populace, but it does not necessarily belie the praising reference to the 116  Yano, “Katakiuchi,” p. 95. 117  Ikegami, Bonds, pp. 140–203. For Donald Keene’s take on these issues, see note 12.

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Tokugawa regime that immediately follows.118 Given the freshness of memories of more than a century of intermittent civil war before the Tokugawa achieved supremacy in 1600, one should not dismiss as insincere groveling the expressions of gratitude for the Tokugawa peace that are to be found in Way of the Warrior. Indeed, commoners of that era had reason to thank the Tokugawa for containing the energies of the samurai, for although they placed the samurai at the top of the social hierarchy and gave them a monopoly on bureaucratic posts, the Tokugawa also limited the samurai’s capacity to make trouble for both commoners and the shogunate itself by confining the samurai to castle towns and keeping provincial lords and their retainers busy traipsing back and forth between their home domains and obligatory attendance at the shogun’s court in Edo. The relative calm thus maintained rendered obsolete the violent, honor-obsessed ethos that Way of the Warrior alternately praises, criticizes and lampoons. 118  Ihara, Budō, p. 21.

Afterword I have drawn together four widely varying fictional works by Ihara Saikaku with the goal of balancing breadth of coverage with depth of analysis, hoping to discern overarching patterns while acknowledging the specificities of each text. Among such larger patterns linking these diverse narratives is their blending of competing voices and narrative strands promoting competing points of view, and their resulting lack of a single, authoritative voice. Their competing elements have a stylistic dimension as well, with condemnations of characters’ behavior, for example, often expressed in plain, terse, direct assertions, which I interpret as Confucian in inspiration, and with passages encouraging sympathy for transgressors characterized by contrastingly lyrical, allusive and rhetorically complex prose that typically employs Buddhist tropes evoking contingency, instability and impermanence. A related feature uniting these works is the undermining of pathos, with tragic or melodramatic narrative sequences repeatedly drawn up short by the intrusion of irony, absurdity and other forms of humor. There are exceptions; for example, pathos is a key aspect of the idealism in the portrayal of shudō relationships of which Someya Tomoyuki writes, as it is in Way of the Warrior’s depictions of samurai wakashu avenging their dead nenja in “Early Mushrooms” and “Striped Hakama,” of the double suicide on a single sword of the lovers in “Koto Music,” or the scene in Five Women’s “Gengobei” in which the title character mourns his ghost-lover with the boy’s father. In a heterosexual context this is also true in the story of the brutalization of Yonosuke’s beloved tayū Mikasa in Amorous Man, in which the reader’s sympathy for and identification with the sufferer’s suffering is given full rein, and in the scenes regarding the death and mourning of Oshichi in Five Women’s “Greengrocer’s Daughter.” For this reason the texts in question cannot be said to be hostile to pathos per se, as Bakhtin finds to be the case in Rabelais’ works when he writes, “In Rabelais, pathos is almost always equivalent to a lie.”1 However, most of the stories in these four works evince a suspicion of the power of pathos to take over a narrative, drowning out other, competing voices and hijacking the reader’s attention from the calm consideration of the forces at play in the situation described, whence the narrator’s prevailing policy of allowing pathos to build now and then, but usually only to a very limited level. This suppression of pathos has certain affinities with the alienation effect for which Bertolt Brecht strove in his theatrical works, the key difference being 1  Bakhtin, “Discourse in the Novel,” p. 309.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004344310_007

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that whereas Brecht saw emotion as an impediment to the clear consideration of the political lessons he was trying to teach,2 Saikaku’s works, in accordance with the multiplicity of points of view noted by Sasaki and Someya,3 sabotage the drawing of unambiguous conclusions from their component narratives, with, for example, Twenty Cases including both “Competitive Storytelling” and “Girls and Cherry Blossoms,” both of which show Buddhist and Confucian practice to be in conflict, with the first story favoring the Confucian side of the equation and the second coming down on the side of Buddhism. If one is compelled to imagine a force driving this refusal to take unambiguous positions, an impulse of the sort posited by Sasaki toward the depiction of reality in all its diversity and with all of its paradoxes seems plausible. For in politics, morals, religion and any number of other arenas for argument, the suppression of opposing evidence is a prerequisite for optimum persuasiveness, and this is a rhetorical strategy that these works shun. Moreover, this impulse seems, paradoxically, to be rooted in Buddhism’s typical skepticism (which has affinities with what we have seen of Zhuangzi) regarding sweeping truth claims and human institutions, including its own, a stance that has given it a seemingly infinite capacity for self-criticism. I would expand on Sasaki’s observation by adding that these texts’ breadth of vision does not result in a realism that excludes the sort of idealism that Someya observes in portrayals of both the pleasure quarters4 and shudō relationships in Saikaku’s fiction;5 these too contribute to this breadth of vision by functioning in counterpoint to portrayals of the more sordid aspects of the same phenomena. With this idealism, as well as with its exaggerations and absurdities, Saikaku’s fiction does not attempt a rigorous, consistent verisimilitude;6 indeed to do so would go against the radical skepticism regarding truth claims to which I have just referred, for the very concept of verisimilitude invites the question of what is being obscured by the angle from which phenomena are observed. Instead, Saikaku’s fiction embraces the radical inconclusiveness of experience and even accentuates it, rather than providing the seductive illusion of full disclosure that has been the main allure of the various Realisms and Naturalisms that trace their origins to nineteenth-century France and that still 2  Bertolt Brecht, trans. John Willett, Brecht on Theatre (London: Methuen, 1964), pp. 91–99. 3  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 460; Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 72–74. 4  Someya likens the pleasure quarter to a Japanese-style garden and the women working there to ikebana, in that both represent an aesthetic that strives for a refinement of nature, attained through control (Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 152–64). 5  Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, pp. 9–16. 6  Someya makes a similar observation (Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 76).

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enjoy, in one form or another, worldwide dominance in popular literature, television and film. Moreover, although Saikaku’s fiction is anti-didactic in terms of shunning the tendentiousness of the didactic literature of its time, it is neither amoral nor apolitical; it raises moral, social and political issues but refuses to provide conclusive answers regarding them.7 In keeping with this refusal, in Way of the Warrior the first story begins with the mock-didactic assertion that the samurai are a “model” for/of the people, using the word “kagami” which can, if a different character is used, also mean “mirror,” and the stories in the volume suggest that the latter meaning of those syllables is apposite, as the warriors depicted in them are a reflection, but a magnified one, of the admirable and despicable qualities discernible in any class of society. Thus the book is neither consistently a glorification of the samurai nor consistently a satire of their ways, and we read in one story, “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer,” both an account of samurai timidity that strains the limits of verisimilitude in the initial ghost-story-telling scene, and, in contrast, a depiction of one samurai character, Tameemon, showing an extreme disregard for his own life in entering a duel over a fine point of honor with someone against whom he bears no ill will. Likewise, in “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa” and “Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar” one is presented with contrasting pairs of wakashu beloveds, those in the former story eerily impeccable and selfless in their behavior, and those in the latter—who are now ex-wakashu, and thus seemingly exempt from the extreme idealization in Saikaku’s fiction of the junior partners in non-commercial shudō relationships—arrogant, petulant squabblers. In like manner, “Striped Hakama” presents us with extreme samurai villainy and virtue, encompassing as it does both the memorable come-on line, “I had a trumped-up charge brought against [your lover], and he was executed this morning, so he’s no longer standing in the way,” and the noble, in terms of samurai ethics, but incredible, because impossible, suicide of the bereaved wakashu, who kills a man implicated in his lover’s death, then, not one to make things easy on himself, slits open his belly and saws off his own head. And in among these extremities one also reads in “Early Mushrooms” Hannojō’s 7  See Struve’s writing with regard to the “dialogue of ideologies” in Saikaku’s fiction, Someya’s observations regarding its multiplicity of points of view, and Sasaki’s praise for the diversity of value judgments in Way of Warrior and the breadth of vision of the best of Saikaku’s fiction (Struve, Ihara Saikaku, pp. 218–45; Someya, Saikaku shōsetsu ron, p. 460; Sasaki, Kinsei shōsetsu o yomu, pp. 72–74). In a similar vein, writing of Way of the Warrior’s “The Height of Indiscretion,” Nakajima asserts, “Saikaku does not portray the [samurai] vendetta according to a simplistic logic of right and wrong” (Nakajima, Saikaku to Genroku media, p. 178).

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extended, heartfelt, psychologically realistic interior monologue in which he longs for his dead nenja. In Amorous Man one is presented with a similarly wide variety of spectacles, in terms of both the objects observed and their believability, ranging in the former sense from pleasure-quarter parties in which an exquisitely refined taste prevails, to a furtive, charcoal-smudged quickie in the woodshed, and in the latter sense ranging from minute accounts of minor sectors of the sex trade such as rice-polishers who double as prostitutes, to the account of the ten-yearold Yonosuke’s learned and passionate disquisition on the classical precedents for the love affair he hopes to pursue with the adult samurai male he is wooing. In terms of the intersection of ethics and aesthetics, Amorous Man depicts the metropolitan pleasure quarter as the site of great beauty and refinement, but also acknowledges the coercion, falsity and callousness of that realm, although, to complicate things further, to varying extents it presents these as a piquant seasoning for the pleasures offered there, I have argued, in accordance with an ukiyo aesthetic derived from the Japanese literary tradition of employing aestheticized references to the Buddhist concept of impermanence. The question of ethics becomes paramount when considering Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan; here, too, the range of narratives is wide, with, at one end of the scale, Buntazaemon’s hideous murder of his sister and crippling attack on his mother in “Sleeves Drenched by Unseasonable Rains at Year’s End,” and with, at the opposite end of the scale, Saibei’s seemingly forgivable obsession with sumo and imperviousness to the allure of sex in “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength.” The absurd tale of the criminal antihero Goemon and his degree-granting school for thieves in “A Fine Kettle of Fish” rounds out the mix in a collection that, taken as a whole, seems designed to frustrate any search for a coherent ethical message or authorial intent. With ethical ambivalence of a different sort, Five Women Who Loved Love implicitly glorifies four of its heroines as heiresses to the refined aesthetic and emotional sensibilities of the Heian court, in between moralistic condemnations of their sexual indiscretions undermined to varying degrees by the surrounding text or, in the case of “Gengobei,” the cheerful smirk of the narrator even as he passes judgment. These four texts’ emphasis on material culture, which is especially salient in Five Women and Amorous Man, in parts of which clothing, accessories and carefully decorated interiors compete with human faces and bodies as objects of desire, also raises ethical, religious, and philosophical issues, for in the context of these works’ repeated Buddhistic invocations of the impermanence of all things, and with the implied corollary that attachment to objects, like attachments to people or anything else, is delusional and a source of pain, the question arises of whether the new consumer society depicted in these works

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is shown as worthy of condemnation or of resigned acceptance, or even as meriting celebration and delectation, provided that one enjoy it with the detached, disillusioned calmness with which Yonosuke continues his pursuit of erotic adventures at the end of Amorous Man. I believe that the last interpretation is the most persuasive, for despite their sensational elements and occasional pathos, these works themselves offer the reader the textual equivalent of the detached pleasure Yonosuke at last enjoys at the novel’s end. In any case, they themselves are indebted to the consumer culture of their time, which through its commodification of classical literature created a critical mass of readers able to savor the dazzling collage of Saikaku’s prose.

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Index Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abe no Nakamaro 111–12, 113 abortion 130 abortifacients 42 acolyte tales. See chigo monogatari acupuncturist 56, 216 adultery 41, 100–102, 132–34, 137–45, 166–67 definition of 134 punishment for 134 aestheticization of evanescence/ impermanence 31–37, 92, 112, 116, 118–20, 157n110, 231, 232, 246, 253, 266 reflected in shudō 231, 241–42 See also autumn leaves; cherry blossoms; clouds; dew; maple leaves; spiders’ webs aesthetics 30, 31–37, 36n134, 39, 42–43, 43n11, 63, 68n70, 69, 72, 116, 129, 136, 264n4, 266 age-reckoning 40n3, 84, 205n32 ageya 56, 61, 76–77, 79, 83, 105–6 Aki no yo no nagamonogatari. See A Long Tale for an Autumn Night alienation effect 99–100, 263–64 allusion 3, 8, 9, 12, 17, 19–21, 25, 40, 42, 46–47, 62, 73–74, 74n91, 78, 82, 85–91, 117, 119, 120, 125, 127, 131, 138, 142, 160, 177, 202 historical 81–82, 85–91, 128, 212 literary 3, 4–5, 28–29, 47n21, 54, 57, 58–61, 105–6, 134–35, 136–37, 145–47, 152, 220, 223, 247, 250 nō dramas 49–52, 49n26, 138, 177, 178 See also aristocratic literature; Kokinshū; Man’yōshū; nō; The Pillow Book; The Tale of Genji; The Tale of the Heike; Tales of Ise; waka alternate attendance 81, 262 Amida Buddha 175 Amida’s Pure Land 98, 115 aphrodisiacs 42, 44, 112, 114, 155n102, 181n54 apparitions 41, 96–99, 97n151, 106–7, 208–10 See also bakemono; ghosts archery 69, 191

aristocracy 19, 25–26, 35, 42–43, 47, 58, 64, 69–71, 72, 73–74, 73n88, 89–90, 110, 117, 124–25, 129, 136, 141–43, 194, 223–24, 229, 250, 256, 259–60 aristocratic literature 1, 23, 31, 32, 36–37, 59–61, 67, 68, 70, 73–74, 142, 202 See also allusion: literary; The Diary of Izumi Shikibu; Gosenshū; A Hundred Poems from a Hundred Poets; Kokinshū; Man’yōshū; The Pillow Book; Senzaishū; Shika waka shū; Shin Chokusenshū; Shin Gosen waka shū; Shin Kokinshū; Shoku Goshūishū; The Tale of Genji; Tales of Ise; waka; Wakan rōei shū; Yamato monogatari Ariwara no Narihira 40n1, 68, 103, 118, 120, 128, 146 arson 146 Asai Ryōi 5, 157n110, 163 Asano Naganori 201 Asayama Irin’an 189 Atkins, Paul S. 238 “Ato no hagetaru yomeiri nagamochi.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “Her Trousseau Held in a Battered Trunk” Atsumichi, Prince 60 Austen, Jane 259–60 authorial intent 8, 11–12, 14, 69, 115, 199, 200, 266 autumn leaves, as signifier of evanescence 32, 120, 168, 242 Azuma (tayū) 53–57, 54n40 Bai Juyi 46, 112, 125 bakemono 208, 210, 212 See also apparitions; ghosts Bakhtin, M. M. 2n7, 11, 14–15, 15n56, 20–23, 24n82, 27n91, 42, 49, 208, 212, 263 on dialogism in development of European novel 2n7, 161, 199, 207–8 banditry 171, 173–78, 205 “The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love.” See under Five Women Who Loved Love Bashō. See Matsuo Bashō bathing 61, 65n65, 79, 113, 215

Index bathhouse 61 spied on while 40–41, 55 Bawang bie ji 50n28 “The Bedding in a Clay Hut.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Beerens, Anna 39, 256 Befu, Ben 9–10 benevolence of high toward low 71n84, 108–10, 254–56, 259–60 Benzaiten 120 bird hunting 86, 152–53 biwa 231, 233 Biwa, Lake 120, 138, 143, 173, 174, 177, 231, 232, 233, 238 blood 98–99, 106, 124, 214, 221, 227, 241 boats and ships 34, 41, 78–79, 81–83, 111–12, 113, 127, 131, 139, 140, 192, 212, 232, 233 boat inspector 256 boatmen 173–74, 177, 233, 256 Fudaraku tokai 115 to Island of Women 42, 44, 45, 57, 65n65, 66n66 Boccaccio, Giovanni 10 bodhisattvas 29–30, 29n104, 96, 115, 116, 144, 149, 149n82, 192, 232, 236, 238, 252 See also Buddhism the body 17n62, 44, 57, 68n70, 92, 94, 95, 98, 103, 120–21, 124, 187, 266 See also bathing; blood; buttocks; coarse physicality; corpses; dildos; excrement; fingernails; flatulence; hair; “Nine Stages of Death”; nudity; scabies; scatological content; semen; sex toys; sexual fluids; skin; testicles; urination; vitiligo book-lending 4, 75n93 bookselling and booksellers 4, 19, 74n91 boors 43n11, 116n195 bourgeois fiction 2n7, 19, 20n71, 22–23, 37, 42, 161–62 bourgeoisie 1, 1n1, 2n7, 19, 20n71, 22–23, 25, 42, 63, 109, 115, 255–56, 260 See also chōnin Brecht, Bertolt 99–100, 263–64 Buddhism 26–37, 41, 44, 51, 98, 99–100, 115–16, 116n195, 117, 118–20, 119n3, 123, 124, 128, 157 allusions to 154, 177 Buddha (historical) 41, 56, 80, 121, 153, 154, 155, 219, 232

279 Chan 28 “commonerization and layification” of Japanese Buddhism 35 conflict with Confucianism 162–63, 183, 187–90, 264 emptiness 28 etoki 78 expedient means 28–29 memorial services 139, 183 naturalization of in Japan 35–36 Nichiren 108, 168 nirvana 28 non-duality 28 salvific schools of 35 Shingon 151 syncretism 128, 162, 178, 183, 189–90 Zen 171, 228, 232 See also aestheticization of evanescence/ impermanence; Amida; Buddhist monks; Buddhist nuns; Datsueba; enlightenment; Fudō Myōō; Fugen; Hasedera; hermit; hermitage; impermanence, Buddhist concept of (mujō); illusory/ dreamlike nature of phenomenal reality; instability; Ishiyamadera; Jizō; Kannon; karma; Kōya, Mt.; Kūkai; Lotus Sutra; nenbutsu; “Nine Stages of Death”; Platform Sutra; pleasure quarter: as realm of (heightened) illusion; reincarnation; samsara; Vimalakirti Sutra Buddhist monks 29, 41, 51, 62, 78, 107, 110, 121, 139, 146–47, 153–56, 178–83, 187–89, 218, 220 and shudō 37, 89, 93, 146, 150, 238 taking the tonsure 5, 146–49, 178, 184, 187–89, 218, 220, 232, 240–41, 253 violation of vows 153–56 zatō 56, 56n48, 57 Zen 228 See also Buddhism; celibacy; chigo monogatari; komusō Buddhist nuns 30, 98, 128, 132, 134–35, 149, 184–85, 220, 227 taking the tonsure 127, 128, 154, 184, 185, 220 See also Buddhism budō (the way of the warrior) 39, 219

280 Budō denraiki. See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Buke giri monogatari. See Tales of Samurai Honor bukemono 6, 7, 9, 20n71, 75n93, 198, 199 See also Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior; Tales of Samurai Honor bunraku 77, 78, 201 burlesque 20n72, 26–27, 181 buttocks 80, 125, 127, 149n82 Callahan, Caryl Ann 10 on Tales of Samurai Honor 199–200 calligraphy 46–47, 46n16, 50–51, 60, 66–67, 72, 137, 191, 221, 228 capital punishment. See execution carnivalesque 11, 14, 15, 15n56 Carter, Steven D. 52 celibacy: among Buddhist clergy 154, 220 violation of Buddhist vows of 154, 156 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “An Untoward Pride” censorship 7, 7n23, 19, 84, 199, 200 cherry blossoms 191, 239, 245 as signifier of evanescence 32, 33, 34, 34n125, 119–20, 231 viewing 109, 125, 126, 168 See also Yoshino (place) Chigo imamairi. See The New Lady-inWaiting is a Chigo chigo monogatari 29, 29n104, 44, 89, 151, 202, 238 Childs, Margaret Helen 29n104 China 9, 34n123, 43n11, 50, 82, 89–90, 111–14, 220 Chinese: capital Chang’an 111, 223 with beards 113–14, 114 Emperor Xuanzong 111, 113, 223–24 imperial court 42–43, 46, 51, 223 -language poetry and prose by Japanese  69–70 literati 42–43, 46, 82, 90, 125 literature 20n71, 31, 31n116, 34n123, 46, 65n64, 79, 89–90, 105, 125, 161 men 112–14 in Nagasaki 111–14 religions and philosophy 162 See also emperor: of China; Bai Juyi; Consort Li; Li Jietui; Su Shi; Tang

Index period; Tang period: poetry; Wu of Han, Emperor; Xiang Yu; Xianyang Palace; Xuanzong, Emperor; Yang Guifei; Yuji; Zhuangzi chivalric romance 2n7, 24 chōnin 1n1, 3, 11, 12–14, 43–44, 70, 73n88, 74n91, 75n93, 109, 114–15, 118, 119, 145, 147, 191, 216, 218, 219, 260–61 attitudes toward samurai of 14–15, 197, 203 contrasting portrayals of metropolitan and provincial chōnin 15, 44, 67, 71–72, 77–78, 81, 113, 117, 142 contrasting portrayals of prosperous and poor chōnin 117, 124–25, 129, 134, 135, 135n45, 136–37, 141, 147–48 dandyish posturing 251, 255 desire for social elevation 15n59, 91, 110, 145, 198, 201 high-chōnin culture 15n59, 16, 19, 42–43, 43n10, 44, 62, 66, 69, 71–73, 75, 79, 81–83, 110, 113, 124, 125, 128 high-chōnin snobbery 62, 71, 110, 194 hubris 15, 17, 46, 47, 51, 58, 60, 62, 68 readership 52, 60, 72–74, 197, 202, 208, 261 samurai violence toward 241, 250–52 in shudō relationships with samurai  91, 145, 148–49, 153, 250–51, 254–56, 261 status raised by association with samurai 147–48, 152–53, 255 See also commoners chōninmono 6, 7, 73–74, 74n93 See also The Eternal Storehouse of Japan “Chūdan ni miru koyomiya monogatari.” See Five Women Who Loved Love: “What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker” Chūjōhime 128 class conflict 13, 14, 216, 251 “Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior cloth 17n62, 64, 66, 141, 141n63, 153n97, 168, 170, 227, 253 clothing 16–17, 17n62, 42, 45–47, 57, 60–62, 64, 66, 68n70, 76–78, 94, 113, 119–21, 135–36, 143, 147, 157, 170, 228, 255, 266 as age marker 85, 92, 94, 95

Index hakama 239, 257 haori 46, 47, 51, 72, 60, 214, 215 kimono 46, 60, 60n58, 61, 62, 64, 72, 104, 119, 130, 145, 147, 152, 169, 225, 235, 245 loincloths 41 as marker of high-chōnin status 66, 135–36, 147, 167–68 as marker of rusticity 141 as marker of samurai status 148, 152–53 underclothes 148, 227 See also sumptuary laws clouds, as signifier of impermanence 32 clove oil (sexual lubricant) 131 coarse physicality 65–66, 65n65 See also the body; buttocks; dildos; excrement; flatulence; scatological content; semen; sex toys; sexual fluids; testicles; urination comedy 11–12, 14, 17, 19n69, 24, 25, 26, 27, 40, 54–57, 61–62, 84, 90–91, 95, 99, 100n154, 102–5, 112, 117, 120, 123n13, 124, 125–28, 128n30, 195, 130 –31, 134, 155, 156, 238–39 directed at samurai 208–13, 238–39, 242 coming-of-age ceremony. See genbuku commoners 1, 3, 6, 15–17, 17n62, 20, 21, 26n87, 35, 36–37, 39, 52n33, 60, 69, 81, 85, 91, 114, 150, 197, 198, 201, 251, 254, 261, 262 See also chōnin; peasants Comparative Literature 9 “Competitive Storytelling Was His New Amusement.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan concubines 40, 50, 108, 220–21, 223 Confucianism 13, 18–19, 18n65, 20n71, 51, 65n64, 75n93, 100–101, 117, 119–20, 128, 143, 160–61, 162, 230, 263 in China 162, 186 conflict with Buddhism 162, 163, 183, 187, 188, 189, 264 Four Books of 191 morality tales of 160–61, 163, 164, 171, 177, 186–87, 230 Neo-Confucianism 18, 164, 190n72 syncretism 162–63, 183, 189–90 Tokugawa-era critique of Buddhism  189–90

281 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan Confucius 87–88, 90, 196 connoisseurship 13, 36n134, 38, 43n11, 117 Consort Li 51 consumerism 7, 16, 60–61, 157, 266–67 contingency 117, 119, 122–23, 129, 134, 263 conventionality in literature 23 corpses 32, 102, 167, 179, 218, 223, 235, 237–38, 240, 258 See also homicide; suicide; vendettas countryside/provinces 104–5, 139, 170, 175, 248, 251 description of residents 141 as foil for metropolitan sophistication  15, 43, 44, 141–43, 107, 117, 124, 152, 179 as site of exile 96, 142–43 See also chōnin: contrasting portrayals of metropolitan and provincial; metropolitan-provincial dichotomy; prostitutes: contrasting portrayals of metropolitan and provincial court poetry 1, 3, 31, 32, 32n121, 42, 60, 82, 90 See also waka cross-dressing 118, 150, 151, 154–57, 154n101, 181, 228 See also Five Women Who Loved Love: “Gengobei” daggers 97–99, 143, 153, 228, 235, 240, 249, 252, 253 “Daija mo yo ni aru hito ga mita tameshi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “They Saw that Great Serpents Really Do Exist” Daikoku 61, 69 daimyo 81, 240, 242, 244 authorizing vendetta 205 son of 256, 257, 258, 261 Danly, Robert Lyons 2n6 Danrin school 1, 2n6, 5, 17, 42, 45–46, 47, 49n26, 58, 60, 69–72, 74 See also haikai poetry Daoism 31, 34n123, 162 Datsueba 119, 121 death 42, 102, 115, 119 as divine punishment 164–67, 170, 178, 186, 215

282 death (cont.) See also corpses; execution; homicide; suicide; vendettas de Bary, William Theodore 9, 26, 118n2, 120n7, 129, 131n34, 131n35, 132n38, 132n39, 132n40, 134n41, 137, 137n51, 138n53, 143n66, 145n69, 147n78, 149n83, 153n97, 153n98, 155n102, 155n104, 157n110, 181n54 Defoe, Daniel 10 desire 13, 26, 28–29, 30, 37, 38, 50, 67, 84, 89, 95, 102, 104, 106, 117–19, 122, 123n13, 124, 128–30, 143, 149, 154, 158, 168, 196, 230, 231, 235, 242, 244–45, 250, 251, 255, 256, 266 detachment 36n134, 100n154, 116, 253n103, 267 dew 54, 220, 225, 253 as signifier of evanescence 32, 253 Dewa province 106, 239 dialogism 3, 12, 13–14, 15n56, 17n62, 18n64, 18–21, 117, 119, 129, 143, 161–62, 163, 196, 200, 207, 242, 261 The Diary of Izumi Shikibu 59–60 didacticism in literature 13, 18, 30, 31, 32–33, 160, 161, 164, 189, 190, 199–200, 202, 265 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan; Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety; Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety in Japan dildos 65n65, 240 disguises 151–55, 157, 181, 205 as fishermen 233, 234 as monk 228 as peasant 146–48 as peddler 239–40 as samurai 174 See also cross-dressing disownment of children by parents 41, 96, 118–19, 121, 124, 195 divorce 108–9, 134–35, 167–71, 169n24 dogs 105, 166, 167, 210, 211, 212 Doi Noritaka 16, 47n19 “Dokushu o ukedachi no mi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “A Swordsman Struck Down with Poisoned Saké” dolls 78, 113, 141

Index “Dolls from the Capital.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Don Quijote 24 Dowdle, Brian C. 7n21 dragons 212 Drake, Chris 10, 48n23, 63n61 The Dream of the Red Chamber 31n116 drinking 64, 79–81, 92, 109, 112, 125, 139, 249 drunkenness 67, 79–80, 83, 239–40 See also saké drums 69, 141 “Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior duels 205, 210–11, 213, 218, 265 See also Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior; vendettas Du Mu 233 Dutch 111, 112 Ebisu 61 Edo: city 1n4, 41, 42–43, 43n11, 44, 66, 81, 137, 227, 256, 262 urban culture 4, 36n134, 75n93, 77–78, 113, 116n195, 256 egalitarianism 10, 11–12, 14–15, 19, 21, 22, 42, 63, 70, 72, 91, 107–8, 149, 156, 259n114 Ejima Kiseki 18n65 elopement 127, 259n114 Emoto Hiroshi 164 emperor: of China 46, 51, 111, 113, 114–15, 174, 223 of Japan 50, 72, 79, 81–83, 156, 212, 223–24, 252, 259 See also imperial court (of Japan) enlightenment 26, 28–29, 51, 89, 116, 238, 243 through pleasure/sex 44, 45, 115–16, 238 entertainment 35, 40, 62, 63 See also kabuki; nō; puppet theater equivocation 17, 17n62, 45, 201 erastēs 38 erōmenos 38, 242 erotic love 9, 31n114, 117, 123, 156, 255 illusory/contingent nature of 123 See also sexual love

Index

283

vendettas 38, 182–83, 201–2, 205, 211, Essays in Idleness 34–35 214–16, 218, 221–24, 225–31, 239–40, allusion to 152 243, 253n103, 261, 265n7 The Eternal Storehouse of Japan 7, 9, 17n62, stories: 44, 52n33, 68–70 “Climbing a Tree to the Height of “Namikaze shizuka ni Jinzūmaru” (Steady Indiscretion” 203–8, 206, 211, 265n7 Trade Winds for the Good Ship Jinzū)  “Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke 68­–69, 70 on the Funereal Incense Altar” 216, “Saikaku o kasa ni kiru Daikoku” 238–42, 265 (A Feather in Daikoku’s Cap) 69–70 “The Four-Legged Walking Footethics 3, 175, 177, 179, 182, 196, 215, 230, 241, Warmer” 208–12, 209, 213, 216, 265 265, 266 “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa”  evanescence. See aestheticization of 231–38, 234, 239, 241, 242, 250, 265 evanescence/impermanence “He Took Her, Sight Unseen, Then Ran “Even in the Capital Now, the World Lives on Amok on Their Wedding Night”  Borrowed Time.” See under Twenty Cases 216–19, 250, 251 of Filial Impiety in Japan “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Europe 35 Seeds of Love” 71n84, 91, 109, 145, European exceptionalism 3n7 148–49, 216, 250–56, 253n103, 260–61, European literature 2n7, 6–7, 9, 10, 11, 263, 265–66 15n56, 20–22, 24, 161–62, 207, 259–60 “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped See also Austen; Bakhtin; Boccaccio; Hakama” 71n84, 109, 148–49, 156, chivalric romance; Defoe; Don Quijote; 256–61, 258, 263, 265 French literature; Goethe; Greek “Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One literature; Montesquieu; pastoral Would Expect to Hear the Pounding romance; Rabelais; Roman literature; of a Stone Mortar Instead” 95, Spanish literature 246–50, 263 excrement 163, 194 “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s executions 128, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147, 171, Hand” 182, 216, 219–24, 222, 225, 172, 175, 176, 179–81, 183, 207 229, 250 for adultery 134, 138 “A Swordsman Struck Down with by beheading 257 Poisoned Saké” 213–16 by nokogiribiki 207 “They Saw that Great Serpents Really Do for unauthorized vendettas 202 Exist” 212–13 wrongful 127, 141, 156, 257–58, 265 “ ’Tis Pity His Forelocks Have Scattered Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior  before the Wind off Mt. Hakone”  7, 8, 13, 27, 43, 71n84, 72–73, 75n93, 81, 244–46 95, 119, 124, 135, 148, 149, 160, 161, 173, “Women Who Played the Bamboo Flute 189, 195, 197–262 with Secret Intent” 149, 225–31, 226, anachronisms in 8, 197, 207, 211–12, 218, 241, 247, 250 232, 254, 261 “A Youth in His Prime, Splendid as the See also under Taniwaki Masachika Bush Clover in Miyagino” 242–43, 244 class conflict in 13, 216, 251 exile 142–43, 229 conflicting portrayals of samurai 196, 198, 202–3, 261–62, 265 Fake Tales 5, 22–23, 25, 161 satire targeting samurai 219, 229, 250 family 41, 109, 142, 145–46, 149, 153, 163, 167, shudō 91, 109–10, 145, 156, 198, 203, 168–69, 172, 178–79, 181, 184–85, 190–92, 228–29, 230–31, 233, 235–36, 237, 241, 195, 201–2, 221, 227, 230, 241, 248, 254, 242, 246, 249, 250–51, 254–56, 259, 255 260, 263, 265

284 family (cont.) collective responsibility/punishment of  102 finances/fortune 42, 71, 118, 128, 152, 157, 158, 169, 174, 204, 217 See also disownment of children by parents; divorce; fathers; servants Famous Sights of the Tōkaidō 5 Farewell My Concubine 50n28 fashion accessories 17n62, 57, 64, 77, 121, 135, 136, 266 See also clothing fate 102, 117, 124, 127, 147, 170, 179, 180–81, 183, 186, 202, 212, 218, 228, 246–47, 253, 258 See also karma fathers 41–42, 91, 127n29, 132, 146, 147, 153, 169n24, 170, 177, 178–83, 191, 208, 221, 242, 243, 244–46, 256–57, 263 avenging the death of 205–7, 214–15, 211, 228, 230–31, 239, 240–41, 248–49 unfilial treatment of by children 152, 157, 165, 167, 172, 173–74, 196, 227 See also family Faure, Bernard 28 feudalism 18–19, 198 application of term to political structures of Tokugawa Japan 18n67 feudal hierarchical system 15, 199 fickleness in love 31n114 of men toward women 98, 118, 150, 154 of women toward men 132, 132n40 filial piety 13, 51, 128, 159–96, 202, 227, 230 See also Confucianism; Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan; Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety; Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety in Japan “A Fine Kettle of Fish.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan fingernails 102–3, 119, 221 fireworks 79 Five Women Who Loved Love 6, 8, 9, 11, 12–13, 18n64, 29, 73–74, 91, 92, 94, 95, 117–58, 160, 161, 173, 195, 196, 199n12, 202, 255, 263, 266 comedy in 100n154, 117, 127, 128n30, 131, 134, 155, 156 stories: “The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love”  129–35, 133, 143, 145, 148, 152, 154

Index “Gengobei, the Mountain of Love” 91, 150–58, 181, 212, 229, 255, 260, 263, 266 “The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love” 145–50, 229, 230, 255, 263 “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji” 118–29, 126, 134, 148, 150, 156–57, 158, 162, 195, 229 “What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker” 135–45, 140, 147, 148, 149, 179 flatulence 65n65, 80, 83, 83n113 floating world. See under ukiyo “floating world” aesthetics 30–37, 118 See also aestheticization of evanescence/ impermanence; ukiyo floating world fiction 1–2, 2n7, 35, 40n2, 161, 177 flutes 69, 93, 228, 259 folk tales 1 food 113, 132, 163, 170 forelocks 92, 95, 154, 175, 225 shaving of 96, 123n13, 233, 244–45, 246 as signifier of impermanence  241–42, 245 See also genbuku fortune-telling 53, 100 “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior “A Fragrant Gift.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man French literature 9 French Revolution 260 “Fresh as First-Picked Tea.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Fudaraku tokai 115 Fudō Myōō 192 Fugen (Samantabhadra) 30, 149n82 Fuji Akio 237, 254–55 Fujiwara no Nobuzane 89 Fujiwara no Teika 46 Fuwa 89 Fuwa no Mansaku 87, 89 genbuku 123n13, 225, 231, 246 avoidance of 95, 123n13, 244–45 hangenbuku 92

Index “Gengobei, the Mountain of Love.” See under Five Women Who Loved Love Genji 41–42, 103, 107, 142, 223–24, 250 See also The Tale of Genji Genji monogatari. See The Tale of Genji Genmu monogatari. See The Tale of Genmu genre 1, 2n7, 12, 14, 15n56, 20, 20n72, 22–24, 29, 29n104, 49, 74n93, 161, 162, 199, 202, 212, 238, 247, 259n113 Genroku period 10, 18n65, 43n11, 30–31, 66n66, 68n70, 109 Genroku Taiheiki 74n91 Germany 115, 255–56 ghosts 151, 153, 157, 208, 218, 228, 263 ghost stories 168, 208, 210, 211, 212, 265 See also apparitions; bakemono Gifu prefecture 89 giko monogatari 25 “Ginmi wa okujima no hakama.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama” Gion monogatari 189 “Girls and Cherry Blossoms Fallen in Their Prime.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 115, 255 goningumi system 187 Gosenshū 82, 138, 147 graves 102 grave-robbing 102, 104–5 The Great Mirror of Male Love 10, 18n64, 75n93, 95, 123n13, 142, 156 The Great Mirror of Many Charms 75n93, 117, 117n1 Greek literature 3n7 “The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love.” See under Five Women Who Loved Love gūgen 12 Hachiman 192, 236, 252 haibun (haikai-like prose) 22, 24, 42, 44, 47, 49n26, 53, 61, 63, 70, 71, 72, 74, 74n93, 79, 85, 174, 216 haikai poetry 1, 2n6, 4, 5, 12, 14, 17, 22–24, 27, 49, 49n26, 53, 53n36, 58–64, 65n65, 66–67, 69–74, 70n81, 74n93, 85, 115, 120, 247

285 haikai no renga (haikai linked verse) 1, 22, 42, 44, 47, 48, 52–53, 61, 67, 70, 86n119, 99, 120, 148, 174–75, 198, 216 haikai salon as space bringing together samurai and commoners 39, 70–71, 91, 110, 261 See also Danrin school; haibun; The Life of an Amorous Man: haikailike narrative shifts; Teimon school hair 17n62, 49, 61, 64, 95, 98, 102–3, 119, 124, 130, 133, 139, 141, 143, 153, 154, 157, 185, 228, 231, 235, 236 hairstyle 85, 92, 94, 100–101, 101n158, 123n13, 132, 135–36, 156 pate-shaving 96, 214, 220 See also Buddhist monks: taking the tonsure; Buddhist nuns: taking the tonsure; forelocks; genbuku; hangenbuku Hamada, Kengi 9–10, 45n14, 52n34, 53n37, 59n54, 63n61, 65n63, 65n65, 72n86, 84, 92n140, 93n144, 96n148, 100n156, 101n158, 102n160, 106n167, 106n168, 108n173, 120n6, 194n85 hangenbuku 92 Hangzhou 90 “Hanyū no nedōgu.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “The Bedding in a Clay Hut” happy endings 115, 118, 123n13, 148, 150, 153, 158 Hasedera 92 Hashimoto Mineo 34–36, 34n123, 34n125, 35n127, 36n131, 119n3, 157, 157n110 Hatanaka Chiaki 18n64, 142, 151n90, 156, 156n107 “Hatsutakegari wa koigusa no tane.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love” “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Heaven (Confucian sense) 79, 101, 143, 143n66, 159, 163–64, 167, 170, 171, 172, 178, 186, 236, 240 hedonism 18n65, 35, 119, 150, 157–58 Heian-period aristocratic culture 13, 23, 25, 31, 46, 60, 73n88, 74n91, 82, 113, 117, 118, 120, 124, 125, 128, 129, 136, 142, 147, 229, 250, 266

286 Heian-period literature 1, 3, 5, 23, 31, 31n114, 36–37, 40, 46, 47n21, 59–60, 64, 67, 68, 98, 142, 202 See also allusion: literary; The Diary of Izumi Shikibu; Gosenshū; Kokinshū; The Pillow Book; Shika waka shū; The Tale of Genji; Tales of Ise Heike monogatari. See The Tale of the Heike “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man hermitage 151, 154, 218, 232, 233, 235, 237 hermits 215, 218 “Her Trousseau Held in a Battered Trunk.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan “Her Water-Comb a Memento.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man heteroglossia 15n56, 21–22 heterosexuality 37n139, 39, 43n11, 75n93, 85, 123, 151, 156, 158, 259, 260, 263 bond uniting couples short-lived as compared to homosexual couples  45, 85, 91, 96, 98–99, 149–50 compatibility with shudō 37, 40, 84, 85, 91, 149–50 and violation of monk’s vows 154, 156 “He Took Her, Sight Unseen, Then Ran Amok on Their Wedding Night.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Hibbett, Howard 11, 14–15, 15n59, 18n65, 20nn71–72, 26n87, 35n127, 40n2, 43n10 68n70, 157n110, 162n3, 197n2, 199, 253n103 Hideyoshi. See Toyotomi Hideyoshi hierarchy 11–12, 14–15, 16n61, 19, 22, 26, 27, 42–43, 63, 67, 69, 71–72, 71n84, 77–78, 107–10, 259 familial 182 in shudō 85, 91, 92, 95–96, 254, 256 status-group 3, 197, 255, 262 See also Confucianism; status-group system Higashi Akimasa 124, 127n27, 132n38, 135n45, 138n53, 152n92 Higuchi Ichiyō 7 Himeji 122 hinin 207 Hirano, Katsuya 16n61

Index “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man historical references 49 See also allusions: historical “Hito no shiranu watakushigane.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “A Secret Stash of Cash” Hōei period 66n66 Hōjōki 87–91 See also Kamo no Chōmei homicide 102, 179, 181, 182, 183, 202, 227, 236, 243, 246, 252, 258, 266 beheading 223, 257 of child 175, 176 of master/mistress 179, 180, 207 murder-suicide 149, 240, 241 by poison 98, 214, 215 of servant 205 stabbing 245 See also corpses; executions; infanticide homosexuality 7n22, 13, 37–39, 37n139, 74n75, 84, 85, 91, 95–96, 148, 149n82, 151, 156 age-structured male homosexuality  13n55, 29, 37–39, 96, 123, 123n13, 149n82, 149n83, 242, 255 in ancient Greece 38 definition of 13n55 See also erastēs; erōmenos; kabuki; shudō Honchō nijū fukō. See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan Honchō ōin hiji (Trials in the Shade of a Cherry Tree) 199, 200 honkadori (allusive variation) 25, 49, 51 Howell, David L. 201 humor. See comedy A Hundred Poems from a Hundred Poets  23, 25 “Hunting Early Mushrooms Sows the Seeds of Love.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Hutcheon, Linda 20, 24–26, 24n82, 25–26, 25n85, 72–73 hyakumonogatari 208 See also ghosts: ghost stories

Index hyōbanki 42, 48, 63, 71, 78 hypocrisy 130, 131–32, 211 “I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan idealism 7n22, 9, 75n93, 198, 203, 263, 264 ideology 12, 14–15, 26, 27, 160, 199, 200, 202 See also chōnin; commoners; Confucianism; feudalism; hierarchy; Ihara Saikaku: critique of Tokugawa feudalism; money: legitimacy of power derived from; peasants; samurai; status-group system; sumptuary laws; Tokugawa Ihara Saikaku 2n7, 31n112, 115n188, 190n72, 198n5, 200–201, 253n103, 259n114 birth name 1n3 commercial success of his fiction 1n4, 4, 6 critique of Tokugawa feudalism 187, 198, 199n12 family of origin 5 literary career 1–3, 2n6, 5–6, 42n8 marathon poetic composition performances 5–6, 198 parallels between his fiction and European counterparts 22–23, 161–62, 199 popularity of his fiction 6–8, 15–16, 16n60, 74n93 prose style of 2n6, 3–5, 9, 12, 13, 20–22, 45, 48, 49, 49n26, 52, 53n36, 58–60, 70, 74, 74n93, 86–90, 106, 110, 117, 120, 152, 154–55, 173, 177, 263, 267 requiem for his wife 24 wife’s death 5 See also individual works by title; ukiyozōshi; wordplay Ikegami, Eiko 39, 70, 70n81, 256 iki 36n134, 43n11, 68n70, 116n195 Iki no kōzō. See The Structure of Iki illiteracy 137, 141 illusory/ dreamlike nature of phenomenal reality 35, 44, 100, 116, 119–20, 119n3, 123, 232 illustrations 7n23, 32n121, 53, 74n93, 92, 97, 97n151, 113–14, 139, 186n64 list of illustrations xiv

287 “Ima koko e shiri ga demono.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction” “Ima no miyako mo yo wa karimono.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “Even in the Capital Now, the World Lives on Borrowed Time” imperial court (of China). See Chinese: imperial court imperial court (of Japan) 32, 35, 42–43, 46, 51, 60, 69, 70, 70n81, 72, 74n91, 81, 82, 90, 113, 120, 128, 137, 141, 142, 223, 225, 229, 250 See also emperor: of Japan impermanence, Buddhist concept of (mujō) 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33n122, 34–35, 34n125, 36, 44, 116, 119, 119n3, 123, 147, 157n110, 183, 188, 189, 263, 266 See also aestheticization of evanescence/ impermanence; instability; ukiyo incense 55, 79, 87, 87n124, 89 funereal 239, 241 incense comparison 46, 69, 107 as marker of elevated status 147, 148 infanticide 172, 240, 241 “Inga no sekimori.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “The Karmic Checkpoint Guard” ink paintings 46 inkyo 220 instability 34–35, 36, 118, 119n3, 157, 158 and impermanence 31n114, 34n125, 116, 119, 263 interior decoration 57 Inu hyakunin isshu. See The Mock One Hundred Poets “The Investigation Turned Up a Striped Hakama.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior irony 12, 17, 18n64, 18–19, 25, 25n85, 26, 45–54, 57, 58, 62, 85, 88, 100, 105, 117, 127, 131, 132, 160, 161, 162, 164, 165, 172, 178, 181, 189, 196, 199, 202, 208, 212, 219, 230, 246, 261, 263 Ise monogatari. See Tales of Ise Ise Shrine 130, 131 See also pilgrimage Ishibashi Seian 75n93

288 Ishikawa Goemon 171 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “A Fine Kettle of Fish” “Ishiusu hikubeki hanyū no koto.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One Would Expect to Hear the Pounding of a Stone Mortar Instead” Ishiyamadera 138, 228 Izumi Shikibu 59–60 Izumi Shikibu nikki. See The Diary of Izumi Shikibu Izu province 42 jails 41, 100–101, 179 Japanese exceptionalism 3n7 The Japanese Family Storehouse. See The Eternal Storehouse of Japan jealousy 38, 106, 112, 114, 129, 149, 203, 223, 236, 246 Jikkaku 96 Jizō 144 Johnson, Jeffrey 11–12, 14–15, 18–19, 26–27, 69, 70, 72, 115, 199, 200, 255 jorōya 56, 112, 112n185, 114 junshi. See suicide kabuki 82, 93, 111, 129, 132, 134, 139, 142, 201 actors 40, 41, 69–70, 135, 142, 152, 182, 195 prostitution of 37–38, 42, 69–70, 76, 78–79, 82, 84, 93, 105–6, 110, 112, 142–43, 194–95 Suzuki Heihachi (kabuki actor) 69 Takii Sanzaburō (kabuki actor) 110 Kagerō nikki 98–99 Kagoshima 150, 152 kaimami 40 –41, 92, 93, 94–95, 125–27, 207, 208, 229, 250 kakekotoba (pivot word) 48, 52, 53, 58–60, 154–55, 171 Kamakura period 119n3, 223 Kamigata 4, 36n134, 40, 43n11, 68n70, 75n93, 78, 102, 113, 142, 190, 191 Kamo no Chōmei 87–90 Kanadehon chūshingura 201, 207 Kan’ami 50 kanazōshi 2n7, 157n110, 164, 189, 189n69

Index Kannon (Avalokiteśvara) 29n104, 30, 96, 115 Kanō school painting 60, 62, 72 Kanō Yukinobu 60 karma 100, 169, 178, 186 karmic burden 184, 185, 253 karmic retribution 143, 179–81, 183, 186, 215 “The Karmic Checkpoint Guard.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man “Katami no mizugushi.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “Her Water-Comb a Memento” Keene, Donald 1n4, 11, 21n73, 100n154, 107n170, 115n188, 134n44, 157n110, 181, 189n69, 198n5, 199n12, 200n20, 261n117 kemari 69, 70, 191, 225, 229 Ken’yūsha coterie 7 kickball. See kemari Kii domain 4n9, 75n93 Kimbrough, R. Keller 30 Kira Sueo 42n8 Kisagata 82 “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Kiyomizu monogatari 189, 190 koban 141, 141n62, 178, 217 Kohitsu Ryōsa 46 “Koigusa karageshi yaoya monogatari.” See Five Women Who Loved Love: “The Greengrocer’s Daughter with a Bundle of Love” “Koi no yama Gengobei monogatari.” See Five Women Who Loved Love: “Gengobei, the Mountain of Love” kojōruri puppet theater 38 Kokinshū 32, 59, 146–47 Kokin waka shū. See Kokinshū komusō 228 Konoe, Emperor 50 Korean literature 9, 18 A Nine Cloud Dream 18 Kōreibashi 119 Kornicki, Peter 19 kōshoku 36n134, 117 kōshokubon 66n66 Kōshoku gonin onna. See Five Women Who Loved Love

Index Kōshoku ichidai onna. See The Life of an Amorous Woman Kōshoku ichidai otoko. See The Life of an Amorous Man kōshokumono 6, 17n62, 75n93, 119 Kōshoku nidai otoko. See The Great Mirror of Many Charms “Kotatsu mo ariku yotsuashi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “The Four-Legged Walking Foot-Warmer” koto 69, 109, 191, 220, 233 sign of refinement in rustic setting  247–48, 250 “Koto Music in a Clay Hut Where One Would Expect to Hear the Pounding of a Stone Mortar Instead.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior kōwakamai 259 Kōya, Mt. 151, 153 Kristeva, Tzvetana I. 20, 24–25, 27–28, 71n83, 72, 229 “Kuchi soete sakakaruko.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket” Kūkai 151, 156n107 Kuki Shūzō 36n134, 43n11, 68n70, 116n195 Kundera, Milan 2n7, 160–61, 196 Kurabe, Mt. 86n119 “Kuzetsu kotofure.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “An Oracle About a Lovers’ Quarrel” Kyōhō period 16, 47n19 kyōka 23 Kyoto 4, 40, 72, 74n91, 79, 81, 86, 89, 92, 97, 111, 113, 123–24, 131, 135, 139, 140–41, 165, 168, 171, 174, 175, 182, 211–12, 219, 221, 223, 225, 228 contrasted with countryside 141–43 licensed prostitution quarter 42–43, 44, 61, 63, 81, 106–8, 112, 256 See also Shimabara theater district 42–43, 112 See also Shijōgawara Kyushu 111, 112, 188 LaFleur, William R. 26, 26n88, 27, 29–30, 31, 34n125 Lane, Richard 7n22, 10, 75n93, 259n114

289 Leupp, Gary P. 13n55, 38 Leutner, Robert 10 The Life of an Amorous Man 1–3, 1n4, 1n5, 2n6, 4–5, 6, 8, 11, 12–22, 19n69, 21n73, 25, 26–27, 28, 29, 35, 36n134, 39, 40–116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 124, 128, 135, 152, 158, 160, 161, 170, 172, 173, 195, 196, 200–201, 224, 255, 263, 266–67 comedy in 40, 54, 57, 67, 90, 99, 103 haikai no renga-like narrative shifts 42, 44, 47, 48–49, 52–55, 53n36, 57, 74, 79, 120, 216 Island of Women 42, 44, 45, 57, 66n66, 111 literary allusions in 40, 41, 46, 47n21, 49, 49n26, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60–61, 64, 68, 72–74, 78, 82, 85, 90, 94–95, 99, 103, 105–6, 124, 138, 143, 145, 202 pathos undercut by comedy/irony in  54, 57, 95, 99, 102, 117, 127, 162, 181 references to Chinese literati, literature, or court culture 40, 42–43, 46, 50, 51, 70, 79, 82, 90, 105, 111–12, 113, 125, 223–24 references to haikai poetry 42, 44, 62–64, 66–67, 69–70, 71–72 translations of 9–10, 10n43, 45 Yonosuke: abandonment of women and offspring 41, 96–99 intellectual precocity of 86–91, 95, 105 non-paying relationships with prostitutes 44, 55–57, 104 number of sex partners 40, 40n1, 115, 194 sexual precocity of 40–41, 84, 85–91, 105, 181 chapters: “The Bedding in a Clay Hut” 91–96, 93 “Dolls from the Capital” 44, 45, 52, 78, 110–15, 114 “A Fragrant Gift” 65n65, 66–67, 83n113 “Fresh as First-Picked Tea” 46, 62–68 “Her Backside Aimed in His Direction” 72, 78–84, 80 “Her Water-Comb a Memento” 101–3, 101 “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower” 85–92, 86, 95, 96, 113, 123n13, 145

290 The Life of an Amorous Man (cont.) “The Karmic Checkpoint Guard” 100 “A Kiss in a Cup in a Basket” 53–57, 55 “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am’ ” 108–10 “An Oracle About a Lovers’ Quarrel”  100 “A Secret Stash of Cash” 57, 67, 72n86, 103–6, 105 “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” 45–53, 58, 60, 62, 63, 66, 68, 72, 73, 85, 86 “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” 58–62, 68, 73, 85 “They Couldn’t Recognize a Stylish Man” 75–78, 82 “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream” 84, 85, 96–99, 97, 123n13 The Life of an Amorous Woman 9, 11, 36n134, 73, 75n93, 117 lightning 208, 214, 252 Li Jietui 89–90 lion dance 64, 125, 126 A Long Tale for an Autumn Night 29, 29n104, 88–89, 238 The Lotus Sutra 28–29, 30 love letters 47–48, 103, 119, 122–24, 137, 146, 151, 155, 221, 242, 257 machiyakko 251, 254, 255 Maeda Kingorō 8, 40n1, 47, 54n40, 56n48, 59n54, 82, 89, 96, 111–12, 125, 127n27, 135n45, 138n53, 144n68, 145n69 Makura no sōshi. See The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon male bonding 98 male-male sexuality 13n55 See also homosexuality; kabuki; shudō male prostitutes 41, 76, 79, 82, 84, 85, 92, 94, 99, 110, 112, 123n13, 142, 158, 182, 195 See also kabuki; tobiko “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Man’yōshū 32 maple leaves 32, 97–98, 99, 112, 119–20, 204, 168 See also autumn leaves, as signifier of evanescence Marishi-ten 192, 252

Index marriage 37, 98, 108–10, 132, 134–35, 139, 143, 154, 158, 168–71, 179, 182, 183–87, 190–92, 196, 216–17, 219, 227, 241, 260 See also divorce; elopement martial arts 173, 175, 194, 195, 213 Maruyama (Nagasaki pleasure quarter) 112 massage 56, 194 massha. See taikomochi “Massha rakuasobi.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down” masturbation 40–41, 65n65, 125 material culture 40, 40n2, 66, 266 See also clothing; fashion accessories Matsuda Osamu 8, 115, 163n5, 173nn30–31, 175, 191, 195 Matsuo Bashō 24, 73 Matsushima 82 McCullough, Helen Craig 31 Media Studies 9 melodrama 99–100, 106–7, 263 merchants 2–3, 20n71, 115n188, 120, 168, 181, 183–84, 187, 190, 195, 197, 201, 240 meritocracy 22, 43–44, 109–10 See also social mobility metropolitan-provincial dichotomy 3, 4, 14, 15, 42, 43, 44, 57, 67, 71–72, 75–79, 81, 105, 113, 117, 123–24, 139, 141–43, 152, 179 See also chōnin: contrasting portrayals of metropolitan and provincial; countryside/provinces; prostitutes and prostitution: contrasting portrayals of metropolitan and provincial Michitsuna no Haha 98 michiyuki 138, 138n56, 142 Minamoto no Yorimasa 46, 50–51 “Minu hitogao ni yoi no mufunbetsu.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “He Took Her, Sight Unseen, Then Ran Amok on Their Wedding Night” misogyny 102, 117, 153, 156, 170 Miyajima 75–78, 82, 113 Miyako no Nishiki 74n91 “Miyako no sugataningyō.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “Dolls from the Capital.” mizuage 107–8

Index The Mock One Hundred Poets 23, 25 money 36, 42, 44, 70, 68n70, 71, 75, 78, 79, 94, 103–5, 107, 110–11, 124, 127, 139, 144, 167, 188, 212 enabling cultural sophistication 15, 46, 62, 67, 69–70, 110, 128, 136 extravagance 17, 47, 60, 152 illicitly obtained 179 instability of wealth 157 legitimacy of power derived from 3, 16, 21–22, 25–26, 58, 68–69, 68n70 loss of fortune in pleasure quarters 41, 61, 118, 152, 157, 165, 166–67 prestige from possession of 48, 121, 136 moneychanging 191 moneylending 165, 169, 187 murder for 178–79, 182 relation to status group 3, 15, 16–17, 16n61, 21, 22, 26, 69, 110, 128, 204, 255, 256 role in pleasure quarters 46, 48, 51, 53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 82–83, 108, 119, 121, 122 wordplay regarding 54, 57 monozukushi 134, 152 Montesquieu 114n187 moon 87, 89, 111, 233, 253 moral absolutes 14, 26, 164 moral ambiguity 13, 14–15, 18–19, 27, 177, 196 moral relativism 14 Moretti, Franco 21, 259–60 Moretti, Laura 2n7 Moriyama, Takeshi 39, 256 Morris, Ivan 9, 118n2, 121n7, 122n10, 125n24, 137n51, 138n53, 143n66, 145n69, 149n83, 153n97, 153n98, 155n104, 157n110 mothers 51, 141, 145–146, 151, 156n107, 163–64, 165, 167–70, 172, 178, 191–92, 194–95, 205, 215, 223, 227, 228–30, 247–49, 266 moxibustion 137 “Mufunbetsu wa mikoshi no kinobori.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “Climbing a Tree to the Height of Indiscretion” mujō. See impermanence, Buddhist concept of (mujō) Murasaki Shikibu 11, 99, 168, 228, 230 See also The Tale of Genji

291 Muromachi period 89, 119n3, 207, 259n113 music 64, 79, 220, 223, 233, 248, 250 See also drums; flute; koto; shamisen; singing “Musumezakari no chirizakura.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “Girls and Cherry Blossoms Fallen in Their Prime” “Muyō no chikara jiman.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength” Nagasaki 44, 45, 52, 78, 111–14 Nagazumi Yasuaki 35 “Nagusami kaete hanashi no tentori.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “Competitive Storytelling Was His New Amusement” Nakajima Takashi xi–xii, 2n6, 9, 66n66, 74n93, 265n7 Naked Island 120 Nanshoku ōkagami. See The Great Mirror of Male Love Nara, Hiroshi 68n70 Nara period 113, 128, 129 Nara prefecture 92 narrator 3, 14, 43, 46, 60n58, 61, 80, 82, 83, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95, 98, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 112, 117, 118, 119, 121, 128–29, 132, 141n62, 143, 144, 145n69, 146, 154, 174, 187, 191, 207, 223, 224, 236, 245, 263 commentary by serves to emphasize comedy 120, 124, 125, 130–31, 178–79, 192, 194 expresses admiration of characters 14, 56, 64–65, 66–67, 123, 134, 144–45, 154, 170, 179, 182 narratorial moralizing 14–15, 16, 17, 19, 27, 45–52, 62, 68, 85, 88, 99–101, 128, 134–35, 150, 160, 179–81, 183, 188 about women 154 characterizing human beings as contemptible 153–54 deploring human fickleness 155, 157 inconsistencies of 15, 17n64, 132, 154, 155, 172, 230, 261–62, 266 undermining of 12, 18, 58, 60–61, 63, 129, 143, 154, 162, 202 The Narrow Road to Oku 24

292 “Nasake ireshi taruya monogatari.” See Five Women Who Loved Love: “The Barrelmaker Brimful of Love” Naturalism 7, 264 nenbutsu 98, 185, 187 nenja 38, 89, 95, 96n147, 99, 109–10, 123n13, 145, 146, 148–49, 152, 156, 195, 230–31, 244, 247, 250, 251, 254–55, 256, 260, 263, 266 See also shūdo; wakashu Neo-Confucianism. See Confucianism nerigi (sexual lubricant) 155 The New Lady-in-Waiting is a Chigo 29n104 newts 130 Nijūshi kō. See Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety A Nine Cloud Dream 18 “Nine Stages of Death” 32, 32n121 “Nioi wa kazukemono.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “A Fragrant Gift” Nippon eitaigura. See The Eternal Storehouse of Japan Nise monogatari. See Fake Tales Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (The Rustic Genji) 25 Nishiyama Sōin 2n6, 14, 69, 71 nō 1, 20n71, 29–30, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 49n26, 52n33, 64, 86, 90, 215 allusions to 3, 21, 40, 48–52, 60, 62, 120, 125, 138, 177, 178, 202 as prestigious hobby 191 performed by prostitutes 112, 112n185 popularity of 52, 52n33 plays Eguchi 29–30 Funa Benkei 177 Kan’yōkyū (Xianyang Palace) 46 Kayoi Komachi 138 Matsukaze 112 Matsuyama kagami 50–51 Miidera 112 Nue 50–51 Shiga 138 Sumidagawa 177 Takasago 125 Teika 112 “Nochi ni sama tsuke yobu.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am’ ”

Index Nosco, Peter 10 novel 12, 15n56, 20, 21, 22, 42n6, 160, 161, 196, 199, 207, 212, 260 definition of 2n7, 23 See also Bakhtin; dialogism; European literature “Now They Call Her ‘Ma’am.’ ” See under The Life of an Amorous Man “Nozukue no keburikurabe.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “Dueling Flames of Passion Raise Smoke on the Funereal Incense Altar” nudity 40–41, 94, 106, 119, 120–21, 134 See also bathing nuke-mairi 130 Oda Nobunaga 232 Ōguchi Yūjirō 18n67 Ogura hyakunin isshu. See A Hundred Poems from a Hundred Poets Oku no hosomochi. See The Narrow Road to Oku old age 42, 96, 173, 232, 243, 246 Ōmi province 89, 138, 197, 215, 228 “Omoiire fuku onna shakuhachi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “Women Who Played the Bamboo Flute with Secret Intent” onnagata 110 “Onna no tsukureru otokomoji.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “A Man’s Handwriting from a Woman’s Hand” Ono no Komachi 136, 138, 139, 142, 143 Ooms, Herman 189 “An Oracle About a Lovers’ Quarrel.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Osaka 1, 1n4, 2n6, 4, 5, 40, 69, 72, 74n91, 75n93, 78–79, 81–83, 92, 111–13, 119, 127, 129, 131, 187–88 pleasure quarter 42–43, 44, 53, 79, 106–7, 181–82, 192, 194–95, 256 See also Shinmachi Ōshiki Zuike 30 “Oshi ya maegami Hakone yamaoroshi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “ ’Tis Pity His Forelocks Have Scattered before the Wind off Mt. Hakone”

Index “Ōzetsuki ni nai sode no ame.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “Sleeves Drenched by Unseasonable Rains at Year’s End” paradox 27, 28, 264 parody 18n65, 20n71, 40, 61, 62, 70–74, 71n83, 73n88, 75n93, 106, 143, 152n91, 156n107, 162n3, 164, 174, 229, 249 of Buddhist texts or practices 26–27, 30, 115 confirming the value of elite cultural forms 14, 19, 62, 63, 70, 72–73 definitions of 19–27 and haikai no renga 14, 17, 22, 24, 42, 44, 46, 49n26, 63, 70–74 of Japanese literary classics 3, 5, 8, 22–23, 47n21, 53, 99, 161, 202, 223–24, 229, 247 of nō dramas 49–52, 49n26 role in development of European novel 15n56, 22–23 in Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan 161 undermining narratorial moralizing 15, 46–51, 58–61, 202 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan parvenu ethos/sensibility 15, 15n59, 19, 42, 69, 71, 91, 108–10, 113 “the passions are enlightenment” 28–30 pastoral romance 24 pathos 102, 107n170, 142, 238, 263, 267 undercutting of 54–55, 57, 95, 96–100, 100n154, 102, 117, 127, 162, 181, 186–87, 241, 263 peasants 57, 67, 72, 75n93, 102–4, 178, 201 peeping. See kaimami Pflugfelder, Gregory M. 13n55, 38n144 pilgrimages 92, 130, 131–32, 151, 153, 178, 183, 184, 217 The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon 31n114 pivot word. See kakekotoba The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch 28 pleasure, illusory/transient nature of 36, 44, 94, 116, 120, 157, 158 pleasure quarter 11, 14, 43n11, 46, 48, 50, 53, 58, 62, 65–67, 70, 78, 81, 82–83,

293 106–7, 112, 114–15, 124, 137, 255, 256 brothels 42, 52, 95, 96, 116, 167 connoisseurship 13, 36n134, 117 as cultural hub 36n134, 43n11, 46, 65–67, 68n70, 115, 119 extravagance of visitors to 51–52, 61, 71, 78, 118, 165 false appearances of 44, 57, 83, 94, 102–3, 115–16, 119–20, 266 fashion 46, 62–63, 266 as microcosm 43–44, 100, 116, 119–20, 123 as realm of (heightened) illusion 92, 94, 100, 102–3, 105, 116, 121, 123, 158, 264 See also prostitutes and prostitution pledges of love (verbal) 46, 53–54, 98, 102, 155, 227, 248, 253 plot 51, 119–20, 145, 149, 150, 165, 177, 195, 204, 216, 238, 251n97 plum blossoms 64, 85 The Plum in the Golden Vase 65n64 poison 165 See also homicide popular fiction 1–2 pornography 17n62, 42, 121 precociousness 40, 84, 86, 90, 91, 178–79, 181–82, 224 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “I Am a Traveling Monk”; Life of an Amorous Man pregnancy and childbirth 247 death during 184–87 out of wedlock 227 women abandoned during 41, 100 Pride and Prejudice 259–60 privies 54–55, 54n43, 57, 104, 257 prostitution and prostitutes 12–14, 26, 29–30, 35, 36, 40, 41–45, 46–68, 65n65, 68n70, 73n88, 76–84, 85, 92, 96–97, 100, 102–16, 117, 118–24, 158, 170, 181, 195, 216, 240, 241 contrasting portrayals of metropolitan and provincial 14, 67, 71–72, 75–78, 124, 240 the deceitful prostitute 31n114, 45, 57, 92, 93–94, 95, 102–5, 121

294 prostitution and prostitutes (cont.) indenturing of prostitutes 44, 53, 94, 95, 105, 107, 108, 111 kamuro 64, 104 pimps 105 the plight of prostitutes 45, 57, 93–95, 99, 105, 106–8, 115–16 prostitutes as role models in matters of love 123–24 “rice polishers” 41, 100, 266 sincerity/insincerity of prostitutes 13, 44, 45, 94, 102–6, 119, 121–24, 158 streetwalkers 105 system of ranking prostitutes 14, 43, 106–8, 108n173, 120 tayū 46, 48, 52–57, 58–61, 62–65, 66, 67, 69–70, 71, 77–78, 83n113, 103–4, 106–10, 112n185, 113, 123–24, 135, 170, 191–92, 263 See also Azuma; Takahashi I; Takahashi II; Yoshida tenjin 79, 83 tobiko 92–96 wastrel sons and prostitution 41, 118, 157, 158, 165, 175 194, 195 See also kabuki; pleasure quarter; ukiyobikuni prose style. See Ihara Saikaku: prose style of Protestant Reformation 35 provinces. See countryside/provinces publishing industry 1, 2n6, 4, 4n12, 19, 37, 74n93, 84, 162, 202 puppet theater 38 See also bunraku Rabelais, François 10, 66, 263 raccoon dogs 96, 98, 141 rape, attempted 41, 100 readership 1, 4, 6, 14, 20–21, 37, 42, 51, 60, 64, 70, 72–73, 74n93, 195, 208, 260–61 realism 3, 6–7, 7n22, 9, 40, 75n93, 105, 106, 135, 198, 203, 264, 265–66 reincarnation 64, 128 religion 61, 160, 264 hypocritical invocation of 131–32 syncretism 162, 183, 189–90 See also Buddhism; Confucianism; Daoism; Shinto

Index Renaissance 10 revenge. See vendettas The Road to Komatsubara 52 Rokujō, Lady 41, 98–99 Roman literature 3n7 Russia 43n11 rusticity. See countryside/provinces “Ryokō no kure no sō nite sōrō.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk” Saigin 74n93 Saigyō 82 Saikaku. See Ihara Saikaku Saikaku okimiyage. See Saikaku’s Parting Gift Saikaku oridome. See Some Final Words of Advice Saikaku shokokubanashi. See Tales from the Provinces Saikaku’s Parting Gift 10 Sakai 81, 212 saké 56, 76, 109, 118, 142, 214, 241, 249, 251–52, 253 See also drinking samsara 28 samurai 1, 3, 6–8, 9, 10, 12, 13–14, 19, 36, 37–39, 47, 60, 69–70, 72, 73–74, 73n88, 74n93, 81, 86–91, 96, 110, 114, 135n45, 146, 147, 148, 153, 179, 194, 199–200, 201–2, 204, 207, 217, 223, 228, 229, 230, 232, 235, 236, 239, 243, 246–47, 249, 250, 251, 253, 257, 259, 261–62, 263 abuses of power 198, 217, 224, 241, 250, 251–52, 254, 255, 261 comic portrayals of 208–13 contrasting portrayals of 14, 197, 198, 202–3, 208, 212, 237, 241–42, 246, 261–62, 265 disguised as Buddhist monks 218, 219 disguised as fishermen 233 disguised as peasants 146–48 disguised as peddlers 239 high-samurai aesthetics and culture  26, 37, 42–43, 46, 51, 60, 69–72, 90, 110, 143 masterless (rōnin) 145–46, 211, 215, 232, 242, 248

Index as models for emulation 70, 91, 110, 197, 219, 231–32, 246, 255, 261–62, 265 portrayed as cowards 197, 203, 208–16, 218 questionable value of in time of peace 198, 211, 213, 219, 261, 262 rōnin 145–46, 211, 215, 232, 242, 248 and shudō 37–38, 41, 45, 91, 96, 109, 113, 142–43, 145, 148–49, 150–52, 156, 195, 198, 250–51, 254–56, 260, 263 stipends 207, 213, 214 unflattering portrayals of 216, 241–42, 254 women 215–16, 220–24, 225–31 See also Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior; Kanō school painting; nō; shudō; vendettas Sanford, James H. 32n121 sankin kōtai. See alternate attendance Sargent, G. W. 9 Sasaki Akio 2n6, 9, 27, 157, 198–99, 229, 264, 265n7 satire 26–27, 115, 164, 165, 199, 219, 224, 229, 250, 265 scabies 92, 95 scatological content 54–55, 57, 65n65 Schalow, Paul Gordon 10, 26, 27n89 Screech, Timon 121 “A Secret Stash of Cash.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Sei Shōnagon 31n114 Seken mune san’yō. See Worldy Mental Calculations sekkyō puppet theater 38 self-cultivation 43–44, 68–71, 83n113, 109, 110, 175 semen 65n65, 120, 194 See also sexual fluids Sengoku period 8 Sen no Rikyū 64 sentimentality 99–100, 105–7 Senzaishū 147 servants 64, 69, 77, 92, 109, 122, 124, 130, 136, 139, 146, 147, 170, 179, 194, 204–5, 214, 215, 220–21, 227–28, 236–37, 238, 239, 240, 252, 257 maidservants 40–41, 128, 65n65, 122, 137–38, 220–21, 224, 225, 257 Seta Bridge 87, 89

295 setsuwa 75n93 sex toys 42, 65n65, 240 See also dildos sexual fluids 65n65, 120, 194 See also semen; tissue paper sexual intercourse 51, 80, 112, 120, 125–27, 128, 130–31, 194, 208 sexuality 26, 26n89, 28–30, 35, 65n64, 65n65, 66n66 See also erotic love; heterosexuality; homosexuality; male-male sexuality; prostitution and prostitutes; sexual intercourse; sexual love; shudō sexual love, irrationality of 129, 134, 158 See also erotic love shamisen 64, 76, 79 Shijōgawara 112 Shika waka shū 79 Shikidō ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Love) 122 Shimabara (Kyoto pleasure quarter) 61, 63, 81, 82, 105, 107, 109, 112, 123–24, 167, 191–92 Shimada Hinyū 67 Shin Chokusenshū 152 Shin Gosen waka shū 89 shin’i 124, 124n17 shinjūdate 102, 119 Shin Kokinshū 82 Shinmachi (Osaka pleasure quarter)  53, 79, 82, 107 Shinoda Jun’ichi 85n117 “Shintei o hiku Biwa no umi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “Heartstrings Plucked on Lake Biwa” Shinto 61, 98, 111 deities 127–29, 131–32 priest/priestess 41, 100, 221 syncretism 162, 189–90 See also Ise shrine; nuke-mairi; pilgrimage Shirane, Haruo 10, 73, 75n93 Shively, Donald H. 16–17, 17n62 Shoen ōkagami. See The Great Mirror of Many Charms Shoku Goshūishū 152 Shōtoku Taishi 259 shudō 7n22, 13n55, 37–39, 41, 43n11, 44, 84–96, 86n119, 93, 112, 143, 150, 181, 203,

296 shudō (cont.) 230, 231, 233, 236, 241, 242, 246, 250, 263, 264, 265 bond between lovers outlasts sexual relationship 85, 91, 96, 98–99, 123n13 Buddhism and 37–38, 235 as chōnin means of elevating status  255–56, 260 compatibility with heterosexuality 37, 40, 84, 85, 91, 149–50 conventions of 38–39, 45, 84–85, 88–91, 91–92, 94–96, 98, 112, 123n13, 231, 250, 255, 260 crossing lines of status group and rank 151, 152–53, 198, 203, 250–61 depth of relationship as compared to heterosexual 45, 96, 98, 149–50 hierarchical aspects of 38, 95–96, 237, 250–51, 254, 256, 260 idealization of 7n22, 38, 44–45, 75n93, 85, 91, 96, 142, 198, 203, 263, 264, 265 jealousy and 38, 149, 203, 236, 239, 246 kabuki and 37–38, 40, 42, 69–70 kyōdaibun (fictive brothers) 228, 249 masculinity or effeminacy of devotees 37 onnagirai 37, 123n13, 156 penetrative sex and 38, 41 relationships between samurai and chōnin 86–91, 96, 145, 149, 151, 152–53, 198, 250–56 samurai and 37–38, 44–45, 151 as social space bringing together samurai and commoners 91, 113–15, 151, 152–53, 156, 250–56 views of women toward 149–50, 230–31 violence and 38, 246 as “way” or discipline 38–39, 255 See also chigo monogatari; homosexuality: age-structured male homosexuality; nenja; wakashu shunga 121 Shunshoku umegoyomi 68, 68n70 Siary, Gérard 10n43, 45n14, 65n65, 101n158, 106n167 Silver, Mark 199, 200 singing 76, 81, 109, 147n78, 152, 220–21, 233, 247–48

Index Six Dynasties poetry 31 skin 49, 56, 120–21, 137, 155, 259 “Sleeves Drenched by Unseasonable Rains at Year’s End.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan snow 46, 63–65, 69, 85, 147, 164, 217–18 social mobility 3, 43–44, 70–72, 91, 109–10, 113 See also status-group system; Tokugawaera social hierarchies “Sode no shigure wa kakaru ga saiwai.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “His Sleeves Damp from an Opportune Shower” Some Final Words of Advice 10, 52n33 Someya Tomoyuki 7n22, 9, 20n71, 27, 30–31, 31n112, 38, 73n88, 74n93, 128n30, 199, 229, 263, 264, 264n4, 265n7 on The Life of an Amorous Man 18, 65n64, 68 on Saikaku’s bukemono, including Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior 198, 203 on Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan 164, 190n72 “Sono sugata wa hatsu mukashi.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “Fresh as First-Picked Tea” Sosei 46 sōshi 30, 30n112 Spanish literature 3n7, 24 spears 81, 209–10, 218, 236 spiders’ webs, as signifier of evanescence 32 Stallybrass, Peter 11 status-group system 3, 14, 15–16, 21, 22, 26, 43–44, 91, 110, 115n188, 142, 201, 261 “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji.” See under Five Women Who Loved Love The Story of the Stone 31n116 The Structure of Iki 43n11 See also iki; Kuki Shūzō Struve, Daniel 12, 20, 36n134, 116n193 “dialogue of ideologies” 12, 13–14, 27, 190n71, 200, 265n7 Stubbs, David C. 9 Suematsu Masako 25 “Sugata Himeji Seijūrō monogatari.” See Five Women Who Loved Love: “The Story of Seijūrō in Himeji”

Index Sugawara no Michizane 125 Sugimoto Tsutomu 9, 49n26, 52n33 sui 43n11 suicide 54, 110, 115, 122, 134, 147, 167, 217, 241, 243, 247, 263, 265 accidental 165 after vendetta 182, 202, 223, 253 by beheading 258 feigned 139, 141, 143 junshi 8, 182, 195, 235, 236, 241 murder-suicide 149, 240, 241 note 258–59 prevented 102, 106, 121, 143, 146, 236–37 seppuku 149, 182, 227, 237, 258 sumo 41, 171, 181, 190–95, 193, 266 forty-eight moves of 175, 191 as low-class hobby 191, 194 See also Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “An Untoward Pride” sumptuary laws 44 intention of 21, 26, 47, 47n19, 62, 63 spirit of, both paid lip service to and undermined in Saikaku’s fiction 16–17, 17n62, 21, 45–47, 63, 73, 168, 170, 201, 255 See also cloth; clothing; fashion accessories “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Su Shi 89–90 swords 102, 108, 150, 204, 205, 208–10, 214, 215, 218, 227, 230, 235, 236, 238, 242–43, 246, 249, 249n94, 250, 251–52, 259, 263 “A Swordsman Struck Down with Poisoned Saké.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior tachibana orange 59–60, 64 Taiheiki 20n71, 202, 208 recited by masterless samurai 211, 212 taikomochi 58, 58n52, 61–62, 72, 79, 83, 120, 121 “Taikomochi Letting Their Hair Down.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man Takahashi I (tayū) 63–68, 69–70 Takahashi II (tayū) 69 Takasago 125 Takatsuka Masanori 9

297 The Tale of Genji 11, 23, 25, 31n114, 49n26, 64, 68, 138, 161 allusions to 3, 20–21, 28, 40, 41–42, 46, 54, 57, 59–60, 94–95, 98–99, 106, 124, 125, 142, 202, 219–20, 223–24, 228–30, 247, 248, 250 allusions to Uji chapters of 48n23, 57, 60, 64, 142 Genji as model for Yonosuke in The Life of an Amorous Man 68, 103, 107 reference to writing of 228, 230 See also Genji; Murasaki Shikibu; Rokujō, Lady The Tale of Genmu 29n104, 238 The Tale of the Heike 5, 20n71, 50–51, 208 The Tale of Usuyuki 5 Tales from the Provinces 7, 75n93, 259n114 Tales of Ise 22–23, 25, 31n114, 33–34, 40, 40n1, 59, 68, 118, 161 allusions to 3, 5, 60, 138, 146, 152 Tales of Samurai Honor 7, 10, 76n93, 182, 199–200 Tamenaga Shunsui 68n70 Tanabata 130, 225 Tang period 31, 223 poetry 34n123, 46 Taniwaki Masachika 2n6, 7n23 on anachronisms in Saikaku’s fiction  8, 197, 200, 203–04, 207, 212–13, 218, 232 on Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior 219, 254 on Five Women Who Loved Love 125, 134 on The Life of an Amorous Man 19n69, 53n36, 69, 74, 92, 115, 120 on Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan 164 tanuki. See raccoon dogs taste 34, 66–67, 76–78, 107, 266 tayū. See under prostitution and prostitutes tea ceremony 38–39, 62–64, 66, 173n30 as means of chōnin cultural advancement 69–70, 261 as prestigious hobby 191 as a social space bringing together samurai and commoners 39, 261 See also Sen no Rikyū Teika. See Fujiwara no Teika Teimon school 5

298 Teruoka Yasutaka 8–9, 56n48, 59n54, 65n65, 70, 81, 82, 89, 96, 107, 111 testicles 127 textual ambiguity 34–35, 48, 52, 56n48, 58–59, 63n61, 77, 205n29, 221, 232 theater 12, 115, 139, 207, 255–56 district 42–43, 69–70, 83, 111 See also kabuki; nō; puppet theater theft 28, 102, 127–28, 167, 175, 186, 257 “They Couldn’t Recognize a Stylish Man.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man “They Saw that Great Serpents Really Do Exist.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior This Scheming World. See Worldly Mental Calculations thunder 124, 213, 214 “ ’Tis Pity His Forelocks Have Scattered before the Wind off Mt. Hakone.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior tissue paper (signifier of sexual intercourse) 130–31, 138 See also sexual fluids tobacco 79, 80, 108, 248 Tōkaidō meishoki. See Famous Sights of the Tokaidō Tokugawa -era commercialism 218–19 -era religious debates 189–90 -era social control 15–16, 187, 199, 262 -era social hierarchies 3–4, 43–44, 197–98, 199–200, 201 See also status-group system foreign travel ban 113 prohibitions on depictions of sensitive current events 207 shogunal court 81, 262 shogunate 1, 4, 8, 12, 18–19,18n67, 21, 26, 62, 81, 101–2, 102n160, 113, 197, 207, 211, 212, 232, 261–62 See also Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: anachronisms in Tokugawa Tsunayoshi 16 “Tōryū no otoko o mishiranu.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “They Couldn’t Recognize a Stylish Man” Toyotomi Hidetsugu 89, 90

Index Toyotomi Hideyoshi 64, 89 tragedy 57, 91, 124, 127, 128–29, 134, 185 transgressive love 12, 117 transvestism. See cross-dressing travel literature 5 See also Matsuo Bashō tsū 43n11 Tsurezuregusa. See Essays in Idleness Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan 13, 17n62, 61, 81, 88, 90, 119, 135, 159–96, 202, 230, 264, 266 conflict between Confucianism and Buddhism in 162, 163, 183–87, 190, 264 internal contradictions of 164, 171 as parody of Confucian morality tale 160–61, 162, 163, 165 place in Saikaku’s œuvre 161 sexual issues in 196 stories: “Competitive Storytelling Was His New Amusement” 187–90, 264 “Even in the Capital Now, the World Lives on Borrowed Time” 165 “A Fine Kettle of Fish” 171–78, 176, 183, 186, 194, 266 haikai no renga-like shift 174 perversion of Confucianism  175–77 wordplay in text 172–73 wordplay in title 171–72 “Girls and Cherry Blossoms Fallen in Their Prime” 183–87, 190, 196, 264 “Her Trousseau Held in a Battered Trunk” 167–71, 196 “I Am a Traveling Monk, Wandering Through the Gathering Dusk” 90, 170, 178–83, 180, 190, 229 “Sleeves Drenched by Unseasonable Rains at Year’s End” 165–67, 166, 195, 266 “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength” 181, 190–96, 193, 266 celibacy in 192, 194, 195 Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety 161, 163, 164, 172, 177, 186 Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety in Japan 163

Index Uji 64 ukiyo: aesthetic 246, 266 “floating world” 34, 34n123, 157n110, 187, 259 term’s origin and range of meaning 33–34, 34n123, 35n127, 116n193, 118–19, 119n3, 246 thought 34–36, 157–58, 157n110 See also aestheticization of evanescence/ impermanence; impermanence; wretched world ukiyobikuni 30 ukiyoe 35, 131 ukiyozōshi. See floating world fiction “An Untoward Pride in His Own Strength.” See under Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan urination 24, 65n65, 194 Usuyuki monogatari. See The Tale of Usuyuki vendettas 156, 182, 201–2, 214–16, 218, 223, 240, 243, 261, 265n7 authorized 205, 211, 214, 239 pursued by a woman 221–24, 225–31 tales 13, 38, 201, 253n103 unauthorized 182, 202 See also Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior; samurai vengeful spirits 41, 85, 96–99 Vimalakirti Sutra 28 violence 38, 96–99, 102, 203, 216, 219, 223, 224, 241, 242, 243, 244, 261 Vitiello, Giovanni 13n55 vitiligo 120 voyeurism. See kaimami wabi-sabi 232 Wada Yasuyuki 30 waka 31n114, 48, 59–60, 64, 72, 78, 87–88, 111 as link between chōnin and elite culture 20–21, 90–91, 146–47 relationship to haikai 22–24, 247 rules of decorum governing topic choice and diction 22, 23, 32, 32n121, 71 See also Fujiwara no Teika; Gosenshū; Kokinshū; Man’yōshū; Senzaishū;

299 Shika waka shū; Shin Chokusenshū; Shin Gosen waka shū; Shin Kokinshū; Shoku Goshūishū; Sosei; Wakan rōei shū Wakan rōei shū 79 wakashu 38, 84–85, 92, 95, 109, 145, 148–49, 154, 195, 203, 246–47, 250, 254–55, 256, 260, 263, 265 as embodiment of aestheticized evanescence 231 See also shudō “Wakashuzakari wa Miyagino no hagi.” See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior: “A Youth in His Prime, Splendid as the Bush Clover in Miyagino” Wakayama 4, 179 “Ware to mi o kogasu kamagafuchi.” See Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “A Fine Kettle of Fish” warrior epics 1, 20n71 Watson, Burton 28 Way of the Warrior. See Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior wealth. See money weddings. See marriage weeping 87–88, 96, 102, 103–4, 128, 148, 174, 228, 229, 235, 252, 253, 258 “What the Seasons Brought the Almanac Maker.” See under Five Women Who Loved Love “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream.” See under The Life of an Amorous Man widows 41, 135, 182, 216, 230, 240, 247–48 Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship 115, 255, 259–60 Wind and Water Cave 89–90 women and girls 12–13, 31n114, 40n1, 41, 51, 64, 76–79, 84–85, 90, 95, 98–99, 104–5, 107, 109, 112–13, 122, 123–24, 129–32, 135–36, 147, 150, 151, 153, 154, 168–70, 178–82, 184, 185, 191, 194, 216–17, 220–21, 223–24, 225, 227, 230 chōnin 16, 117, 134, 151, 156 disguised as males 118, 150, 151, 154–57, 154n101, 181, 228 feminine solidarity 98–99 and male same-sex desire 37, 149–50, 245

300 women and girls (cont.) marriageability 167–71 plight of 45, 99–103 See also adultery; Buddhist monks: Buddhist nuns; divorce; family; Five Women Who Loved Love; Island of Women; mothers; pregnancy; prostitutes and prostitution; Twenty Cases of Filial Impiety in Japan: “Girls and Cherry Blossoms”; widows “Women Who Played the Bamboo Flute with Secret Intent.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior wordplay 3, 12, 17, 44, 53, 62n60, 85, 154–55, 160 puns 54, 57, 58, 67, 76, 96, 97, 100, 120, 120n7, 149n82, 165, 168n20, 171, 172–73, 185, 186–87, 192, 242 See also kakekotoba Worldly Mental Calculations 7, 9–10, 200n20 wrestling. See sumo wretched world 33–35, 34n125, 253 See also ukiyo Wu of Han, Emperor 51 Xiang Yu 50, 51 Xuanzong, Emperor 111, 113, 223, 224 yabo 43n11, 116n195 Yamato monogatari (Tales of Yamato) 34

Index Yamato nijūshi kō. See Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety in Japan Yang Guifei 111, 113, 223 Yano Kimio 165, 200, 261 Yōmei, Emperor 259 Yorimasa. See Minamoto no Yorimasa Yoshida (tayū) 65n65, 66–67, 83n113 Yoshida Kenkō 34 Yoshikai Naoto 25 Yoshino (place) 183, 229, 245, 246 Yoshino (tayū) 7n23, 71, 108–10, 108n175 Yoshiwara (Edo pleasure quarter) 66, 77–78 “A Youth in His Prime, Splendid as the Bush Clover in Miyagino.” See under Exemplary Tales of the Way of the Warrior Yuji 49–50, 51 “Yume no tachikaze.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “The Whoosh from a Sword in a Dream” Zeami 50 “Zensei kashobaori.” See The Life of an Amorous Man: “The Sumptuous Poem-Coat” Zhuangzi 12, 34n124, 159, 162, 163, 183, 196, 264 Zwicker, Jonathan 6n20, 21, 58, 68, 68n70