Ogyū Sorai’s school of Chinese studies, which dominated the first half of the eighteenth century, centered on the literary composition of Chinese poetry and prose, thereby feeding into the bunjin (literatus) movement that began in the early eighteenth century, and was led by kanshi poet-artists like Hattori Nankaku (1683–1759). Kokugaku likewise was the field of scholars like Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769), who was one of the best-known waka poets of the eighteenth century. Scholarship and commentary, in fact, were inseparable from these elegant genres, kanshi and waka, which had been associated in the medieval period with nobility and priesthood but were now the province of educated samurai and urban commoners. Significantly, the waka composed by Mabuchi and others in his school consciously attempted to address contemporary needs and to establish new ground for poetry.
The eighteenth century was thus marked by the interaction and fusion of refined and popular cultures and literatures. A new kind of commoner culture gradually developed that sought refinement and elegance. Well-to-do urban commoners, rich farmers, and samurai attempted through the elegant classical genres to adopt aspects of elite culture for themselves. This striving for elegance and refinement (ga) was closely tied to two salient movements: a deepening interest in Chinese poetry, fiction, and art and a renewed interest in ancient and classical Japanese culture and literature. The newly literate classes, which included the samurai, sought expression for their everyday lives in vernacular popular forms such as haikai, but they found cultural legitimacy in the acquisition of classical Japanese or Chinese culture that had hitherto been the property of either the nobility or the Buddhist clergy. Thus a popular genre like the late-eighteenth-century sharebon, the vernacular fiction of the licensed quarters, had a highly sinicized cast, including Chinese prefaces, that reflected a desire for the high culture associated with China. Accordingly, the trend, embodied most obviously in the bunjin movement, was toward cultural elegance and refinement, toward the development of “Chinese” or “classical Japanese” tastes, even as the deep interest in the vulgar and everyday dimensions of contemporary life continued.
PERIODIZATION
The early modern period can be said to begin either in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan by achieving an overwhelming military victory at the battle of Sekigahara, or in 1603, when Ieyasu founded a new military government, or shōgunate, in Edo. The period came to an official end in 1867 when the Tokugawa shōgunate turned over its power to the new Meiji emperor, who became the symbolic head of a nation-state. These 260 years are variously referred to as the Tokugawa period (after the ruling military family), the Edo period (after the new city of the shōgunate), the kinsei period (literally, recent period), and the early modern period, implying the first stage of modernization. Each of these terms is incomplete: Tokugawa is a political label, stressing the ruling house; Edo is primarily a geographic designation; early modern emphasizes the notion of the modern; and kinsei does not make sense in English. As a consequence, this book uses three terms—Tokugawa, Edo, and early modern—depending on circumstance.
The early modern period, from 1600 through the late nineteenth century, can be roughly divided into four subperiods. The first, which stretched from the late sixteenth century to the late seventeenth century, was a cultural extension of the medieval period. Politically, the country moved from war to peace and started on the path to economic and urban development that would be the mark of early modern society. The popular literature of this time, however, represented most prominently by haikai and kana-zōshi, closely resembles the popular literature of the sixteenth century. It was not until the second subperiod, from the late seventeenth century through the first two decades of the eighteenth century, that the early modern culture began to flourish, especially in the Kyoto-Osaka area. The third subperiod, roughly covering the remainder of the eighteenth century, came to a climax in the latter half of the century and had bases in both Kyoto-Osaka and Edo. The fourth subperiod, encompassing the first half of the nineteenth century and centered primarily in Edo, had peaked by 1830 but lasted until the end of the Tokugawa regime in 1867.
Most literary histories consider the two high points of early modern culture to be the Genroku era (1688–1704) in the first half of the period and the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–1829) in the second half. The major figures in the first peak are generally agreed to be Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693), Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), and Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1724), while the major figures in the second peak are considered to be Takizawa Bakin (1767–1848), Shikitei Sanba (1776–1822), and Jippensha Ikku (1765–1831). This view of literary history, however, heavily reflects the perspective of modern Japanese writers and scholars who are interested in the origins and development of the modern novel or are looking for a modern dramatic prototype.
As this anthology demonstrates, the third subperiod, the century between the Genroku and the Bunka-Bunsei eras, peaking in the latter half of the eighteenth century, should be considered one of the high points of early modern literature and culture. Significantly, this literature is not marked by the kind of realism found in the other periods but by a deep interest in other worlds, by a complex fusion of Chinese and Japanese cultures, and by a mixture of elite and popular cultures. The unusual combination of humor, moral didacticism, and the fantastic signals an exceptional achievement in fiction, poetry, and drama, producing such diverse and remarkable writers as Namiki Sōsuke (1695–1751), Hiraga Gennai (1728–1779), Yosa Buson (1716–1783), and Ueda Akinari (1734–1809). As Nakano Mitsutoshi argued, if the Genroku and the Bunka-Bunsei are eras of popular literature characterized by an interest in contemporary society and immediate reality, then the literature of the eighteenth century, which Nakano considers to be the high period, marks a remarkable fusion of high and popular styles and cultures.
The tremendous growth of kangaku (Chinese studies) in the eighteenth century, particularly the study of vernacular Chinese, created a profound interest in China and led, among other things, to the bunjin (literatus) movement, which sought freedom in elegant and imaginary worlds. The eighteenth century also produced nativist studies (kokugaku), which sought an ideal world or community in ancient Japan, and witnessed the emergence of rangaku (Dutch studies), which stirred interest in science, medicine, and yet another distant country. Hino Tatsuo pointed out that even the licensed quarters, which played a major role in cultural production throughout the early modern period, became fertile ground for the imagination. In the Genroku era, fiction and drama such as Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s Love Suicides at Amijima explored the domestic consequences of a man’s involvement in the licensed quarters and its impact on his wife and family. In late-eighteenth-century sharebon like The Playboy Dialect, such unpleasant realities disappear, and the licensed quarters become a self-enclosed world separate from realities of everyday life.4
The literature and culture of the Bunka-Bunsei era, by contrast, marks the gradual loss of these imaginary worlds and a return to everyday reality and language. The fusion of elite and popular that characterized much of eighteenth-century literature was gradually replaced by a broad-based popular culture and literature aimed at a wide audience of both men and women. In kanshi (Chinese poetry), for example, poets moved away from the difficult neoclassical style of Ogyū Sorai’s Ancient Rhetoric school, which had governed most of eighteenth-century kanshi poetics, into a relaxed, everyday style of the Fresh Spirit (seishin) movement, making possible the emergence of such down-to-earth kanshi poets as Ryōkan (1757–1831). The vernacular romance likewise shifted from the cerebral sharebon, based on the tightly defined notion of the connoisseur of the licensed quarters, to the more popular love romances of the ninjōbon widely read by women. If Buson’s haikai represent a “departure from the common” (rizoku), Issa’s haikai mark a return to the common and everyday. There are, of course, notable exceptions. Eighteenth-century genres such as senryū and dangibon cast a satiric and realistic eye on the contemporary world, and Takizawa Bakin’s monumental The Eight Dog
Chronicles (1814–1842) was heavily influenced by the Chinese vernacular novel of the Ming period and so might be called the ultimate exploration of other worlds. But as a general trend, the early nineteenth century marked a movement away from the richly imaginative tendencies of the eighteenth century toward a solid refocusing on this not-always-so-pleasant, everyday world.
________________________
1. Before 1590, almost no printing existed except in Buddhist monasteries. But within a century, more than ten thousand books were in print and sold or rented by more than seven hundred bookstores.
2. According to one Genroku source, Shimabara could claim 13 taiyū out of a total of 329 courtesans, and Shinmachi, 17 taiyū out of a total of 983 courtesans.
3. In the new system, the former sancha became yobidashi and chūsan, and the former umecha became zashikimochi and heyamochi.
4. Hino Tatsuo, “Kinsei bungakushiron,” Iwanami kōza Nihon bungakushi, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), pp. 3–46.
Chapter 2
KANA BOOKLETS AND THE EMERGENCE OF A PRINT CULTURE
The culture and literature of the early Tokugawa period, from 1600 to 1680, belongs as much in the medieval as in the early modern period. Politically during this time, the country moved from the military hegemony of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi to the founding of the Tokugawa bakufu in Edo, from war to peace. Commercially, this period brought the rapid development of communication, transportation, and economic exchange on a national scale; the growth of three major cities (Kyoto, Osaka, and Edo); and the emergence in these cities of the “bad places” (akusho), the pleasure quarters (yūkaku), and the theater area (shibaimachi), which were cordoned off and controlled by the Tokugawa military government. Nonetheless, the popular literature of this time, represented most prominently by haikai (comic linked verse) and kana-zōshi (kana booklets in vernacular prose), still closely resembled the popular literature of the sixteenth century, with one distinct difference: the emergence of printing. Many of the noted medieval literary forms such as the otogi-zōshi, the Muromachi tales, were in fact printed for the first time in the early seventeenth century. In short, a distinctive early modern literature and culture did not fully emerge until the end of the seventeenth century.
In the sixteenth century, Japan increased its trade with other East Asian countries, importing technologies for ceramics, weaponry, metallurgy, and printing. The first form of printing was movable type, which resulted in a flood of publications, spurred the new consumption of printed goods, and established a publishing industry. Movable type was then abandoned in favor of woodblock printing, with nonmovable type, which allowed for mass printing and further expanded the market. At first, the publications were primarily Buddhist and Confucian texts, then medical books and literary classics, and eventually contemporary vernacular literature. The decline of movable type, the rise of the publishing industry, and the mass production of printed goods all occurred at the same time, in the mid-seventeenth century.
A direct descendant of the folk narratives (setsuwa) and otogi-zōshi of the late medieval period, the seventeenth-century kana-zōshi were noted for their diversity, ranging from literary parodies like The Dog Pillow Book (Inu makura) and Fake Tales (Nise monogatari) to humorous tales such as Today’s Tales of Yesterday (Kinō wa kyō no monogatari) to didactic tales like Asai Ryoi’s Tales of the Floating World (Ukiyo monogatari) to supernatural tales such as Asai Ryoi’s Hand Puppets (Otogi bōko). Some kana-zōshi were pedagogical, intended, for example, to teach the principles of Buddhism or Confucianism to a popular audience. Others served as travel guides (meishoki), such as Asai Ryoi’s Famous Sights Along the Eastern Seaboard (Tōkaidō meishoki).
PARODIES
Parodies were one of the earliest kana-zōshi genres and transformed texts of Heian or medieval court culture into humorous comic versions of contemporary popular culture. The first parodies appeared in the early sixteenth century, along with haikai, or comic linked verse, which parodied classical waka poetry. With the rise of print culture in the seventeenth century, which made classical texts available to a wider audience, literary parody gained new life, with Fake Tales (1640s), a word-for-word parody of The Tales of Ise; Dog Hundred Poems (Inu hyakunin isshu), a parody of Hyakunin isshu (One Hundred Poets, One Hundred Poems), edited by the noted poet Fujiwara Teika; The Dog Pillow Book, a takeoff on Sei Shōnagon’s famous Pillow Book; and Dog Essays in Idleness (Inu tsurezuregusa, 1653), an extended comic twist on Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa. Another new literary form at this time was the easy-to-read digests or modern renditions of the classics for popular audiences. The most salient examples are Ten-Chapter Genji (Jūjō Genji, 1661), Child Genji (Osana Genji, 1665), and Tales of Ise in Easy Words (Ise monogatari hirakotoba, 1678), which turned The Tales of Ise into a continuous narrative instead of the episodic sections found in the original.
In strong contrast to Ihara Saikaku, the pioneer of the late-seventeenth-century vernacular prose and a professional writer of merchant background who profited financially from writing, most of the authors of kana-zōshi were intellectuals, usually Confucian scholars, Buddhist priests, doctors, and samurai (mainly former samurai), who, with the exception of a few writers like Asai Ryōi, did not leave their names on their works, suggesting that for most of them, writing kana-zōshi was a hobby.
THE DOG PILLOW BOOK (INU MAKURA, 1607?)
The Dog Pillow Book, whose author is unknown, was printed during the Keichō era (1696–1715) and so is one of the earliest kana-zōshi and a good example of literary parody. Consisting of some seventy sections, it parodies Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book, specifically her “detailing of things” (mono wa tsukushi) sections, in which she introduces a topic (mono) and then details (tsukushi) its possibilities, as in the following example:
Elegant Things
A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat.
Duck eggs.
Shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl.
A rosary of rock crystal.
Wisteria blossoms. Plum blossoms covered with snow.
A pretty child eating strawberries.
This kind of “detailing of things” became a popular literary practice in the seventeenth century. In The Dog Pillow Book each entry within a section is linked to the next in an unexpected fashion, with the sections themselves often juxtaposed in contrastive or parallel fashion, as in haikai. The result is a text that derives its pleasure from its terseness, surprising juxtapositions, and unexpected humor.
Disagreeable Things
Being invited to a clumsy tea ceremony.
A woman who falls asleep after making love.
Accompanying the master on a sightseeing trip to the hills.
A grievance that goes unheard.
A long-staying guest on a night when one has other matters in mind.
A bad friend.
Things That Stand One’s Hair on End
Talking about ghosts.
In winter, putting on armor without underclothes.
A river of unknown deeps and shallows.
Malaria.
The prospect of an evening’s conversation with one’s boy favorite.1
The house where a faith healer is praying.
Dangerous Things
Leaving one’s boy favorite in a priest’s charge.
A one-log bridge.
A skipping race on stone steps.
Gossip about one’s master.
Things One Would Like to Send Away
An old wife.
Someone who appears in the middle of a conversation.
A beggar standing at the gate.
The officious parent of one’s boy favorite.
A woman who falls asleep after making love.
Things the Bigger the Better
Roof beams.
The heart of the master’s son.
The penny cakes of a teahouse where one stops on a tiring journey.
Blossoms on trees—the fruit, too
.
The sword of a strong man.
Things the Smaller the Better
The youth who is one’s personal servant.
The sword worn in a reception hall.
The wine cup of a weak drinker.
Acolytes and serving boys.
[Kana-zōshi shū, NKBT 90: 35–48, adapted from a translation by Edward Putzar]
FAKE TALES (NISE MONOGATARI, 1640S)
Fake Tales is a word-for-word parody of the 125 sections of The Tales of Ise, the Heian poem-tale about the noted lover Ariwara no Narihira. The parody derives its interest from not only the witty twists on the original text, which in those times most readers knew by heart, but also its reflections on contemporary life in the mid-seventeenth century. The following passage, which turns on the notion of “burning alive,” the preferred method of executing Christians, is about the ban on Christianity that went into effect in 1612 and continued to the end of the Edo period. The repression of Christians was most severe between 1615 and 1644, when this parody was written. The episode translated here is probably based on the actual execution of more than forty Christians in 1638. Section 12 of The Tales of Ise also has been reproduced here in full.
This woodblock illustration from Fake Tales is a comic variation on the deluxe Sagabon edition of The Tales of Ise, first published in Kyoto in 1608. This scene from Fake Tales shows a commoner couple tied up in the fields of Musashino—replacing the elegant courtier couple in the Sagabon edition—while two officials prepare to set fire to the fields. Musashino was associated in classical poetry with autumn grass (reflected in the pampas grass and bush clover). Clouds frame the scene at the top and bottom, a convention used in the Sagabon and earlier illustrated books.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 5
