Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  Daimyō lords usually spend most of their time in the front rooms of their mansions overseeing domain business, and without knowing it, they become attracted to the young pages with long hair who are constantly waiting on them. The love a lord feels for a page is deeper than anything he feels for a woman. His wife is definitely in second place. In my opinion, this is because a lord’s wife isn’t allowed to show her jealousy the way commoner women do. Men, high or low, fear a jealous woman more anything else in the world, and those warriors take strict precautions.

  I’ve always been an unlucky woman, but with the lord I was fortunate. He was tender to me, and we enjoyed our lovemaking. But things didn’t work out. Before I could get pregnant, he started taking herbal pills. They didn’t do much good, though. He was still young, but in bed he just couldn’t do anything anymore. It was just extremely bad luck. I couldn’t talk about it with anyone, so I spent all my time regretting what had happened. The lord kept losing weight, and finally he became so weak and haggard he was just awful to look at.

  I was amazed to discover that the councillors thought it was my fault. They said I was a woman from the capital who liked fancy sex and had worn out their lord. Those old men didn’t know the first thing about love, but they made the decisions. I was suddenly dismissed and sent all the way back to my parents—again. If you look closely at the world, you’ll see that a man who’s born sexually weak is a very sad thing for a woman.

  A Monk’s Wife in a Worldly Temple (2:3)

  I have a small build, so I unstitched the sewn-up openings under the arms of the robes I’d worn as a girl78 and put them on again. I looked so young people called me a female version of the Daoist wizard Tie-guai.79

  In those days Buddhism was at its proverbial high noon, and truly, even in broad daylight, women dressed as temple pages80 would walk right into temple precincts and visit the monks there. I, too, finally overcame my shame and had my hair done up like a boy, with thick, long hair in front and the top of my head shaved. I learned to speak like a boy and move my body almost like one, too. When I put on a loincloth, I was surprised to see how much like a boy I looked! I also changed to a boy’s narrow sash, but the first time I stuck long and short swords through it, they were so heavy I couldn’t keep my waist and legs steady. And when I put on a boy’s cloak and wide-rimmed sedge hat, I began to wonder whether I was really myself.

  The woman (right) stands inside the precincts of the temple dressed as a young samurai with a long and a short sword. She wears a sedge hat trimmed with leather. Behind her is the sandal bearer, holding her sandals. Beyond a cherry tree, the jester (left) negotiates with the head priest, who wears a black robe over a wadded white silk robe.

  I hired a young man with a long ink moustache painted on his face to carry my spare sandals and other things, and I set out together with a professional jester from the licensed quarter who knew a lot about how things worked in Kyoto. We asked around and found a temple known to have wealth and a sex-loving head monk. We walked right through the gate in the earth walls surrounding the temple, pretending we were going inside to see the small cherry tree in the temple garden. Then the jester went to the head monk’s quarters and began whispering with the monk, who seemed to have a lot of free time on his hands. Soon I was called into the reception room, where the jester introduced me to the monk.

  “This young warrior,” the jester said, “has lost his lord, and he has no one to depend on. He’s been able to make some contacts, but while he’s waiting for an offer from another lord, he’ll drop in here from time to time for a little recreation. I most sincerely ask you to take care of him to the best of your ability.” He went on and on about a lot of similar things.

  The head monk was flushed with excitement. “Just last night,” he blurted out, “I got someone to teach me how to make an herbal mixture to induce abortions. It’s something you women really need to. . . .” Then he clapped his hand on his mouth. It was all quite amusing.

  Later we drank some saké and spoke more freely. As we savored the smells of meat and fish coming from the temple kitchen, my fee was set at two small gold coins81 per night. Later, the jester and I went around to temples of every persuasion suggesting they switch to the Woman-Loving sect, and we didn’t find a single monk who didn’t convert.

  Eventually the head priest of one temple fell in love with me, and I agreed to become his temporary wife for three years in exchange for twenty-five pounds of silver. I became what people call an “oven god.”82 As the days went by, I was more and more amazed by what I saw and heard at this floating-world temple. In the past, a group of monk friends who lived in various halls around the temple compound had gotten together on the six days a month when special purifications and austerities are required. They all solemnly pledged that on days except for these six, they would strictly obey their abstentions. And they vowed to rigorously limit their fish and poultry and their sex with women to the nights of these six days, except, of course, when the days fell on the memorial days for various buddhas and the sect founder. To pursue their pleasures, they went all the way to Third Avenue in downtown Kyoto and visited places like the Koiya Inn.83 On other days, the men acted like model monks. The buddhas, who know all, looked on them leniently, and everything went smoothly.

  But in the last few years, this large temple had been growing very prosperous, and the monks were losing all restraint. At night they replaced their black robes with long cloaks and went to the licensed quarter pretending to be shaven-headed herbal doctors. And the head priest would bring his secret wife of the moment right into the monks’ living quarters. He’d had his monks dig far down below one corner of the main living room and built a secret underground room for the wife. Between the ground and the raised floor of the quarters, they’d constructed a narrow window in a place that no one could see from the outside. That way the woman could have a little light. They’d also filled the space between the ceiling of the underground room and the quarters floor with earth and constructed soundproof walls more than a foot thick all the way around to the back of the room. During the day the head priest forced me down into this underground cell. When the sun went down, I was allowed up and could go as far as his bedroom.

  Living like this was depressing enough, but sleeping with the priest made me even sadder. It was just a job, and there was no love in it. I had to give myself to that disgusting priest day and night, whenever he wanted to have sex, and I began to lose interest in living. Nothing gave me pleasure any more, and I gradually lost weight and grew weaker. But the priest didn’t let up in the least. His expression showed that as far as he was concerned, if I died he’d just have me secretly buried somewhere on the temple grounds without even a proper cremation. And that would be that. It was frightening.

  Later I got used to the situation, and I even came to enjoy it. When the priest went out to chant sutras at a parishioner’s house on the night after a death or on a memorial day, I found myself waiting up late, wishing he would come back. And when he went out at dawn to pray over the ashes of a cremated person, I felt as if we were saying good-bye to each other, and I hated for him to be away, no matter how short a time it was. Even the smell of incense on his white robe clung to my body and seemed dear to me. After a while I forgot my loneliness, and I started to like the sounds of gongs and cymbals at the ceremonies. At first, you know, I would hold my hands over my ears whenever I heard them. And my nose got used to the smell from the crematory. The more deaths there were, well, the happier I was, since they meant more offerings for the temple. Early each evening, I called in fish peddlers and made suppers of duck meat with and without bones, blowfish soup, cedar-broiled fish, and other fine seafood.84 I did take one small precaution, though. I always put a cover on the brazier so the nice smells wouldn’t escape.

  The young monks in training saw our loose way of living and imitated us. They hid salted red herrings in their sleeve pockets and wrapped them in pieces of old calligraphy practice paper covered with half-wr
itten buddha names. After soaking the papers, they would place them in warm ashes to bake and would eat herrings from morning until night. It gave them wonderful complexions and lustrous skin and kept them vigorous and healthy. Some monks go off for long periods to a mountain or forest where they eat only berries and plants. Other monks are so poor they have no choice but to eat only vegetables. You can spot these kinds of monks right away from their lifeless expressions. They look like rotting trees.

  I’d worked at the temple from spring until early fall. At first the priest was terribly afraid I would run away, and while I was up out of my underground room, he would lock the living quarters each time he went out. But later he came to trust me and just glanced in at me from the kitchen from time to time. Gradually I became bolder, and when parishioners came to visit the priest I no longer rushed underground but simply slipped out of sight into another room.

  One evening I went out onto the bamboo verandah to get some fresh air, and a strong wind was moaning in the trees and ripping the thin leaves of the plantains in the garden. It was an eerie sight. Everything in the world really does change, I felt, just as they preach. I lay down on the porch with my head on my arm and was soon very drowsy. Then I saw what looked like a phantom shape. Her hair was completely gray, and her face was covered with wrinkles. Her pathetic arms and legs were thin as tongs, and she was bent over with a crooked back. She came toward me crawling on all fours.

  “I’ve lived in this temple for many, many years,” she said in a voice so full of sorrow I could hardly bear to listen. “The priest told people I was his mother. I’m not from a low-class family, but I decided to do a disgraceful thing, and I came here. I was twenty years older than he was, and I’m ashamed to say I was so poor I couldn’t get by any more, and I began to sleep with him. Later we became close and exchanged many pledges, but they. . . . For him, all those pledges were nothing, nothing at all. When I got old like this, he pushed me into a dark corner of the temple. He gives me nothing but old rice offerings he’s taken down from the altars. And now he sees I’m not about to die eating only that, so he glares resentfully at me. He’s treated me terribly, but still, you know, it isn’t really so bad. There’s something else that gnaws at me until I can’t stand it. Every single day. It’s you! You don’t know anything about me, but whenever I hear you and the priest saying little things to each other in bed, well, you see, even at my age I just can’t forget sex. So I’ve decided to get rid of this terrible longing I have and feel good again. I’m going to bite right into you. Tonight!”

  I was completely shaken. I knew I had no business being in that temple a minute longer. Finally I devised a method of escape that impressed even me. I stuffed a lot of cotton wadding between the outer and inner layers in the front part of my robe. That made me look quite heavy. Then I went to see the head priest.

  “I haven’t told you until now,” I said, “but I’m several months pregnant. I’m not sure exactly when, but the baby could come any time now.”

  The priest lost his usual composure. “Please go back to your parents’ house,” he said. “Have a safe delivery and then come back here.” He gathered up a lot of offertory coins from different places and gave them to me, swearing he was very worried about all the needs I’d have at home. Then he gave me some tiny silk robes that grief-stricken parents had left as offerings after their babies died. The priest said he couldn’t stand to look at them any more, and he gave me all he had, telling me to sew them into things for his baby instead. Then he began celebrating and named the child Ishijiyo—Everlasting Rock—a boy’s name, even though it hadn’t been born yet.

  I’d had enough of that temple. There was a lot of time left on my contract, but I never went back. The priest must have been very upset, but in a situation like that, well, there was no legal action he could take.

  A Teacher of Calligraphy and Manners (2:4)

  “The irises you sent are exquisite.85 Watching them gives me endless pleasure in ways too many to begin to count.” This is the kind of thing a woman has to write to begin a respectable thank-you letter in early summer.

  In Kyoto, ordinary women can learn to write in a flowing woman’s hand from women calligraphy teachers, who also sell their skills transcribing letters. These commoner teachers start their careers when they’re young, serving for several years in the mansion of an aristocrat and learning from experience all the proper ways of elegant comportment, writing, and speech as well as the various traditional ceremonies that mark off the year. When they finish their service, most of these women are models of respectability and make a decent living teaching what they’ve learned. Parents tell their daughters to emulate these teachers and send their girls to study under them.

  I, too, had once worked for a high-ranking aristocratic family. Although I’d been through a lot since then, some very kind people thought it would be a shame for me to waste my experience and knowledge, and they helped me establish my own calligraphy school for girls. It consisted of a single room, which served as my bedroom at night, but it was a pleasant place, and I was extremely happy to finally have a house of my own. I pasted a notice on the doorpost announcing that I taught calligraphy to women, and to help me, I hired a young woman from the country who’d just arrived in Kyoto.

  Taking care of other people’s daughters isn’t an easy job. Day after day you continually have to exert yourself correcting brush strokes on the girls’ practice papers and generally act as an example, demonstrating and explaining to them the cultured manners and decorum they’re expected to learn. To avoid rumors, I completely gave up relationships with men and managed to overcome every temptation to meet them.

  Then one day an obviously vigorous young man in a state of extreme passion came to me and asked me to write a letter to a certain woman with whom he fervently wished to become intimate. Since I’d worked in the licensed quarter, I knew how to compose love letters that would reach their readers’ hearts. I could make a woman reader want to fly together with a man, sharing the same wings and eyes, or make her desire to become one with him, like two trees linked by a shared limb. Choosing precisely the right expressions, I could make the woman who read one of my letters fall deeply in love with the man who’d asked me to write it. I could see directly into the feelings of young women still living with their parents and persuade even the most experienced woman who knew everything about men. I used different ways of affecting each woman, but there was none my letters didn’t move.

  Nothing shows a person’s feelings better than a letter. No matter how far away the person you’re thinking of is, you can communicate your thoughts with your brush. You may write at length, using phrase after polished phrase, but if your letter is filled with falsehoods, it will show and soon be forgotten. Truthful brush strokes go straight to the heart. As you read, you will feel as if you’re meeting the writer, who’s right there with you.

  When I was working in the licensed quarter, there was one man among my many customers whom I loved very much. Whenever I met him I forgot I was performing and opened my heart completely to him. I trusted him and told him everything. The man also opened himself to me, but when his parents discovered our relationship, they forced him to stop his visits. I was so sad I wrote him every day and had the letter secretly delivered to him at home.

  Later he told me that while he was confined in his parents’ house he felt as if we were still together—as if I were right there with him. After reading each of my letters several times, he would go to sleep at night with it pressed against his skin. Sooner or later the same dream would come. In it, the letter would take on my shape, and we would talk and hold each other all night. The people guarding the man slept near him, and they would hear two voices coming from the place where he was sleeping. They certainly had a hard time believing what they heard!

  Eventually the man’s parents relented, and when we met again he told me about everything he’d experienced. I discovered that the thoughts I’d been thinking each day had also reached
his mind—exactly as I’d thought them. Actually, though, there’s nothing strange about that. When you spend a long time writing a letter, you forget about everything else. If you put your whole mind into thinking something, it will always reach the other person.

  I turned to the young man who’d visited my school. “Since I’m taking on the full responsibility for writing your letters,” I said, “I can assure you that sooner or later the woman will respond to your love, no matter how uninterested she seems now.” I put all of myself into composing the best letters I possibly could. But as I wrote more and more letters, I found I’d lost control. The man who’d asked me to write the letters had become very, very dear to me.

  During one of the man’s visits, I was unable to continue writing. I sat there holding my brush and thinking only about him. Then I abandoned all shame. “What an incredibly coldhearted woman she is,” I said. “She’s torturing you and not showing the slightest sensitivity to your feelings. You’re just not getting anywhere with her. Why don’t you love me instead? We’d have to talk about it, of course, and we’d have to set looks aside. But I’m kindhearted, and with me you can realize your love without even waiting. You’ve got a lot to gain with me right now.”

  The man looked surprised, and he remained silent for some time. He didn’t know whether the woman he was writing to so often to would ever agree to meet him, and he realized it would be a lot quicker with me. He didn’t seem to think I was a bad substitute, either. Judging from my wavy hair, curving large toes, and small mouth,86 he thought I must be a very passionate woman.

  The sign on the door announces: “calligraphy Taught to Women.” Outside, two girls leave after a lesson, with a maid carrying calligraphy practice books and a brush case. Inside is a low writing table with a black lacquer box (for brushes and an inkstone). Sitting in front of her kimono rack and her koto, the woman writes a love letter for a male customer, who, like many well-off merchants, wears a short sword. While the woman’s helper brings tea to the customer, the woman writes on a thick sheaf of paper, with her inkstone box in front of her. Another rolled sheaf of paper lies on the floor.