Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  [GAPPŌ]: With the help of Buddha and others, I’ll rebuild this house into a temple to commemorate my daughter. It will be called the Tsujidō, Temple at the Crossroads. May all souls receive its blessings; may my daughter pass through the gates of paradise.

  CHANTER (sings): Gappō’s prayers are for the afterlife, a farewell to this life. Tamate has awakened from the dream of one hundred and eight desires and now floats on her way to the shores of Nirvana. The shell cup remains, a memory of how a crooked path can lead to the knowledge of good. Here outside Tennō-ji, the oldest Buddhist temple, on the road near the Western Gate, there still remain Tamate Spring and Gappō’s Temple at the Crossroads.

  [Bunraku jōruri shū, NKBT 99: 309–327, with stage descriptions from a recent production, introduction and translation by C. Andrew Gerstle]

  ________________________

  1. The text is from the modern Edo/Tokyo version. The modern Osaka kabuki version is closer to the original jōruri version.

  2. This name was created in kabuki in the late Edo period.

  3. Genroku does not appear in the original jōruri version.

  4. Her hair is being fashioned for her trip to the Kyoto brothel. She has agreed to her father’s plan for her to go into service to help Kanpei raise money to enable him to participate in the vendetta.

  5. From the Chinese collection Wen xuan and found in various earlier classical texts.

  6. In order to reach the next world, departed souls must ford the Three Rivers seven days after they die. One’s karma determines how difficult one’s crossing will be.

  7. “More and more” (itodo) is a “pivot word” (kakekotoba). In translation the line may be read either “light up more and more” or “more and more the grief.”

  8. According to Buddhist belief, the soul remains on earth for forty-nine days after death.

  9. According to Chinese legend, the spirit of Emperor Li appeared in the smoke of incense offered in his memory.

  10. Kumagai’s interpretation of the order contains several complicated puns. The word for “bud,” futaba, is written with the character meaning “youth,” but audiences would be reminded of the more common way of writing futaba, with the characters meaning “two” and “leaf,” referring to the double leaf that accompanies a budding flower, thus suggesting Atsumori and Kojirō, who are budding or flowering youths of the same age. Being the emperor’s son, Atsumori is “rare” or precious; it is “rare” or fortunate that Kojirō, so like Atsumori, would be available for substitution; and a double-flowering cherry tree itself is a rarity. The order (isshi o kiraba, isshi o kiru beshi), previously read “if you cut one branch, you must cut one branch [or finger],” is read here, “if you cut one child, you must cut one child,” because “one branch” and “one child” are written with characters having the same pronunciation (isshi).

  11. Said to have been born an old man with white hair.

  12. Shigemori’s daughter, Princess Koyuki.

  13. Alluding to the light of Buddha’s salvation.

  Chapter 11

  DANGIBON AND THE BIRTH OF EDO POPULAR LITERATURE

  Popular literature and culture flourished between two sets of reforms by the Tokugawa shōgunate, the Kyōhō Reforms and the Kansei Reforms. The Kyōhō Reforms (1716–1736) were carried out by the eighth shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshimune (r. 1716–1745), and the Kansei Reforms (1789–1801) were executed by Matsudaira Sadanobu, who became senior councillor in 1787. The Kyōhō Reforms were intended to resolve the financial crisis facing the shōgunate and the samurai caused by the increasing disparity between the samurai’s elite sociopolitical status and economic reality. The initial stage of the reforms (1716–1722) concentrated on curbing expenditures and restoring the currency, but it proved to be inadequate, and the shōgunate was unable to pay its retainers’ stipends in full. It was not until the last stage of the reforms (1736–1745), when the shōgunate adopted an expansionary financial policy that increased tax revenues while allowing greater penetration of urban merchant capital into the countryside, that many of these problems were surmounted. These measures laid the groundwork for the commercial development and close shōgunate-merchant ties that marked the so-called Tanuma era (1768–1786) when Tanuma Okitsugu (1719–1788), the bakufu’s senior councillor (rōjū), exerted his greatest influence on its policy.

  These reforms also had a far-reaching effect on the culture of this period. One characteristic of the literature of the latter half of the eighteenth century is the deep interest in other cultures, particularly China’s. The neoclassical Chinese poetry and prose that had been encouraged by the Ancient Rhetoric (kobunji) school of Ogyū Sorai (1666–1728) stimulated the literati (bunjin) movement, which looked to China for its cultural models. At the same time, Hiraga Gennai (1728–1779) and scholar-artists like him became interested in Dutch studies (rangaku) and European culture and literature. Ironically, during a period of national seclusion and under the policies of Tanuma Okitsugu, Japan gave birth to an internationally oriented culture. At the same time, interest was growing in another “other,” Japan’s ancient past, which was idealized by such nativist learning (kokugaku) scholars and poets as Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769) and Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) and became the source of inspiration and material for much of the period’s fiction, poetry, and drama.

  Although the center for kabuki and jōruri remained in Osaka and eminent writers like Ueda Akinari and Yosa Buson remained in the Kyoto-Osaka area, from the middle of the eighteenth century the locus of cultural production and consumption began to shift from the Kamigata (Kyoto-Osaka) region to Edo. Not surprisingly, the literature of the rulers, or the samurai—such as the Chinese studies of Ogyū Sorai, who worked in Edo—had begun to appear in Edo, the seat of political power and the center of samurai society. By the middle of the century, the literature of the ruled also started to move east. Until the mid-eighteenth century, economically and culturally Edo had been a colony of Osaka and Kyoto. In its first century, Edo had been a city of strangers coming from all parts of the country, mainly on the alternate attendance system, with no common customs or dialect. But by the mid-eighteenth century, a distinct Edo language had developed, and Edo had become home for many people. The establishment of a distinctive Edo culture and the economic growth came together to create a socioeconomic sphere that competed directly with the Kyoto-Osaka region, which had been the cultural capital for many centuries.

  After the Hōreki era (1751–1764), Edo’s popular literature showed spectacular energy and creativity. The ukiyo-zōshi (books of the floating world), which had emerged and flourished in the Kyoto-Osaka region—published by the Hachimonjiya and other publishers and eagerly awaited by the Edo townspeople—disappeared by the mid-eighteenth century. In their place, new gesaku (vernacular playful writing) emerged: sharebon (books of wit), ninjōbon (books of sentiment), yomihon (reading books), kusa-zōshi (text-picture books, particularly kibyōshi), and kokkeibon (humor books), which included dangibon (satiric teachings). The publishers in Edo were, for the most part, branches of Kyoto-Osaka firms. They were small-scale merchants who sought new talent and marketed their goods to samurai. Because their sphere of activity was limited, they produced an urban literature whose main locus was the city of Edo itself.

  The notion of ugachi (hole digging), or satirically viewing and commenting on the flaws in contemporary manners and mores, was central to the new gesaku genres—senryū, kyōka, kyōshi, sharebon, kibyōshi, and kokkeibon—that came to the fore in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In a society under military control where free expression was not encouraged, ideas had to be expressed in roundabout ways. One way was through satire, to point to various defects, weaknesses, and bad tendencies in society that were normally hidden or covered over. Making these kinds of satirical observations brought intellectual pleasure to both the writer and the reader. The person who practiced ugachi, however, was not a social critic or reformer; instead, he was a bystander, someone on the outskirts o
f society who did not assume responsibility for further action or change. It was sufficient merely to expose the “hole.” In a kind of twisted or inverted pride, gesaku writers referred to their work as “useless” (muda).

  Interestingly, each major period of literary humor followed a period of extreme political, social, and economic repression. Rather than succumbing to these repressive measures, urban culture thrived after the reforms had passed. The Hōreki (1751–1764)-Tenmei era (1781–1789) and the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–1830) proved to be great creative periods for urban commoner culture, especially comic fiction. Reflecting the nature of the times, moralistic and didactic books came into vogue during the Kyōhō Reforms, which enforced frugality, restraint, and moral rectitude. Then the death in 1751 of the shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshimune, marked a return to greater freedom and prosperity for urban commoners. One result was the flowering of kabuki, prosperity in the pleasure quarters, the return of jōruri singing (such as Tokiwazu, Tomimoto, Kiyomoto, and Shinnai), and the emergence of new comic genres like senryū and kyōka in poetry; dangibon, sharebon, and kibyōshi in prose fiction; and rakugo in storytelling.

  JŌKANBŌ KŌA

  The life of the mid-eighteenth-century writer Jōkanbō Kōa remains a mystery. In his youth, Kōa was a monk of the Jōdo (Pure Land Buddhism) sect in Kyoto, but he left the temple and went to Osaka where he became a doctor. After traveling around the country, he settled in Edo during the Genbun era (1736–1741) and became a writer but returned to Kyoto in the mid-Hōreki era. While in Edo he published Modern-Style Lousy Sermons (Imayō heta dangi, 1752), seven tales criticizing various aspects of contemporary Edo culture, which quickly captured the interest of the townspeople and became a sensational bestseller. Within a year, Kōa published a sequel, Teachings: Sequel to Lousy Sermons (Kyōkun zoku heta dangi, 1753), and not long afterward, several works imitating Kōa’s works in tone, style, and format appeared in Edo. Although the dangibon (satiric sermon) genre, characterized by its didactic tone and critique of contemporary society, had begun developing in the first half of the eighteenth century, it was Kōa’s Lousy Sermons that made it popular.

  MODERN-STYLE LOUSY SERMONS (IMAYŌ HETA DANGI, 1752)

  Jōkanbō Koa’s work stands between the conservatism of the Kyōhō Reforms, a highly conservative and repressive period during which the bakufu clamped down on those cultural activities that it believed encouraged moral depravity and social disorder, and the Hōreki era, during which the popular culture, particularly in Edo, was reborn. This period was noted for the prosperity of Edo kabuki, led by the actor Ichikawa Danjuro II and featuring the spring performances of the Soga brothers’ story, in which Danjurō always starred. In addition, popular forms of haikai poetry such as maekuzuke (verse capping) flourished, as did senryū. The bungo songs—jōruri songs that became fashionable during the 1730s but were prohibited in 1741—also regained popularity at this time.

  One basis for the satire in Modern-Style Lousy Sermons appears to have been the “mind study” (shingaku) thought of Ishida Baigan (1685–1744). This new thinking had emerged in Kyoto in the 1720s and soon spread to Osaka at a time when the Kyoto-Osaka economy was suffering. It provided a new ethics for urban commoners in reaction to what appeared to be the material and carnal excesses of chōnin life. Apparently influenced by shingaku thought, Kōa criticized contemporary kabuki, the extravagance of funerals, the commercialization of the kaichō (the display of Buddhist images in temples), and other ostentatious, decadent practices. In “The Spirit of Kudō Suketsune Criticizes the Theater,” the first of the seven stories in Lousy Sermons, Suketsune, the protagonist, criticizes the double-suicide plays, the bungo songs, and the immorality of the Edo kabuki plays in general. There is, however, a seeming contradiction between the popularity of Lousy Sermons as a work embodying the new Edo culture and dialect and its didacticism, which reinforced the frugality and conservative morals of the Kyōhō Reforms. The key to understanding this seeming contradiction is Kōa’s ironic humor. In “The Spirit of Kudō Suketsune,” the spirit of Suketsune complains in a self-serving manner about how he is depicted in contemporary Soga drama, thereby undermining the credibility of his claims. This humorous depiction produces an ironic distance between Kōa, who seems to wink at the audience and implicitly parody the dangibon genre, and Suketsune, who embodies the conservative values of the Kyōhō Reforms. Suketsune’s conservative stance may in fact have been a means for Kōa to avoid the censors, who plagued other writers of the time.

  As subsequent dangibon influenced by Modern-Style Lousy Sermons suggest, this literary genre became a combination of didactic tone and ironic humor rather than simply a conservative vehicle for upholding public morality. In this sense, Kōa’s Lousy Sermons stood on a middle ground between the old and the new tendencies of the dangibon genre. The dangibon remained at the forefront throughout the Hōreki and Meiwa (1764–1772) eras, climaxing with the publication of Hiraga Gennai’s Rootless Weeds (Nenashigusa, 1763) and The Modern Life of Shidōken (Fūryū Shidōken). The dangibon gradually shifted its emphasis from its didactic and ironic character to its humor, and by the Kansei period (1789–1801), it had all but disappeared, replaced by the new kokkeibon (humor books) such as Jippensha Ikku’s Travels on the Eastern Seaboard (Tōkaidōchū hizakurige, 1802), which had almost no traces of social and moral didacticism.

  The Spirit of Kudō Suketsune Criticizes the Theater

  Understanding Jōkanbō Koa’s satire of the Soga plays in “The Spirit of Kudō Suketsune Criticizes the Theater” requires some knowledge of its history and dramatic tradition. Kudō Suketsune was the lord of the Itō Manor on the Izu Peninsula in the twelfth century. When his cousin Itō Sukechika attempted to take control of the manor in 1176, Suketsune fought back, injuring Sukechika and killing his son, Itō Sukeyasu. Kudō Suketsune later served the shōgun, Minamoto Yoritomo, in Kamakura, but in 1192 he was killed by Sukeyasu’s sons Soga Jūrō Sukenari (1172–1193) and Soga Gorō Tokimune (1174–1193), who were later captured and executed for their offense. The Soga brothers, Jūrō and Gorō, had been only children at the time of their father’s death, which they finally avenged almost sixteen years later. The Soga brothers’ story of revenge, the principal source of which was the late-Kamakura-period Tale of the Soga Brothers (Soga monogatari), was frequently dramatized in nō, jōruri, and kabuki. Chikamatsu Monzaemon wrote numerous plays on the topic. By the 1730s, the Soga brothers’ story of revenge had become the customary topic of New Year’s plays in Edo, and by the mid-eighteenth century the brothers were cultural icons and theatrical archetypes.

  According to Sengaku’s commentary on the Man‘yōshū,1 in ancient times there was a path called Crossing Run that started at Mount Ashigara,2 crossed the foot of Mount Fuji, and ended at the Kiyomi Barrier, between Mount Fuji and Mount Ashitaka.3 Only since the Heian period had it become customary to pass through Kiyomi Point and exit onto Tago Shore.4 In the ancient period, the foot of Mount Fuji had also been part of the main road between Kyoto and the eastern provinces. In any event, during a storm last autumn, the roads and bridges of the Tōkaidō, the Eastern Seaboard Highway, around the Yoshiwara Plains5 were severely damaged, and all travelers had to put up with the inconvenience of passing through this rather desolate path at the foot of Mount Fuji.

  Meanwhile, at Hell’s Crossroads, around Saihō-ji temple in the Kitano area of Kyoto, there lived an arrogant man named Chikushōdō Bagyū. Although he was only a judge of verse capping and line capping,6 he looked down on even the noted masters of haikai poetry and strutted down the main street, putting on airs. A few years earlier, he had been a mediocre actor named Fujita Turtle’s Tail who played at the Arashi San’emon Theater in Osaka the role of handsome young men. However, when the bones around his eyes began to protrude and his cheekbones became more prominent with age, he gradually sank to minor roles and finally ended up playing the role of a horse and making a living by occasionally striking the drums at the end of the play.

  One year, a man c
alled Ōtani Hiroji, a fat actor who played leading male roles, arrived from Edo.7 Bagyū, playing the role of a horse, was mounted by this very large man and caused him to fall off six times between the dressing room and the stage bridge, not unlike what happened to Prince Takakura in The Tale of the Heike.8 As a result, the actor was paralyzed, making the promoter absolutely furious. “It’s an unspeakable act—injuring a prominent actor!”—the words were spoken like the wise person in a kabuki play.9 This is how Bagyū sadly left the theater business and became a verse-capping teacher. But the number of such teachers was growing, and at the present time not even a lowly blacksmith’s apprentice would bring his five-syllable linked verse to Bagyū.10 He felt hopeless and disgusted, thinking he would die from ever-growing hunger if this situation continued. What a turn of events! It would be better to be in a profession with which he was already familiar, he thought, and knowing numerous actors in Sakaichō and Kobikichō,11 he decided to go to Edo and request the role of the horse again. The consolation of a single man is that he does not have a wife who cannot part with him or crying children who will chase after him. His only concern was his landlord, since he had not paid his rent. But Bagyū conveniently got away while the landlord was asleep, and looking back, he amused himself with the thought that the phrase “horse’s basket trick” matched his circumstances.12

  Eventually, he reached the foot of Mount Fuji, and when he looked around, he heard a sound and saw a rather dark cave, which he thought might be the famous Human Cave.13 In the past, in the third year of Ken’nin (1203), Nitta Tadatsune had entered this cave, following the orders of his lord Yoritomo in Kamakura.14 “What a foolish search that had been!” he thought. “Even if one entered this cave and discovered the room of soybean paste in Hell, the bathroom of Paradise, or whatever, it would hardly be a feat to which a warrior aspired. If a warrior became ill from the humidity in the cave and was bitten by poisonous snakes and bugs, it would, regrettably, mean his end. What silly things they did back then!”