Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  84. Namu sanbō (literally, Homage to the Three Jewels!) expresses surprise and consternation, much like “Good God in heaven!”

  85. That is, having refused all requests from other clients for the afternoon.

  86. That is, I won’t escort you back to Nakano-chō, since I’ll be seeing you anyway later today. It was customary for a high-ranking courtesan, at the end of a “regular” customer’s visit, to escort him back as far as the intersection of her brothel’s street and Nakano-chō, Yoshiwara’s central boulevard. If she held him in particularly high regard, she might escort him all the way back down Nakano-chō to Yoshiwara’s main gate. This exchange would appear to indicate that their intimacy is now such that they can occasionally forgo this formality. However, it can also be read as indicating that having obtained Hira’s pledge of financial support, the courtesan calculates that her hold on him is now secure enough that she can safely dispense with such niceties.

  87. The last line is a slight alteration of the last line of a nagauta (long song), “Love’s Crimson Cherry Blossoms” (Omoi no hizakura, 1742), a courtesan’s love-plaint, which ends: “To me alone he is true—believing thus, we slip so easily into the abyss of sui. As one who is sinking, how clearly now I see: it is better by far not to be sui! All unfeeling, the dawn sky.” (Sui was an aesthetic ideal that was supposed to combine a proclivity for sensuality, warmth, and genuine sympathy for others with an unerring sense of taste and a capacity for cool nonattachment.) The courtesan alters the final word from “sky” to “bell,” thus elegantly protesting the heartless “dawn bell” that tolls the hour of the lovers’ parting. Owing to certain puns, the last line can also be read as the courtesan’s patting herself on the back for having hooked such an easily manipulated dupe as Hira, whose ready money will ring in the dawn of a new day for her as an inner-suite courtesan.

  88. After the 1750s, chūsan was the highest rank of courtesan in Yoshiwara.

  89. By Yoshiwara custom, no sexual intercourse was permitted on a first visit to a high-ranking prostitute.

  90. Shimaya momosuke was a top Edo cosmetics boutique. The seeds of the kuko (Chinese matrimony vine) yielded an aromatic oil commonly used for dressing hair.

  91. A heraldic pattern consisting of three paulownia leaves surmounted by three vertical paulownia blooms: two five-petaled flowers to left and right, with one, seven-petaled flower between them.

  92. Kamuro, or preteenage attendant to a high-ranking courtesan.

  93. Hanagiku is probably the name of the courtesan now entertaining the man with whom the Youth has come to the establishment.

  94. A neighborhood commonly claimed as a spurious address. The Youth is teasing her by giving her an address that is patently false.

  95. She is mispronouncing Mikawa-chō, a place-name she must have half-heard somewhere.

  96. Nishigashi was a neighborhood of prosperous merchant families, suggesting that the Youth comes from a well-to-do household. Asakusa Temple, which enshrines the Buddhist deity Kannon, is near Yoshiwara and would be one of the very few parts of Edo with which this inexperienced young woman, having spent the past few years in the closed world of Yoshiwara, would be familiar. She is apparently unsure of the exact location of Nihonbashi, a very well known section of Edo. Her unsophisticated observation, like her earlier mispronunciation of Mikawa-chō, betrays her ignorance of the world outside Yoshiwara.

  97. A house in the Minowa area of Edo where young prospective courtesans were sequestered and given education and training in various arts and skills related to their profession.

  98. This was a piece of cloth stuffed with cotton batting and stitched into the shape of a monkey. It was a charm that, attached to a corner of the mattress, was said to bind a prostitute’s customer so that he could not leave her.

  99. There is a gratuitous pun on the phonetic similarity between nome (smoke!) and nobe (meadow).

  100. That is, up onto the futon.

  101. This uninspired pun turns on yoshi (good) and the place-name Yoshino, a region famous for the high quality of its kuzu, or arrowroot, which was pulverized and used in cooking as a thickener.

  102. Probably an abbreviation of the Youth’s family name. It was customary to avoid using real names in the licensed quarters.

  103. He refers to her as kei, a Yoshiwara slang abbreviation of keisei, or city toppler (rendered earlier as “high-ranking beauty”), that is, a woman whose charms were enough to inspire the razing of a fortified city. Keisei, a term borrowed from Chinese literature, was commonly used to refer to a beautiful, talented, high-ranking courtesan.

  104. He is proudly claiming to have palanquin calluses from riding to and from Yoshiwara every day. “Velvet” is a reference to the velvet-lapeled sleeping robes used in Yoshiwara houses.

  105. He speaks in a preachy tone, suggesting that he is greatly impressed with his own considerateness.

  106. A head apprentice courtesan (bantō shinzō) attended a high-ranking courtesan but was older (generally over twenty) than the other shinzō. She typically also served as a sort of chaperon and kept the brothel management informed of the courtesan’s activities.

  107. Around 5:00 A.M.

  108. As was the custom, an employee of the “guiding teahouse” has come at the appointed hour to collect the customers and escort them back to the teahouse. He is announcing his arrival from outside the room.

  109. In this chapter, Genji’s half brother Prince Hotaru comes calling one evening on Genji’s ward Tamakazura, and Genji releases a bag of fireflies into Tamakazura’s room so that Hotaru can catch a glimpse of her face in the darkness.

  110. Several times a year, festivals were held in the licensed quarters. The occasion might be seasonal gatherings for flower viewing or moon viewing or special licensed-quarter holidays. On these days, fees were doubled, and each courtesan was expected to persuade customers to visit her. Any courtesan who failed to bring in a customer was required by her brothel to pay his fees herself. Thus there was enormous pressure on courtesans to persuade their regular customers to visit on these days.

  111. Apprentice courtesans (shinzō) must, by long-standing Yoshiwara tradition, debut in proper ceremonial fashion. This cost a great deal of money, and the courtesan whom the apprentice courtesans served was responsible for raising it. She did so by obtaining commitments from her regular customers.

  112. After the original New Yoshiwara licensed quarter was destroyed in a fire in 1787, its inhabitants were moved to various temporary locations, including a section of newly reclaimed land known as Nakazu.

  113. Nakazu was, in fact, quite near Yoshiwara (the quarter) and, of course, had exactly the same weather; but to this ingenuous courtesan, for whom Yoshiwara was the center of the world, Nakazu (which was actually somewhat closer to central Edo than was Yoshiwara) seemed like the middle of nowhere.

  114. Teahouses in the quarters served as intermediary agents who introduced customers to houses and handled their accounts; they also managed musicians’ performances. Teahouse employees came with the customers and later returned with them to the quarter gate. They also ran errands for them.

  115. From about 2:00 until 4:00 P.M.

  116. Kyōden begins by improvising a senryū, playing ironically on a popular saying, “Courtesans don’t have true hearts” (keisei ni makoto nashi), and on a humorous senryū in Mutamagawa (vol. 1), “In Yoshiwara, if the woman has a true heart, the man’s finished” (Yoshiwara ni makoto ga atte un no tsuki). “If the courtesan has a true heart, the man’s finished” because he would have to pay a large amount to buy out the woman’s contract.

  117. In section 9 of his Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa), Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1352) describes how passionately women love men and how attractive women are to men. From a Buddhist point of view, he warns that the intense desire men feel for women is the most dangerous form of sensory attachment and must be resisted. Like many other Edo-period writers, Kyōden here adds irony to his allusion, suggesting the strength of the
love between men and women.

  Chapter 17

  KIBYŌSHI: SATIRIC AND DIDACTIC PICTURE BOOKS

  Kibyōshi (literally, yellow booklets), picture books in which the image and text are intended to be enjoyed together, flourished in the thirty-one years between 1775 and 1806. The kibyōshi shared the humor and wit of kyōka, senryū, kyōshi, and sharebon, which also prospered at this time. Although initially its subject matter was largely limited to the pleasure quarter, by the time the kibyōshi reached its creative peak in the 1780s, virtually no segment of society was spared its satiric treatment.

  The kibyōshi fell under the rubric of kusa-zōshi (literally, grass books), “middle-size” books with ten pages in a volume, with a large picture on each page. The text, which was written primarily in kana and included descriptive prose and dialogue, filled the blank spaces in the picture. Many kibyōshi consisted of two or three volumes and were, on average, about thirty pages in length. Other fictional genres were accompanied by pictures as well, but the images were secondary to the text. By contrast, the kusa-zōshi, particularly the kibyōshi, were noted for their harmonious balance and close interaction between image and text.

  The early kusa-zōshi, dating from the late seventeenth century through 1750, were unsigned and appreciated primarily for their pictures. They began mainly as children’s stories or as books for adults with little education, featuring such familiar tales as “Peach Boy” (Momotarō), “Tongue-Cut Sparrow” (Shitakiri suzume), and “Kachikachi Mountain” (Kachichiyama), and had bright red covers, giving them the name of “red books” (akahon). As the kusa-zōshi matured, they began taking stories from kabuki, jōruri, war tales, ghost stories, and love romances. Because the covers of these more adult kusa-zōshi were black or blue, they were called “black booklets” (kurohon) or “blue booklets” (aohon). Despite the more adult subject matter, these early kusa-zōshi remained essentially picture books for telling stories (etokihon). Koikawa Harumachi’s Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold’s Dream of Splendor (Kinkin sensei eiga no yume, 1775), considered to be the first major kibyōshi, dramatically and fundamentally changed the nature of this kusa-zōshi genre.

  KOIKAWA HARUMACHI

  Koikawa Harumachi (1744–1789) was a low-level samurai from Suruga Province (Shizuoka) who was stationed in Edo. He took his pen name from the location of his lord’s mansion (Koishikawa Kasuga-chō) and from his painting teacher, Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1792), a popular ukiyo-e artist who had become known for his pictures of kabuki actors, warriors, sumo wrestlers, and beautiful women. Harumachi was so impoverished in the mid-1770s that he probably turned to working as a painter to earn some extra income. In addition to writing more than thirty kibyōshi, he composed kyōka under another pen name, Sake-no-ue Furachi, and became one of the leading samurai men of letters in the 1780s. He died at the age of forty-five.

  MR GLITTER ‘N’ GOLD’S DREAM OF SPLENDOR (KINKIN SENSEI EIGA NO YUME, 1775)

  The success of Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold’s Dream of Splendor can be attributed to several factors. First, Harumachi was the first to use the content of the sharebon (books of wit and fashion in the pleasure quarters) in the kusa-zōshi picture-text format. He added a kanbun-style preface which gave the text an intellectual, urban style, reminiscent of the kanbun prefaces found in sharebon such as The Playboy Dialect (Yūshi hōgen, 1770). Equally important, Harumachi, a serious aspiring artist, incorporated into his kibyōshi the visual style of his painting teacher and captured the latest fashion and lifestyle of contemporary youth.

  Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold is based on a Tang story, which also was dramatized in the nō play Kantan, about a young man who goes from the country to the city in hopes of seeking a fortune, takes a nap at an inn while waiting for dinner, dreams of rising and then falling from the peak of glory, wakes up to find his dinner ready, and realizes the transience of glory. In kyōka fashion, Harumachi transforms this classic tale into a contemporary story of a young man’s rise and dissolution in the pleasure quarter. More important, the kibyōshi becomes a means of describing the life of the sophisticate. The term kinkin (literally, gold gold, but implying something like “Mr Glitter and Glitz”), a popular phrase at the time, referring to being in fashion, stylish, with an erotic allure. The “splendor” or “glory” (eiga) achieved by Master Kinkin (Kinbei) is not merely worldly glory but success with certain women in the licensed quarter, which appealed to the pleasure-seeking youth of the time.

  Harumachi did not depict the sophisticate (tsūjin) directly but revealed this ideal by its comic failure, the kind of hanka-tsū (half-sophisticate or pretender) found in such sharebon as The Playboy Dialect. The protagonist is transformed from a country bumpkin into a suave, urbane man and then is revealed to be a pretender. He is, in other words, both the object of laughter and someone with whom almost every male reader could identify. Contemporary readers of Mr Glitter ‘n Gold appreciated both the images in the Katsukawa Shunshō style, which revealed the latest fashions, and the satiric “hole poking” (ugachi). Both media appealed to the tastes of urban, intellectual audiences and stimulated the growth of the new genre.

  Like Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold, the characters are cleverly named. The crafty shop hand is Genshirō, an epithet for slick swindlers. Guichi (literally, five-plus-one, the equivalent of boxcars in crapshooting), the blind bard, implies Luckless-Guichi. The professional jester is Manpachi, a byname for liars. Kakeno, the Yoshiwara courtesan, suggests kakeru (to defraud). Likewise, the name of Omazu, the artless prostitute, evokes the adjective mazui (tasteless, inept).

  A major characteristic of Mr Glitter ‘n Gold and subsequent kibyōshi was the attention given to minute and often allusive visual detail. For this reason, a commentary is provided after each image.

  Preface

  As stated in literature, “Life, in its uncertainty, is like a dream; how much of it is given to happiness?”1 Surely the line rings true. Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold’s dream of splendor, like the dream inspired by the pillow at Kantan, was of no greater duration than the time it takes to cook millet. We do not know the identity of this Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold. The mystery is as deep as that surrounding the Three-Bird Secrets of the Kokinshū.2 Those with money become the Mr Glitter ‘n’ Golds of this world, while those without it become the blockheaded nobodies. Thus, Mr Glitter ‘n’ Gold is someone’s name and yet belongs exclusively to no one person. . . .

  A frivolous story by the painter Koikawa Harumachi

  1. Kinbei, wearing a traveling overcoat and holding a woven traveling hat in his right hand, arrives at the millet-cake shop and points to a road sign that says “From here to the right, Meguro Street.” The broad topknot on the crown of his head and his disheveled side hair emphasize that he is a boorish man (yabo) from the suburbs. The standing sign notes “Famous Specialty—Genuine Millet Cakes,” and the shop awning gives the shop name: Musashiya. Two people are preparing steamed millet. The woman, with her hair wrapped in a tenugui (patterned washcloth), flips the millet in the mortar while the man pounds it with a pestle. From the 1775 edition. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)

  Book 1

  1. Long ago there lived in the backwoods a man by the name of Kanemuraya Kinbei. By nature he was elegant in mind and heart. Although he wished to savor all the delights of the floating world, he was poor and could not realize his wish. Having given the matter much thought, however, he decided to seek work in the bustling metropolis, attain a high station in life, and enjoy every conceivable pleasure in the floating world. And so he set out for Edo.

  [KINBEI]: Once I get to Edo, I’ll work my way up to chief clerk. I’ll make my money by picking up whatever slips past the accounting beads on the abacus, and then I’ll have the time of my life.

  Because the famed Exalted Fudō of Meguro was a god of fortune, he worshiped at the temple and prayed for good fortune.3 It was near dusk by then, and being famished, he stopped to eat some of the millet cakes for which the area was famous. Now, the
Exalted Fudō of Meguro has produced many miracles; this is known to everyone. The principal icon of the temple was sculptured by the Great Teacher Ennin.4 The monastery is named Ryūsen-ji temple. Specialties of this area include the millet cakes and something called “rice-cake blossom,” which is made by slitting a section of a length of bamboo, tying the filaments together to form a floral ring, and then attaching red, white, and yellow rice cakes—like petals on a blossom. Hence, the name “rice-cake blossoms.”

  2. Kinbei falls asleep on a bench with a pillow pulled to his side. Behind him a pestle rests in the mortar, and in front of him are his tobacco set and travel sandals. He holds a tattered fan, similar to the fan of the god of poverty, suggesting his current state. The dark black line on the bench suggests a prop used to represent bridges and palaces in nō drama, thus evoking the nō play Kantan. In his dream, a man with a sword in ceremonial attire bows before Kinbei, leading the group of people accompanying the palanquin. The servant at the back holds a lacquered traveling box, which contains slippers and a change of clothes for an outing. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)

  [KINBEI]: Hello! I wonder what time it is? May I have a dish of millet cakes?

  [WOMAN]: It must be past midafternoon. Do go into the inner guest-room.

  2. The famished Kinbei went into the inner guest-room of the millet-cake shop, but the cakes had not yet been made. During the short while he was kept waiting, he became a bit drowsy—perhaps as a result of the tiring journey—so he grabbed a pillow that lay nearby and was soon lulled into peaceful slumber and dream.