[RITARŌ]: Never!
[CLERK]: You look perfect.
6. Ritarō takes a short nap under a thick night robe, as was the custom at the time. His tobacco set is near his pillow. Above him, three bad souls tie up the good soul as it steps out of Ritarō’s body. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
6. While people sleep, it’s certain their souls leave their bodies and have a little fun. One day, when Ritarō was eighteen, he felt tired after doing inventory and took a nap. His soul, worn out from keeping the bad soul away day after day, went out and relaxed nearby. The bad soul noticed this and called his comrades. Together they tied up the good soul and entered Ritarō’s vacant body.
[GOOD SOUL]: Aagh. This can’t be happening.
[BAD SOULS]: What a great feeling!
7. When Ritarō woke, he decided he’d make a pilgrimage that very day to the Kannon Temple in Asakusa. After making his prayers to the bodhisattva Kannon, he turned to go home. Then he started thinking. He’d never had any interest in seeing the Yoshiwara licensed quarter before, and just looking around wouldn’t cost anything. Surely there wouldn’t be anything wrong with seeing it just once. His steps felt light as he began walking the half-mile stretch of river embankment between Asakusa and the quarter. This all happened because the bad souls had gotten inside him.
[RITARŌ]: No, I won’t go after all. People at home will worry about me. Still, I’ve come this far. Maybe I should just take a look. But then again, maybe I’ll go home.
Again and again he set out along the bank, then turned back. This was the work of the bad souls.
[FIRST BAD SOUL] (on Ritarōs right): Stop dithering. I’ll tell you exactly how to act when we get there. Don’t worry. Why not take a look at a few of the stylish places? Rice cakes in soybean flour, young man, come on! I look like I’m pulling in customers for an inn—and got stripped by bandits!
7. Urged on by the bad souls, Ritarō hesitantly walks along Nihonzutsumi, the embankment leading to Yoshiwara, which appears in the far distance. Ritarō is wearing a fashionable long coat over his kimono. Many of the roofs hold rain barrels for use in case of fire. The two notice boards advertise the unveiling of sacred Buddhist treasures at the Fudō Temple and the thousand-sutra chantings at the Yūten-ji temple. Both events were held in Kansei 1 (1789), the year before this kibyoshi’s publication. The bad soul in front of Ritarō likens himself to a barker for an inn, while the two bad souls pushing Ritarō yell phrases as if he were a parade float. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōga-kukan)
[SECOND AND THIRD BAD SOULS] (behind): Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, you’ve got it, you’ve got it. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Hey, now. We look like we’re pushing a festival float with someone on it.
[SIGN TO FAR RIGHT]: “Chikubu Island, Designated Imperial Prayer Place. Greatest of Only Three Manifestation Sites of the Female Fortune God Benzaiten. Thirtieth of Thirty-three Kannon Pilgrimage Temples in the Kyoto Area. Secret Kannon Image Officially on Limited Display at Fudō Temple in Mejiro: Seventeenth of Intercalary Sixth Month to Eighteenth of Eighth Month.”
[NEXT SIGN]: “Thousand-Sutra Chantings Daily: Seventeenth to Twenty-Fifth of Seventh Month. Yūtenji Temple, Meguro.”
8. At the Miuraya House, Ritarō is entertained in an upstairs parlor. A single candle in the center lights the room. With a fan in hand, Ritarō dances to the shamisen music while keeping the beat with his tobacco pipe and a teacup. As partial exteriorizations of Ritaro’s feelings, the bad souls dance, too. Ayashino, whose name suggests ayashi (suspicious), a character that appears on her robe, sits next to Ritarō, who sits in front of the alcove (tokonoma), where a hanging scroll is displayed, indicating that he is the main guest. To the far right, a teenage apprentice (shinzō), marked by the long sleeves of her robe (furisode), converses with a male jester, who provides entertainment. To her right sits a child attendant (kamuro), wearing elaborate hairpins and assuming a pose very similar to that of Ayashino. The shamisen player (bottom right) is singing a verse from a popular song called “Wankyū of the Four Seasons,” about a man of extreme dissipation. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
8. Led by the bad souls, Ritarō arrived at the Yoshiwara. He thought he’d just take a quick look around and go home, but as he walked around watching the evening sights along the main street of the quarter, he gradually fell under the full control of the bad souls and finally asked the owner of a teahouse to arrange a meeting with a courtesan named Ayashino45 at the Miuraya House. The bad souls flew straight up to heaven and forgot about ever going home again. Ritarō had completely lost his mind.
The souls jump into the air and dance.
[FIRST BAD SOUL] (singing): Do it!
[SECOND] (singing): Yeah, yeah.
[THIRD] (singing): That’s it! That’s it!
9. Elaborate bedding with three layers of futon, a custom at Yoshiwara, is prepared for Ritarō. Two bad souls help Ayashino and Ritarō undress each other. The bad soul sitting on top of the futon cover addresses the reader as if it were the end of a kabuki act, a technique used to close the scene humorously, avoiding erotic details. The folding screen depicts the branches of a plum tree in bloom, an image that often appears in erotic ukiyo-e prints. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[RITARŌ]: Ah, what a nice fragrance. It’s Okamoto’s Hair Oil for Young Ladies.
[GEISHA] (singing with shamisens):
Each night he drank till dawn.
On and on, until he reached—insanity.
[RITARŌ]: Hey, this is fun. Really fun. Where have I been all my life?
9. After the performance, Ritarō was shown to a bedroom. Soon Ayashino appeared, and the bad souls took her by the hand and had her untie Ritaro’s loincloth. Then they had the two hold each other tight and led Ritaro’s hand far down underneath her open collar. Ritaro’s whole body felt as if it were melting.
[AYASHINO]: Over this way. Oh, your hand’s so cold!
[FIRST BAD SOUL]: All right! Perfect!
[SECOND]: Even if your parents punish you, so what?
[THIRD]: That’s all for tonight, folks. (Kabuki drumbeats mark the end of the act just in time.)
10. The good soul, who’d loyally lived so many years inside Ritarō, remained tied up where the bad souls had left it. The good soul worried about Ritarō, but no one came to release it, and it agonized alone. A superb chanter like Chūgorō or Isaburō46 would have been there to express the good soul’s suffering by singing softly to the shamisens in the background.
10. Ousted from Ritaro’s body, the good soul, which is tied to a giant Sino-Japanese character for wazawai (disaster) in the sky, compares itself with characters in two puppet plays who experience similar difficulties. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[GOOD SOUL]: I’m Hyōgo’s brave wife tied to a post in the puppet play Epiphany at Yaguchi Crossing. I’m the loyal daughter Yukihime tied to a tree in Gion Festival Record.47
11. The bad souls, exhausted from a night of dancing, went inside the front of Ayashino’s robe. Just when they were falling asleep, Ritarō began thinking uneasily about home. Why had he ever come here? What had made him do this? He felt as if he were waking from a dream and got up to leave without even saying good-bye, but that woke the bad souls. Determined not to let him go, they immediately jumped inside him again. Ritarō quickly changed his mind and told the house he would stay on. Just then the good soul, who’d finally escaped, came running in. He grabbed Ritarō’s hand and tried to pull him outside. The bad souls, determined, pulled the other way.
“I’d really like to stay on,” Ritarō said, pulled to the left. Then, tugged to the right, “No, I need to be going right now.” He kept walking up and down the hall.
Souls are completely invisible to ordinary human eyes. “What a weird customer,” exclaims the teahouse guide who has come to see Ritarō off
.
[AYASHINO]: Either you go home or you stay. Stop acting like an idiot.
[THIRD BAD SOUL]: Come on boys, let’s get this well clean. Hey, no farting!
[FIRST AND SECOND]: Heave ho! Heave ho!
11. Ritarō stands confused, torn between the good and bad souls in a corridor. This is the second floor, where the courtesan’s parlor and rooms are located. Note that it takes three bad souls to compete against one good soul. The way in which the bad souls are pulling Ritarō is similar to the way in which workers and tools, attached to a rope, were pulled from wells that the workers had fixed and cleaned. The teahouse guide, holding Ritarō’s slippers and a lantern with the teahouse’s crest, comes for him. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
12. The good soul returned inside, and Ritaro’s experience in the quarter now seemed like a distant dream. Ritarō felt disgusted even to remember it and busied himself with the shop accounts. Then one day a messenger from the teahouse arrived with the standard follow-up letter from Ayashino. When Ritarō innocently opened the letter, the bad soul entered it and struggled to possess him again.
[MESSENGER]: A letter after only one meeting! It’s unheard of, even in the age of the gods.
The good soul anxiously tried to keep Ritarō from looking at it.
13. After reading Ayashinō’s skillfully worded letter, Ritaro’s mind began to waver again. With the fortune I’ve got, he thought, I can easily afford to spend three hundred or four hundred pieces of gold a year. I’m not going to live ten thousand or even a thousand years. And when I’m dead, all I can take with me are six coppers to pay to cross the river to the other world. I’ve really been wasting my time scrimping and saving. Doesn’t the old Chinese poem say “Take a lamp and go where pleasure is”?48 He interpreted the line willfully, as though it referred to his own desire, and bad thoughts appeared.
12. At the shop, Ritarō reads a letter from Ayashino delivered by the teahouse guide. An account book box, on which is written chōbako (account book box), functions as a desk. The good soul takes Ritarō’s arm and tries to redirect his attention to the thick account book opened before him. However, the bad soul once again gains entry to Ritarō’s body through the letter. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
13. With Ayashino’s letter before him, Ritarō sits perplexed. The picture on the low two-panel furosaki screen echoes the phrase that Ritarō utters, “six coppers to pay to cross the river to the other world,” by depicting two men pulling a boat across a river. Above him, the bad soul slays the good soul. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
While Ritarō was having many bad thoughts, the bad soul got its chance. Finally it cut down the good soul and got revenge.
[BAD SOUL]: Resign yourself.
[GOOD SOUL]: This can’t be happening!
14. The bad soul and his comrades at last entered all the way into Ritarō’s body and drove out the good soul’s wife and two sons with a sharp split-bamboo cane. How pitiful the three looked, holding hands as they left the body that had been their home for many years. Ritarō then began a life of dissipation, staying with Ayashino four or five days at a time.
14. Ritarō is again with Ayashino (right), with a bad soul straddling his shoulders and another sitting in front of him, while, with a split-bamboo cane, a bad soul expels the wife and two sons of the good soul (left). The folding screen depicts a bamboo thicket and a pheasant, serving as a reminder of the faithful son that Ritarō was once expected to become. On the left, Ritarō’s head clerk begs Ritarō to come to his senses, as the teenage apprentice (shinzō) behind him appears to be laughing at the ridiculous situation. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[BAD SOUL WITH CANE]: Hurry up. Faster. Out!
[GOOD SOUL’S WIFE]: Just wait. You’ll pay for this.
[FIRST SON]: I feel really sad.
[SECOND SON]: Mommy, let’s leave!
[BAD SOUL ON RITARO’S SHOULDERS]: Wait’ll you see what I can do!
[BAD SOUL SITTING]: Serves you right!
Ritarō’s head clerk comes for him and rebukes him in the manner of the kabuki villain actor Okuyama.49
[CLERK]: You weren’t always like this. What happened to your brain? An evil spirit must have gotten into you. You’re completely hopeless.
[RITARŌ]: Please, old boy. Don’t be tasteless. Whatever happens, I simply refuse to go. Shad sushi to that!
15. Shingaku instruction books typically taught that an imprudent person would be reduced to a robber who broke into homes by cutting holes in the foundation. Ritarō, his head covered like that of a robber, is confronted by his own dog as he breaks into his family storehouse. A throng of bad souls behind him urge Ritarō on, and more bad souls line up to enter his body. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
Ayashino also feels that Ritarō has stayed too long, but she speaks indirectly: “Your papa and mama must be concerned about you. I don’t want to tell you to go home, but well, I don’t know what to say.”
15. More and more bad souls entered Ritarō. He not only went to the quarter but drank heavily, started fights, gambled, and swindled. His behavior was so disrespectful to his parents that finally they disowned him. He had nowhere at all to go. Then one night he cut a hole in the back wall of his own family storehouse and robbed it. A large group of bad souls gathered around Ritarō, urging him to commit one wrong after another. It was shocking, totally reckless.
[DOG]: Old Master, you’ve become a thief! You’re like the old master in Yamashina in that puppet play—the one who gets covered with mud repairing a storehouse.50 But hey, he was repairing the wall, not breaking in. If I didn’t bark, I wouldn’t be doing my duty. (Barks)
[RITARŌ]: Spot, boy! It’s me! Don’t bark! Say, listen to this. “Kitchen god pictures,” don’t you bark! Did you like that one?51
16. On a deserted road with wild grass growing through a dilapidated fence and a crescent moon lighting an open field, Master Dōri (the character “dō,” or the Way, appears on his robe), echoing the Shingaku master Nakazawa Dōni, forcefully throws Ritarō to the ground after being attacked by him. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
16. Finally Ritarō became a vagrant. The bad souls grew even bolder, and Ritarō began robbing travelers on deserted roads. Pitiful!
Now there was a widely revered man of great learning and insight named Dōri, Master of Truth, who naturally felt deep compassion and love and had the ability to act on his beliefs.52 One night, returning from a lecture, he was attacked by Ritarō. But Master Dōri, a strong man, grabbed Ritarō and threw him to the ground. He felt only pity for his assailant. Hoping to reform the young man, he forgave him and took him back to his lodgings.
[MASTER DŌRI]: What a disgrace!
The bad souls, who were responsible for Ritarō’s actions, pointed at Ritarō and roared with laughter.
17. The good soul’s widow and sons had been watching the movements of the bad soul, waiting for a chance to take revenge. But there were too many other bad souls, so their days and months were bitter. Now that Ritarō had returned to his original mind, however, they had little trouble realizing their long-cherished desire. To their great joy, the other bad souls abandoned their comrade and fled.
17. Ritarō listens humbly to Master Dōri’s teachings and regains his original mind. Master Dōri sits at a Chinese desk, with a writing box, in front of a bookcase labeled “Chinese and Japanese texts,” indicating that he is a man of learning. The wife and two sons of the good soul return to drive away the bad souls. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[GOOD SOUL’S WIDOW]: Revenge for my husband! Put up your sword!
[FIRST SON]: This will teach you!
[SECOND SON]: This is for my father! Prepare to die!
Ritarō was indebted to
Master Dōri for his life, and he listened intently to his explanations of the virtues common to Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shinto. He deeply regretted his former misconduct and returned to his original mind.53
[MASTER DŌRI]: In everything humans do, only the mind is important. Without intending to, people inflict great pain on themselves with their own minds. The mind is the soul. This is a truth you must firmly grasp.
[RITARŌ]: I alone ignore the truth.54 I gave money to that woman just so she would say she loved me. I even gave her special tips on holidays. Now all that money seems unclean. Very unclean.
18. Ritarō, dressed in formal robes, bows to his parents, both hands touching the floor. The saké cup placed on a small wooden stand and the sake container on the side show that Ritarō has exchanged sips of saké with his father and has been formally accepted back into the family. Text on right: “Written by Kyōden.” On left: “Pictures by Masayoshi.” (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[MASTER DŌRI]: Next I’ve got to put it to the author of this book.55 He sounds like a mighty scoundrel who has ignored the Way.
18. After Master Dōri had carefully taught Ritarō, the young man went to see his parents at the Quick and Easy Store and begged their forgiveness. Overjoyed, they took him back immediately. From then on, Ritarō discerned the Way clearly. He honored his parents, treated his relatives and employees with kindness, and became a living example of a virtuous man. The house and its business prospered greatly. Near and far, people praised Master Dōri’s deep compassion and high character, which, they said, had made it all possible.
The good soul’s sons inherited their father’s house and duties and lived for many years in Ritarō’s body, taking good care of their mother and diligently protecting Ritarō. From then on, the good souls stayed right where they were and never got restless again.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 102
