by Steven Moore
Unlike the episodic kokkeibon of Jippensha Ikku, yomihon were artfully constructed; Bakin draws attention to his technique at the beginning of chapter 4, asking for the reader’s indulgence as he begins to complicate his story: “The perfect bamboo has many joints and branches; a romance, many chapters and descriptions necessary to its completeness. Although I here diverge from the main part of my story, I do so in order that the latter may be more fully understood by my readers.” Bakin then introduces two samurai brothers, who had once committed the sin of abandoning their leader during a battle and consequently also become the victims of divine retribution. One of them is conned out of an ox by Saikei, who insists the ox is the reincarnation of his father. In a metafictional aside, the owner says, “I have often read about these strange things in novels, but this is the first time any one has recounted such a dream to my face” (3).100 The other brother marries Hachisuba, whose lust for Saikei will lead to both brothers’ deaths. Eventually the filial offspring of one of the brothers manage to avenge their father’s death with supernatural aid from the goddess Kannon after Saikei has learned the magical arts—plot twists and turns that are too bizarre to summarize briefly but that are deftly handled by Bakin as he brings his novel to a dramatic close.
As a Confucian, Bakin is withering in his contempt for Buddhism, especially for the mindless, fundamentalist version favored by women and the uneducated; his praise is reserved for the filial piety of the two teenagers who avenge their father’s death, and for the unbending ethics of the samurai. Many of the chapters are followed by mini-sermons by the author on the actions of his characters, driving home his didactic themes (which are obvious enough), as well as anthropological notes that indicate he researched his novels carefully. This Japanese Elmer Gantry is considered one of Bakin’s lesser works, which makes the unavailability of his major works in English all the more frustrating.
Another former kibyoshi writer who turned to kokkeibon, Shikitei Sanba (or Samba, 1776–1822) published two novels in the second decade of the 18th century that are remarkable for their almost total reliance on dialogue. Ukiyoburo (The Bathhouse of the Floating World, 1809–13) and Ukiyodoko (The Barbershop of the Floating World, 1813–14) recreate the chatter and gossip of public meetingplaces, and are populated by a wide range of characters “whose speech, recorded with diabolical accuracy, revealed common human weaknesses” (Keene 415). Sanba even invented his own diacritical marks to indicate varieties of dialect, and included glosses for obscure idioms. The novels are almost plotless, just a stream of small talk during a typical day at such establishments, a relaxed flow of banter, gossip, anecdotes, snatches of songs, and pop-culture references. The conversations range from technical medical diagnoses and allusions to Chinese literature to the prattle of children. Robert W. Leutner translates two chapters from Ukiyoburo (the more popular of the two) in his critical study of Sanba; the dialogue is so allusive and culture-specific that his 74-page selection is followed by 128 explanatory notes. Like the bathhouse, the novel is segregated: two sections take place during the men’s bathing hours, and two during the women’s. Not suprisingly, the men tell outrageous stories, trade dirty jokes, and sometimes put on airs; the women tend to talk about relationships and their children. Leutner undersells Ukiyoburo as “a fragmented work, best approached as a succession of unrelated scenes – verbal genre paintings of town life – rather than in the expectation of finding anything resembling a novel in the usual sense of the word.”101 But it does resemble some wonderfully unusual novels: the setting recalls those extended bathhouse scenes in McCourt’s Now Voyagers, and the overall effect is similar to Gaddis’s J R. Betraying a conventional notion of the novel, Leutner goes on to claim Ukiyoburo’s “mixtures of classical and vernacular locutions, and of straightforward, barebones description with irony-laden caricature, are stylistic chaos from the point of view of modern fiction” (102), but only modern conventional fiction; Sanba would feel right at home in the heteroglossic bathhouse of experimental fiction.
The last genre of Japanese fiction to emerge in the premodern period was ninjobon, sentimental novels intended for female readers (specifically, for geisha and young girls), and the finest example of the genre is also the most innovative novel of the whole period. Love’s Calendar: The First Blush of Spring (Shunshoku umegoyomi, 1832–33) was written by a bookseller/publisher named Tamenaga Shunsui (1790–1843).102 In the 1820s he and his assistants churned out about thirty ninjobon potboilers, but after his shop was destroyed by fire in 1829 he began to take writing more seriously, and in 1832 the first installments of this extraordinary novel appeared to instant acclaim.
Like many ninjobon, it is set in the floating world: the licensed quarters of Edo. The plot is typical of the genre: before the novel opens (as we learn later), a young man named Tanjiro had been adopted by the owners of the Karakotoya brothel, where he fell in love with both the family’s daughter Ocho (age 15 when the novel begins) and with a geisha named Yonehachi (around 20). But after the owners die, their sleazy clerk Kihei takes over the business and gets Tanjiro adopted into a debt-ridden family, which ruins him financially and sends him into hiding. The first half of the novel deals with the attempts by Tanjiro’s two loves to save him and the jealousy between them. Two other strong, selfless women get involved: the head geisha of the house, Konoito—who helps Ocho escape from Kihei’s unwanted advances and who tests Yonehachi’s devotion to Tanjiro by sending her favorite customer Tobei to try to seduce her—and Oyoshi, a hairdresser who leads a vigilante group committed to good deeds. (She is introduced when they rescue young Ocho from an attempted gang-rape.) After a number of tribulations and revelations, all ends well: Tanjiro turns out to be the heir to an important clan, and after a quickie affair with another geisha, he marries Ocho and takes Yonehachi as his official mistress. Konoito and Oyoshi discover they are long-lost sisters, and after Tobei realizes Oyoshi is the unforgettable girl he had a fleeting affair with seven years earlier, he marries her. Konoito marries her childhood sweetheart Hanjiro, who inherits an estate after the sudden but convenient death of his father, and the sleazy Kihei is exposed as a crook with a record and thrown in jail.
But forget the hookers-with-hearts-of-gold/sisters-doing-it-for-themselves plot. Ignore the number of times the author shamelessly threatens virginal Ocho with rape or prostitution (which she contemplates to raise money for Tanjiro). What is fascinating about this sentimental novel is its magpie form (with elements of kibyoshi, kokkeibon, and Kabuki theater) and its flippant self-consciousness as fiction. If Ikku is a coarser Dickens, Sanba a Japanese Gaddis, and Bakin a Confucian Scott, then Shunsui is Japan’s Laurence Sterne, for Love’s Calendar is filled with Tristram Shandy-like novelties. First, it resembles a play-script, each page a mixture of dialogue and stage directions (some indented, others run in), along with many poems and authorial observations. Here, for example, is the conclusion to chapter 4, right after Oyoshi has saved Ocho from rape. She speaks first, addressing one of her gang:
But now let’s be off—we’ll have trouble finding an inn in the dark like this. Place the girl in the middle—and have a care for reprisal! Man: There’s not a chance they’ll attack. . . . Maybe I should carry the missy on my back, he? Yoshi: Ha! That might be safe if it’s Ei-san or Kinta-san or Jirō perhaps, but Kane-san or Gen-san are dubious guards indeed for a young lady!
But as they laughed the moon grew dark
behind the misty clouds
They headed toward some village lights
and safely made their way.
[The scene shifts and we are with Yonehachi in her new Fukagawa quarters, surrounded by three or four singers.]
Yone: Umeji-san, I really am quite sure I want to do it that way. Ume: No one will make a fuss—go ahead and do it! [Masaji is seated nearby plucking her eyebrows.] Masa: Who cares! They always cry sour grapes when that happens. Yone: Well, I feel like following your advice and telling him off. Ume: Feeling like doing it isn’t enough, honey—I remember t
hat much! Masa-san, do you remember how it was with Kō-san? Masa: Exactly! You were fit to be tied. The Ōtsu-ya’s mama certainly stood you well then. [In this interval, Yonehachi finishes tying her obi, and holds out a teacup.] Yone: Ume-san . . . pour a little here, would you? [Umeji, reaching beside the hibachi picks up an earthenware bottle.] Ume: This? Yone: You’re a quick one, aren’t you?! The one over there, dear. Ume: Oh, that! [Taking out the heated bottle of saké next to it, she fills her teabowl to the brim. Yonehachi tosses it off in one gulp and strikes her breast. She gasps two or three times and clicks her teeth together.] Yone: I’m off, dears. Others: We’re all behind you – really tell him off! [Yonehachi, smiling brightly, departs.]103
Note the realistic dialogue and actions, and especially the absence of referents—the unidentified “him” is Tobei—which sometime makes the novel hard to follow, especially at the openings of chapters, but that’s deliberate. In one of his many authorial addresses to the reader, Shunsui warns: “Since the author’s method is to leave for later what ought to be explained at first, there will be places that are difficult of comprehension, and the reader is urged to pay close attention along the way” (21). Perversely, this appears four chapters before the end, way too late for the inattentive reader. But on other occasions the author is more than willing to assist the reader, to make his motives clear, or even to interrupt the story to record his experiences while writing, as in this sequence:
Drawing Ochō close by her side, [Konoito] is suddenly convulsed with weeping. Although crocodile tears are common among this breed of women, Konoito’s sincere affliction here reflects her gentle perfection.
. . . The author, at the time of this writing—late one night during the month when chrysanthemums bloom—can hear the first call of the wild geese on their southward migration. . . .
To such a gentle Courtesan
I must send a message with
the wild geese to her pillow-side.
But meanwhile, Ochō too, at Konoito’s ever so gentle words is struck down with weeping. Wailing, her body quivering, she looks up. (3)
Elsewhere, he’ll record the poems friends left with him after visiting, or follow a spicy scene with a bogus disclaimer:
The author takes this opportunity to interject; this work is aimed solely at the exposition of the Sentiment of Yonehachi, Ochō and the others. It is not intended to satirize the Quarter. I have never been well-acquainted with the Temples of Entertainment, and consequently can only give the briefest sketch of its life. May we escape being criticized in the same light as the sharehon! (3)104
On other occasions, Shunsui resorts to these asides out of apparent laziness, as when he introduces the mother of Oyoshi and Yonihachi and then writes: “To reproduce in dialogue her tale of bygone days is beyond the powers of the author’s feeble brush; consequently, it is summarized below:” (21). Such summaries occur more frequently toward the end of the novel, as though he were in a hurry to wrap it up. In another aside, he writes that some details “could not be adequately set forth in the limited number of pages we have here” and promises to flesh them out in a sequel, a little advance advertising for a novel he published in 1834. The serial publication of the novel allowed him to make mock appeals to his readers for help; at the end of chapter 6 (the first installment), for example, he writes:
Tanjirō starts down the stairs followed by Ochō. If they meet up with Yonehachi, what on earth will ensue? The author, indeed, as yet cannot imagine. Ah! At times like this, our handsome hero experiences a bitterness unknown to ordinary folk. But what will happen next? The author can only hope the reader will be so kind as to immediately suggest some ingenious solution.
The frustration of reading novels in installments is dramatized later in chapter 14 when Yonehachi reads a novel aloud to herself, reaches the end of the installment, then gets angry because she can’t find the next volume.
This diverse novel also includes a story-within-the-story, a dream sequence, a reproduction of a letter, drawings of three teacups, songs, and several metafictional exclamations like “Isn’t that crazy?! Just as in a novel!” and “No matter how much these kinds of things are popular in novels, there’s very little attractive about a fight between women” (both in chap. 20). One character who appears intermittently asks, “But I wonder, do you suppose the author of this story has a grudge against me? Whenever there is a clumsy scene, I always get pulled in!” (24). There are two chapter 23s, and Shunsui even interrupts his story in chapter 16 to insert an advertisement for a friend’s tea-candy business, two boxed ads right in the middle of the page. (“The author mentions these not because they are made by a friend, but because they are excellent gifts to bring back in any season from the Mukōjima area—and far superior to sakura-mochi. They are truly the finest of tea candies.”)
All of this elevates Shunsui’s sappy story of how four women found true love to another level, making it a work that, like Tristram Shandy, has more in common with postmodern novels than with premodern ones. The Japanese generally consider their first “modern” novel to be Futabatei Shimei’s Ukigumo (1889), by which they mean a realistic novel in the so-called great tradition of the nineteenth-century Victorians and Russians. Love’s Calendar belongs to that other great tradition, innovative novels that fall outside literary history’s neat time-lines and genre classifications. Premodern, postmodern, or Japan’s truly first “modern” novel, a sentimental romance or avant-garde experiment—whatever it is, Tamenaga Shunsui’s novel leaves us pleasurably adrift in the floating world of fiction.
TIBETAN FICTION
Japanese novelists of this period treated Buddhism with a great deal of contempt, but in Tibet, Buddhism still befuddled the minds of sentient beings. In the previous volume I gave some examples of their spiritual biographies, which contain so much fiction and fantasy that they should be regarded as novels. During the premodern period, Tibetans continued to write these fictional hagiographies; a recently translated example is A Jewel Mirror in Which All Is Clear (Kun gsal nor bu’i me long, 1609) by Lochen Gyurmé Dechen (1540–1615).105 Drawing upon several earlier biographies, this religious scholar supernaturalized the life of T(h)angtong Gyalpo (c. 1385–c. 1485), a theologian, architect, and civil engineer who not only designed many bridges (iron suspension as well as wooden), ferries, and temples, but also founded Tibet’s first opera company. That much is historical, and some of his bridges can still be seen today. He is also considered a miracle-worker who lived to the age of 125, a pharmacologist who developed “longevity pills,” and the reincarnation of the 8th-century Indian guru Padmasambhava, and it’s those unhistorical beliefs that appealed to Gyurmé Dechen.
His novel is basically an “ocean of marvels” (the title of one of his sources), beginning with accounts of Tangtong’s previous existences, prophecies of his coming, and the usual childhood miracles—the same m.o. followed by all religious writers who want to glorify their man. After he is ordained, Tangtong goes through the “insane monk” phase common to many beloved Tibetan saints—indulging in outrageous behavior, babbling, playing with corpses in graveyards, having sex (especially with “dakinis,” religious groupies who claimed to be spirits in human form)—then travels to Nepal and India, absorbing mystic teachings and “fill[ing] the fine vase of the great adept’s comprehension with the nectar of the profound path.”106 After he returns to Tibet, he has a vision in which “Many girls of human form appeared to him again and again, singing songs and stomping their feet in dance” (160), and these spiritual cheerleaders bestow upon him the title “King of the Empty Plain.” Thereafter, the author gives us a lengthy account of Tangtong’s mystical adventures, transforming his historical acts into religious parables. When he begins building iron bridges, for example, it’s not merely to aid Tibetan transportation but so “that from the temporal auspicious connection of crossing over the element of water, he would be able to liberate all sentient beings from the four great rivers of suffering: birth, old age, sickness, and death. Mor
eover, with the ferries and bridges of method and wisdom he would be able to liberate the six types of living beings from the sea of the sufferings of samsāra” (174).
Mostly the Jewel Mirror is an episodic account of an invincible religious superman, accompanied by religious explications like the one just quoted—the usual self-medicating nonsense. Gyurmé Dechen was apparently more concerned with harmonizing his often-contradictory sources into a coherent narrative, and understandably downplayed or ignored the secular aspects of Tangtong’s life. We hear nothing about how he founded Tibetan opera, and only one of his many wives and consorts is mentioned, and her only briefly: a princess-turned-nun he met in his seventies. Whatever sex life he had is sublimated into scenes like this orgiastic fantasy:
Then the great adept decided to travel to the land of Uddiyāna [Pakistan?]. When he faced the southwest and prayed to the Great Teacher of Uddiyāna, he became exhilarated and in an instant arrived in Singala, the land of Demonesses, near Uddiyāna. About a thousand demonesses gathered and made a great display of desire. The great adept emanated a thousand physical bodies. From a state of discriminating primordial awareness that is the pristine nature of desire, he kindly satisfied the demonesses with bliss in the temporary sense and established them in the sublime, immutable great bliss in the ultimate sense. (182)
To be fair, Gyurmé Dechen was writing a hagiography, not a novel, but he made no attempt to give his narrative expressive form or dramatic conflict, as Tsang Nyön Heruka did so brilliantly in his Life of Milarepa (1488), which Gyurmé Dechen probably knew. (Nyön Heruka is believed to have met Tangtong Gyalpo toward the end of the latter’s life.) We’ll have to look further for Tibet’s first true novel.
