This Scheming World

by Ihara Saikaku

  “To be successful in collecting bills you must start with the one who pays most readily and then work up to the hard one who is notorious for nonpayment. Be careful not to trip over your own tongue. If the debtor behaves in a manner calculated to irritate you, remain all the calmer and speak only of the matter at hand, and that with a persuasive tongue. Sit down on the threshold in a leisurely manner, tell your porter to put out the light, and talk in a way similar to this:

  “ ‘What crime did I commit in a former life that I should have been condemned to suffer in this one as a bill collector? I have yet to celebrate New Year’s Day even once with my hair done up properly. My wife has to work in a banker’s office, a virtual hostage, where she has to try to please even the clerks. Of all the hundreds of possible ways to earn a living, why should I ever have chosen such a mode of life as this? Sometimes I feel like reproaching the tutelary god, even though I know he hasn’t anything to do with my present sorry lot.

  “‘ In contrast, though I’m a stranger to your household affairs, I’m sure the mistress lacks nothing to make her happiness complete. Those lovely rice-cake flowers hanging from the ceiling are full of the rejoicing of the New Year season. And by the way, that fish hanger over there is the most attractive thing in the house. Oh, just look at the duck, and the dried sea cucumbers, and the dried sea ears hanging there. I’m sure you’ve already prepared your winter wardrobe. The patterns in vogue now with the ladies are peonies with leaves intertwined with four ginkgo leaves combined in a circle. I wish my wife could afford to wear fashionable and up-to-date kimono. It’s so true that clothes make the woman. Say, O-Matsu! The kimono the master gave you must be patterned with pale blue paulownia flowers against a dark brown background. You are lucky to be working in this house. Out on the edge of town I see many women wearing kimono of old-fashioned arabesque design.’

  “Talking in this fashion, you must strive to create a leisurely atmosphere, in order to induce the wife to say something. Then, when the other bill collectors are not around, the master of the house will quietly come to you and say that although he is determined not to pay anybody else this year end, yet because he admires your reasonable conversational approach he’ll pay you his much, even though it’s the money he’s saved up for his wife’s pilgrimage to the Grand Shrine at Ise. The balance he will pay you before next March, when he hopes to see your smiling face again.

  “So saying, he will pay you sixty momme out of a hundred due. In olden times they used to pay eighty momme out of a hundred. Twenty years ago they would have paid half the debt without fail. Ten years ago a forty-percent payment was prevalent, but nowadays they will pay only thirty momme out of a hundred, which usually includes at least two bad pieces of silver. Thus men’s minds grow more and more debased, and such is the situation existing between creditor and debtor. What a nuisance to the creditor! But for him there is no escape from it unless he goes out of business, which he cannot afford to do. Whereupon, forgetting the troubles of the year end he will again start selling to customers on credit.

  “It is fascinating how customs change with the times. In olden times the creditor accepted the debtor’s excuse for failure to pay up and after midnight on New Year’s Eve stopped trying to collect bills overdue. Later, when collectors persevered until dawn, quarrels broke out wherever they went. Quite recently, although collections are made far into the wee hours of the morning, no angry words arise between creditor and debtor, for all is settled without too much fuss.

  “Just how is it settled that way? ‘The truth is that where there’s no money, there’s just no money to be got,’ declares the debtor, not afraid to be overheard by his neighbors. ‘Why, even the feudal lords are in debt nowadays! No one’s been beheaded yet for failure to pay his debts, even though they may amount to a thousand kan. If I really had any money to pay, I wouldn’t put you off. Oh, how I wish this cauldron were filled with one-hu silver pieces! Then I could clear off all my debts at once. Actually, money is the most biased thing I know; it actually seems to hate me.’

  “So speaking, he will then break into a song from a Noh play, singing, ‘Now you are up, then you are down. That’s the way of the world.’ Meantime, while stretched at full length on the floor, he beats time on his wooden pillow like a hand drum.

  ‘’That sort of fellow is simply beyond me ! Since he defies all sense of shame and decency, the average bill collector .figures it will simply be a waste of time to talk with him any further; so he strikes off his old credits and discounts the new ones. Thus the two reach an amicable compromise instead of continuing to quarrel. Today people have grown wiser.”

  When you consider carefully the state of the world, you will realize that it is better to have a foolish son than a smart clerk, for the son is by nature honest. When he sets out to .collect bills he never does the job halfheartedly, for he knows that the money will be his own some day. On the contrary, the young employee with sincere regard for his master, who attends to his duties faithfully and understands his position, is rather an exception, for rare indeed is the employee who is devoted to his master’s interests. He would prefer to visit the gay quarter, where each day a thousand pieces of gold are squandered. lf he collects a fair sum of money, he pilfers some, entering it in his notebook as ‘short.’ Or he may surreptitiously exchange good gold for bad, or substitute copper for silver, and misappropriate the financial profit gained there by to his own personal uses. Those credits of which the master is ignorant he may possibly enter as ‘non-collectable.’ Even the shrewdest master cannot keep up with all the varied forms of embezzlement.

  In the case of a petty merchant’s apprentice, he too fails to pay sincere attention to his bill collecting. Instead, he buys cards at the Hoteiya shop and walks along the street trying to memorize them, at a time when he ought to be busy working. Anyway, his actions are of no profit to his master.

  Bill collectors are not all of the same disposition, but good-natured ones are rare. Hence it is of great importance to be on guard all day long, considering every man to be a robber, just as truly as fire is caused by the careless handling of fuel.

  Once there lived a certain Churoku whose nickname was ‘ Demosthenes.’ He worked as foreman at a building site, and since he was forever cracking jokes he gained the reputation of being the town’s chief unofficial entertainer. His mimicry unfailingly pleased the company at such meetings as that of the Moon-Waiting Society or the Day-Waiting Club. Now it happened one year that as the new year approached, he found that he would be hard pressed to tide over the year end. So he went to the home of one of his patrons and asked him for a loan of five hundred momme of silver. His request being quickly granted, he was so delighted that he returned after dark to his patron’s house and sat down on the floor to sing a song of appreciation and congratulation:

  SONG OF CHUROKU ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

  How merry the notes of the koto

  That fall this eve on my ears!

  ‘Tis the house of one blest by the kami,

  A demigod, free from all cares.

  In all the wide city of Osaka,

  There’s no other house: far or near,

  That with silver and gold is surrounded,

  With treasures which none can compare,

  With the cloak that makes you invisible,

  And the hat that makes you the same.

  Oh, the hammer that fashioned the money scale’s beam

  Was Daikoku’s mallet of fortune and fame.

  How blest is my master!

  On hearing the voice raised in song the master entered and said, “Churoku, you seem to be waiting to see me. Is it for this?” So saying, he tossed him five hundred momme wrapped up in a sheet of paper. Cuhroku raised it to his forehead thrice, each time repeating appropriate expressions of gratitude. “Thanks to you,” he said with feeling, “I shall now be able to tide over the year end.
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br />   I’ll take my leave now, for before long the cock will be crowing.” When he got as far as the doorway,. he trotted back to ask the maids to tell the mistress how grateful he was. Whereupon one of them, Kichi by name, reminded him that this was a most auspicious season. “You ‘re right!” he said gaily, “so I’ll try a dance.”

  While Churoku was in the midst of his dance of felicitation, the head clerk of the household suddenly returned from business in the northern district and as he entered the house he cried out, “We must send two hundred kan to the warehouse office at once. The rice will be arriving any minute. Cash, cash ! We are badly in need of cash. This is not the time for play and song, even by you women. Somehow we’ll have to raise that cash.”

  At this moment his eye happened to light on the five hundred momme which Churoku had left on the threshold when he began his long dance. He snatched it up, crying, “Oh, what a lot of money we have here! How dare anyone leave it lying around so carelessly? Two hundred kan in cash is the money we need. Let’s see whether or not we have that much in the house. If not, we’ll have to send out search parties to scour the city until we raise it. O money, money, money! My kingdom for some money!”

  The clerk had created such a furor that poor Churoku was completely nonpulsed. So with empty hands he beat a hasty retreat.

  GOLDEN DREAMS

  “DON’T forget your business,” admonished a millionaire, “even in your dreams.” For in your sleep you are sure to dream of what gives you most concern. Sometimes the dreams are happy, sometimes they are sad. One of the most common of them is that of finding money by the roadside. But nowadays no one would ever lose his pocketbook, for he cares as much for it as he does for his life. No, you couldn’t find even a farthing in the vicinity of a temple where the Ten-Thousand-Day Service has just been held, nor even on the very next day after the Temma Festival. The fact is that money won’t come to you unless you work for it.

  There was a certain poor fellow of Fushimi who longed to become rich all at one jump, although he habitually neglected his work day by day. He had formerly lived in Edo, where in those days loose silver could be seen piled up in the money exchange shops in Suruga Street. Such a vivid impression had it made upon his mind that he still recalled the sight.

  “Oh, how I wish I owned such a heap of silver at this year end!” he sighed to himself. “There was also a newly minted stack of gold lying on the counting board that was as high as my head,” and he lay back on his paper covered bed, obsessed with his thoughts of money. On the very last day of December his wife awoke at dawn. Glancing in the direction of a sunbeam that had just come peeping in through the eastern window, she saw, to her great amazement, a heap of gold. “Oh, my goodness!’’ she cried aloud, awakening her husband. “This is literally a gift from heaven!”

  ”What’s the matter?” he asked drowsily. But at that very instant, much to her great disappointment the gold disappeared. When she told him what she had seen, her husband remarked, “The temporary manifestation of gold to you must have been caused by my attachment to all that money I saw when we were living in Edo. My situation is so hopeless at present that I would gladly toll the bell of damnation at Nakayama in Sayo. I wish I could be saved from poverty in this present world, even though it might mean damnation for me in the next. Why, in this present life rich people enjoy a veritable paradise, while we poor people suffer the very tortures of hell. We have absolutely nothing! Not even a stick of firewood to burn in the stove. Oh, what a miserable way to end the year!”

  Even as such wicked desires arose in his mind, his soul was changed from good to evil. When he fell into a doze, he dreamed of the black and white messengers of hell, drawing a rumbling fiery cart behind them, and pointing out to him the boundary line between his world and theirs. When he awoke and told his wife of the dream, she grew all the sadder and thus admonished him:

  “No one can live to be a hundred. So it is unwise of you to entertain such a silly desire. In future, if our love for each other does not diminish a bit but remains constant, we can hope to celebrate New Year’s Day happily. I can well imagine how it must vex you sometimes when you think what I have to put up with. But if things continue as bad as they are now, the three of us will starve to death.

  “It’s fortunate for us that I now have an offer of employment. It will also be a good thing for the future of our only son. If you will be so kind as to bring him up with your own hand, we may still look forward to happiness at some future time. I know it’s cruel of me to desert him, but please take good care of him for me.” All the while she spoke she was choking with tears, which so overwhelmed her husband with grief that he could say not a word in reply, but shut his eyes against the tears, unable to look her in the face.

  Just then a woman business agent from Sumizome arrived at the house, in company with an old woman about sixty years old. “As I was telling you yesterday,” she said to the young mother, “you have good breasts; so you will be paid the whole eighty-five momme in cash, and in addition you may have new kimonos made for you four times a year. You ought to be grateful for such generous treatment. Why, the pay of a kitchen maid as tall as a tower, who does the weaving in addition to her regular work, is only thirty-two momme every six months. It’s because of your breasts, you know, that you are being paid so well. If you turn down this offer, I have another candidate for the job in the upper part of Kyomachi Street. Anyway,” she concluded, “since we must have a wet nurse beginning today, you’ll have to make up your mind.”

  Speaking in a spirit of self-sacrifice the wife replied, “It’s only because we don’t want to starve. Now my chief concern is whether or not I’ll be able to do my duty successfully to the beloved son of my new master. In any case, I sincerely desire to work for him.”

  “Then let’s start as soon as possible,” replied the agent, completely ignoring the husband. She then borrowed a brush and ink from the next-door neighbor, wrote out a contract for a year, and handed her the sum of money in cash. At the same time, however, she shrewdly kept back her commission of eight and a half momme out of the money envelope on which was written “Eighty-five momme; thirty-seven pieces.” “It’s all the same whether I take it out now or later,” she said defensively. “Anyhow, this is what everybody does.”

  “And now, my dear nurse,” continued the agent, “I repeat, there’s no need to stop to change clothes.” And she started to leave at once. The husband was dissolved in tears. The wife, also flushed with weeping, spoke to her baby, saying, “Goodbye, Big Man. Mama is now leaving to go to her new master’s home, but some day during the New Year’s season she will come back to see you.” She then asked her neighbors to take good care of her baby, and once again burst into tears.

  Altogether unmoved by what she witnessed, the woman business agent hardheartedly declared, “Babies can grow up without parents. If one is not going to die, he won’t die even if you beat him to death. So long, mister!”

  And so saying, she walked on off. However, the old woman who had come along with her was moved with compassion. She looked back toward the poor husband and baby and sighed, “He will love his baby just as I love my grandson. It’s a pity to see an infant deprived of its mother’s breasts.” The agent, with no regard for the feelings of the mother who stood beside her, called back to the old woman, “ It can’t be helped, for money runs this world. It’s really no concern of ours whether that baby lives or dies.” And so saying, and stonyhearted as ever, she hurried away with the mother.

  Meantime the evening came on, the eve of New Year’s Day. The poor fellow, left at home and thoroughly sick of life, mumbled to himself, “I inherited a considerable fortune, but because of my bad management I lost it all and had to leave Edo. It was due solely to my wife’s considerate efforts that I was able to settle down here in Fushimi. Even if we should have nothing but ‘good-luck tea’ to toast the parting year, we could still be happy if only we could
celebrate the New Year’s Day together. Oh, what a shame!”

  In expectation of eating zoni with his wife on New Year’s Day the man had bought two pairs of chopsticks. When his glance happened to fall on them lying on a corner of the shelf he picked one up and said, “ One pair is unnecessary now,”and so saying he broke the chopsticks in two and threw the pieces into the kitchen fire.

  When night fell, the baby began to cry and would not be comforted. The wives of the neighbors came in and showed him how to put jio in the ricepaste and water, and how to warm it up and feed it to the baby through a bamboo tube. “It may just be my imagination,” remarked one of the women, “but it seems to me by the looks of his chin that this baby has lost flesh even in a single day.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” thought the man to himself. And then all of a sudden, feeling very angry with no one in particular, he hurled the firetongs he held in his hand out into the garden. Seeing him in such agony, the wives said to one another, “Here sits a poor unhappy husband, while his wife is enjoying herself. Her new master likes to have a good-looking maid around the house, especially since she looks so much like his wife who died recently. Why, if you saw her from the back, you’d say she looks just as attractive as his dead wife did.”

  That did it !

  No sooner had the husband heard this remark than he snatched up the money from where it had been lying untouched ever since his wife had left home, and rushed out of the house. For now he felt that he would rather die of starvation than be separated from her a moment longer.