“What sort of young man are you?” he asked.
“As you can see I am one who has taken up the way of manly love. I have heard so much about you, Sir Priest, that I came all the way to meet you at the risk of my life. But these many loves of yours—I knew nothing of them. I have loved you in vain. It was all a mistake.”
He had almost reached the hut, where Oman waited eagerly for him, when it seemed to her as if two handsome young men came toward him out of the withered under-brush. Each was as beautiful as the other.
In the midst of her wailing Gengobei clapped his hands in delight. “How could I fail to appreciate such love as that!” he exclaimed as his fickle heart went out to her. “Those two lovers you saw are dead—just illusions.”
Oman wept and he with her. “Love me in their stead,” she begged. “Do not turn me away.”
“Love is hard to pass up,” he replied coyly, “even for a priest.”
Perhaps Buddha would forgive him. After all, Gengobei did not know his lover was a girl.
4. Variety is the spice of love
“When I first entered the religious life,” Gengobei was saying, “I promised Buddha that I would give up completely the love of women. But I knew it would be very hard to give up the love of young men, and I asked him to be lenient with me in this. Now there is no one who can censure me for it, because I made it all plain to the Buddha from the beginning. Since you loved me enough to come all the way in search of me, you must never forsake me later on.”
Gengobei said these things half in jest, but it was doubly a joke for Oman. She pinched her thigh and held her breast to keep from laughing.
“Listen now to what I say,” she said in great seriousness. “I was deeply touched by your troubles in the past, and it seems a pity that you should have become a priest. My coming here shows how great was my anguish. I risked my life for your love. From now on you must promise to think no more of taking up with other men. Even if the things I say do not suit you exactly, you must never disobey them. When you have made that solemn pledge, I will give you my all and promise to love you even after death.”
It was a foolish thing for Gengobei to do, but he gave his solemn promise. “For a sweetheart like this I would do anything, even leave the priesthood if it came to that.”
Panting with desire, he slipped his hand up her sleeve and felt her naked body. It was strange. His lover wore no underwear.5
Gengobei’s puzzled expression amused Oman, but it was her turn to be puzzled when Gengobei took something from his toilet bag and put it in his mouth to chew on it.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Without a word he hid whatever it was—perhaps what lovers of men call nerigi.6 This, too, struck Oman as funny and she turned away to lie face downward.
Taking off his clothes, with one foot Gengobei kicked them into a corner and proceeded to the business of love-making, always an absorbing business no matter who you are. He slipped off her sash, which, having been made for a young man, was only of medium width and tied in the rear. Then it occurred to him that his lover might not be accustomed to cool nights in the country, so he threw a large cotton night-robe over “him.”
“Now!” he said, lying down with his head on her arm.
The bonze had hardly settled into bed before he was dizzy with excitement. He ran his hand around her back nervously. “This boy hasn’t even a moxa scar yet—hasn’t been touched at all.”
But when Gengobei began to move his hand slowly down from her hips, it made Oman uneasy. At this point, she thought, it might be best if she pretended to fall asleep.
Impatient, the bonze began playing with her ear, and she threw one leg over him, revealing some woman’s underwear of scarlet crepe.
Gengobei was amazed. He took a careful look at her and realized what a soft face his lover had, just like a woman’s. The discovery left him dumbfounded. For a few minutes he could say nothing. Then he tried to get out of bed, but Oman held on to him tightly.
“Before, you promised to do anything I said, no matter what it was. Have you forgotten so soon? I am called Oman of the Ryukyu family. Last year I sent you one love note after another, but you were so unkind as to leave them all unanswered. There was nothing I could do to heal the wound in my heart, nothing but to disguise myself this way and come here to see you. Can you blame me for it?”
When Oman had said this, she brought her lovely young body close to his. In no time at all Gengobei lost himself in a desire for her.
“What difference does it make—the love of men or the love of women?” he cried, overpowered by the bestial passion which rules this fickle world.
Such sudden infatuations are common to us all, not limited to Gengobei alone. Traps they may be, yet few can refuse the invitation to fall in. Even one of the Buddha’s feet may have slipped in.
5. The man who had too much money
It takes only a year to grow a head of hair. When he had cast off his holy robes, the young bonze looked like the old Gengobei, and he started calling himself by that name again.
In the mountains, where there are no calendars, people tell the seasons by the blooming and falling of the plum blossoms. It was January when Gengobei gave up monastic abstinence for a life of idle pleasure. In early February he went to see an old friend who lived outside Kagoshima and rented from him a little thatched cottage where he could live in seclusion with Oman. But as they had no means of livelihood, Gengobei went to visit the home of his parents, only to find that it had been sold into other hands. What once had been a respectable moneychanger’s office no longer knew the ring of gold and silver on metal scales. Near the entrance was now hung a sign reading “Bean-curd,” the sight of which made Gengobei sick at heart.
He asked a stranger: “What has happened to the man Gengoemon who used to live around here?”
“I have heard,” the stranger told him, “that he was once a good and prosperous man. He had a son called Gengobei, the handsomest young man of this province, but also a slave to love. In eight years time Gengobei wasted over eight thousand pounds of silver on his pleasures, and the loss unfortunately meant ruination for the old man, which just goes to show how things can turn out. Later on, they say, Gengobei gave up the world of pleasure for the life of a monk, all because of some love affair. Can you imagine being as thoughtless as that? Whenever people speak of him, they say: ‘I’d just like to meet that rascal once, face to face!”
“That face is right here,” Gengobei thought to himself, and out of shame he pulled his straw hat far down over his head.
At last he returned to his lodging place, where there was no lamp to see by at night and no firewood for chilly mornings. What was even more depressing, love and love-making did not thrive on hard times. The lovers slept side-by-side on the same pillow, but had nothing to say to each other in the way of bedtime talk.
Then morning came and it was March third, the day of the Doll’s Festival. Little boys ran about with presents of bean cakes for their relatives. Outside there were cockfights and various other amusements. But still it was a dreary day inside for the lovers. They had not even a sardine to put upon the tray set before the altar. They broke off a sprig of peach blossom and, since there was no saké, set the blossoms in their empty saké jar. That was all. When day faded into night, the fourth followed in dismal succession.
Once, as they were thinking of a way to earn a living, it occurred to them to put on plays such as they had once seen in the capital. In no time at all Gengobei made up his face with a false mustache so that he looked the part of the gallant Slave to Love.7 Indeed he seemed the living image of the actor Arashi Sanemon,8 except that his carriage on the stage was poor because his hips swayed like an amateur’s.
“Yakkono, yakkono,”9 he sang. And then:
Gengobei, where did you go?
To the hills of Satsuma,
With a scabbard worth three cents,
And a sword-knot only two,
And a sword insi
de of cypress wood.
While he sang thus in a loud voice to amuse the children of one village after another, Oman dressed herself up in faded garments to perform kyogen10 and other dramatic acts. Together they lived along in a world where tears were as plentiful as dew. It was not easy living on love. They had to lose all sense of pride and wore themselves thinner each day until their old beauty was lost too. Still, in this cruel world, there was no one who felt any pity for them. They were as helpless against fate as the purple blossoms of the wisteria, doomed to fade and die. They cursed their friends, pitied themselves. At last it seemed as if the end had come.
Then it so happened that Oman’s parents came along, anxiously searching for their daughter. When they found her it was an occasion for great rejoicing. They decided that, since Gengobei was the man of Oman’s heart, the two should be united in wedlock and given the family home and fortune. A whole retinue of servants came to escort them home, where their return brought joy to all.
To Gengobei were turned over all the keys to the family possessions, three hundred and eighty-three of them. A date was set for the wedding and the storage cellar was opened up. In it were great trays of money, six hundred and fifty of them, each marked “82 pounds of silver.” All the coins were covered with mould and seemed to have been hidden away for so long that one could almost hear them groaning to be let out of confinement.
While he sang thus in a loud voice . . . Oman dressed herself up in faded garments to perform . . . dramatic acts. Together they lived along in a world where tears were as plentiful as dew. It was not easy living on love. . . .
In the northeast corner of the cellar stood seven large jars, full of newly-minted coins that spilled out through the cover and lay about like sand littering the floor. Outside in a separate storehouse there was a mountain of fine clothes which had originally come from China, and a piece of aloewood as large as the beam on which a cauldron is hung over a fire. There were one thousand two hundred and thirty-five flawless coral beads, weighing from one and a half to one hundred and thirty momme each; sharkskin for sword handles; celadon porcelain in unlimited quantities; fine teacups from the Asuka River region, piled about carelessly because it made no difference how many got broken; some salted Mermaids;11 a small bucket made of agate; a rice pounder from the Taoist paradise of Han-tan in China; a kitchen-knife box from Old Urashima;12 a scarf from Benzaiten, Goddess of Beauty; a razor made for the long-headed Fukurokuju, God of Luck; the spear of Tamon, Guardian of Heaven; a winnow from the God of Plenty large enough to winnow five thousand bushels of rice; and so many other things that one could not remember them all. Indeed, all the treasures of the world were there.
To Gengobei were turned over all the keys to the family possessions . . . great trays of money . . . a mountain of fine clothes . . . celadon porcelain . . . salted Mermaids . . . all the treasures of the world. . . .
Gengobei was so happy that he wept.
“I could buy up all the beauties of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka.13 I could finance all the theatres.14 And still it would take more than my lifetime to spend this whole fortune. No matter how hard I tried, I could not think of a way to use the money up. What in the world will I do with it?”
Footnotes
1 All debts were to be repaid on this date, and monks were not immune to the claims of creditors.
2 Site of a monastery founded in the ninth century by the great patriarch Kobo Daishi. It ranked with Mt. Hiei as the most important of Buddhist centers.
3 The seventh month of the lunar calendar, so called because at this time of year came the Tanabata Festival, when women and girls wrote love poems to the Celestial Shepherd (Vega, the Weaver).
4 In October, it was believed, the gods all assembled at the great shrine of Izumo, leaving the rest of the country “godless.”
5 That is, no men’s underwear which ties around the waist.
6 An aphrodisiac made from the hollyhock.
7 Gengobei himself, as portrayed in the theatre in Saikaku’s time.
8 Famous actor of Saikaku’s time who played the role of Gengobei.
9 Rhythmic chant, introducing a popular song about Gengobei.
10 Kyogen—in this case an early form of Kabuki.
11 A kind of salamander.
12 The submarine palace of the goddess Otohime.
13 The top-ranking female prostitutes (tayu), whose debts he would have to pay off to make them his own.
14 With their male actor-prostitutes.
Saikaku’s “Five Women”
Richard Lane
Columbia University
It is only in the past sixty years that the greatness of the Japanese novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) has come generally to be recognized in his own country. Not, of course, that he was neglected in his own day; his works were best sellers, and other novelists copied and plagiarized him assiduously. But the novelist had no status, no raison d’être, in a feudal society. It remained for the opening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century—with the subsequent realization of the importance of the novelist in Europe, and a familiarity with the new literary currents of naturalism and realism—to make Japanese intellectuals seek in their own past a spirit they could call teacher and preceptor. Thus the Saikaku revival came largely at the hands of the novelists, among them the greatest figures of the Meiji Enlightenment—Kōda Rohan, Ozaki Kōyō, Mori Ōgai, and Higuchi Ichiyō.
Although Five Women Who Loved Love1 has always been one of the most popular of Saikaku’s works of fiction, its significance in Japanese cultural history is not readily apparent to the modern reader. We can only with effort project ourselves into a feudal and Procrustean age in which no men were created equal, each having his own strictly hierarchical place in society. Only when, in Saikaku’s novels, an anti-conventional love affair is punished by the death penalty, are we forcibly reminded of the inclement age in which he wrote. And only after examining the conventionalized writings of Saikaku's predecessors and contemporaries do we realize what a daring innovator for egalitarianism he was.
Saikaku has thus a special significance for Americans: some two and a half centuries ago he planted the seeds of that democracy which found opportunity for renewed growth under our own recent Occupation. Saikaku wrote:2 “Even a court nobleman, deprived of his ceremonial robes, becomes but a plaster-peddler possessed of a rather pale skin. Man is in general only what his profession makes him.” Here he was expressing a way of thought rare in pre-modern Japanese literature—an idea which had hardly as yet gained any wide currency in Europe.
Without some knowledge of Saikaku’s times, his full significance cannot be apprehended. Thus, in addition to discussing the literary elements of Five Women Who Loved Love, we shall have occasion subsequently to examine in some detail the legal and social conditions that form the background of his stories.
* * *
Saikaku was forty-four years old when he wrote Five Women Who Loved Love. He had already, some four years earlier, given up a successful career as poet and critic in order to devote himself to the as yet unrecognized profession of novel writing. From the brilliant but erratic performance in his first novel, The Love Rogue (Kōshoku ichidai otoko) of 1682, Saikaku had progressed through a series of novels and stories which portrayed in detail the varied facets of the life and loves of his times—the adventures of gallants and rakes, of courtesans and harlots, of samurai and plebeian pederasts. Now, with the year 1686, he turned from the world of socially and legally sanctioned love and sensuality and set his scene amidst the common men and women of the towns, depicting freedom of love in an age when this was the most dangerous of all games.
Only a year earlier Saikaku had published his first novel based upon the life of an actual person—The Life and Death of Wankyū (Wankyū isse no monogatari). Now he took for his protagonists five contemporary heroines—from their tragic lives weaving the tales published together as Five Women Who Loved Love. The five novelettes are analyzed below.3
Book One: O
natsu and Seijūrō
As with each of the five stories in Five Women Who Loved Love, this novelette is divided into five chapters. In the first is introduced the hero Seijūrō, handsome son of a wealthy townsman, an experienced gallant, beloved of all the courtesans. To us, profligacy may not seem a very suitable qualification for a romantic hero; but in a society where marriages were arranged by one’s parents, where the niceties of courtship were hardly known, and where love affairs with ordinary townswomen were highly perilous, the gay quarters were the only training ground for a connoisseur of love. Saikaku’s purpose in this opening chapter is simply to show the hero’s qualifications for the more serious love affair that is to follow in the succeeding chapters. Seijūrō is thus introduced as an idealized gallant, reminiscent of the famous hero of Saikaku’s first novel, The Love Rogue.
Having introduced his hero, and furthermore, in the affair with Minagawa, shown his capacity for serious love, Saikaku in his second chapter enters into the main story, for which his hero has been prepared by disownment for his earlier follies. Here Seijūrō displays his basic qualities as a member of the bourgeoisie, and proves a dependable and energetic worker. This situation is upset by the master’s younger sister Onatsu, who, though already fifteen,4 and romantically inclined, has as yet refused all offers of marriage. And what first turns her heart toward Seijūrō is not his handsomeness, but rather the thought of the remarkable qualifications he must possess, to have been so sincerely loved by so many courtesans! Seijūrō is at first reluctant to forego his peace of mind, but once having returned the girl’s affection, it is he who plans the details of the picnic in the third chapter, in order that they may be alone together. Here, as in one such passage in each of the other four stories of the book, the scene of the lover’s first bliss is described suggestively, though with considerable restraint.5
In the fourth chapter the lovers elope, for Seijūrō’s lowly position as an employee renders hope of an approved marriage impossible. The coincidental mislaying of seven hundred ryō in gold seems a rather artificial device to increase our sympathies for the lovers, but this was probably one of the conventions of the story as it appeared in the popular theatre of the time. Again, one might even suggest that this was but a ruse on the author’s part to avoid direct criticism of the Tokugawa laws against love between unequals, which was, after all, the only actual “crime” involved. Further, it was very common in this period for eloping couples to steal and take such funds with them; and as we shall see, Saikaku’s story is based upon an actual event. At any rate, Seijūrō’s fate is sealed on all three counts of seduction, kidnaping, and theft, and he is beheaded. The final chapter turns back to Onatsu, who is left behind to suffer madness and final retirement from the world of men.
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