Five Women Who Loved Love

by Ihara Saikaku

  Sources and background. The actual events of this story occurred in Himeji about the years 1659–60. There is no reliable contemporary account of the event, Saikaku’s story being the oldest now extant. We do possess, however, a rare ballad of the utazaimon genre entitled Onatsu and Seijūrō, part of a series on the subject of the “Five Women Who Loved Love” and dating probably from the 1690’s. The ballad is too long to quote in full, but may be summarized as follows, for comparison with Saikaku’s version:

  Onatsu and the employee Seijūrō were deeply in love, but Onatsu’s father, not knowing of their affair, had already arranged for her marriage. Kanshichi, another employee of the House of Tajima, pilfered Onatsu’s marriage trousseau and dowry money and informed his master that Seijūrō had committed the theft in order to obstruct the forthcoming marriage. The father became terribly angry, for he had only with great difficulty succeeded in arranging an advantageous marriage for his daughter, who had been born of a courtesan and was thus not acceptable in a high-class family. The father expelled Seijūrō at once. Seijūrō plotted that very night to stab the false accuser Kanshichi in his bed, but by mistake he killed another employee. For this he was taken prisoner and soon after executed.

  Despite the fact that part of their purpose lay in the recitation of newsworthy happenings, the utazaimon ballads as a genre were quite free in their treatment of actual events and were characterized particularly by the intensification of dramatic elements. Thus such details as Onatsu’s parentage—daughter of a courtesan of Murotsu6—seem added for greater dramatic intensity, as does likewise the introduction of the villain Kanshichi, the mistaken stabbing (a convention of such tales), and possibly even the proposed marriage itself, which produced a dramatic crisis for the lovers.

  But let us examine another version of the story, that appearing in Nishizawa Ippū’s novel of 1718, Three Revenges for Adultery (Midare-hagi sambon yari):

  Seijūrō, an employee of the House of Tajima, was carrying on a secret affair with his master’s daughter Onatsu. The two eloped to Osaka, but were captured and taken back to Himeji. Seijūrō was beheaded. After her parents died, having no near relatives or friends, Onatsu removed to Katakami in the province of Bizen, where she opened a little teashop for travelers and lived to an old age.

  Ippū’s version seems nearer to the true events. The story occurs in his novel as an incidental anecdote concerning the village of Katakami and there is no attempt at dramatization. It will be seen that his version is basically the same as that used by Saikaku, who, however, inserts an introductory chapter on Seijūrō’s background and then at the end adds, perhaps from his own imagination, the story of Onatsu’s madness and becoming a nun.

  To the above literary sources must be added a recently discovered semi-historical one, which, though dating from a century after the actual event, may well be the most accurate of all. This account appears in the manuscript Shoki shishūki of 1760 and will be translated in full, retaining the elliptical style of the original:

  Memorandum on the Affair of Onatsu and Seijūrō

  The second house from the corner at the Fuda Crossroads, Main Street, Himeji, was formerly that of Kuzaemon of the House of Tajima; at present the house is occupied by the clan official Omoteya Shirobei. Behind it there is an old well used for drainage, i.e., the well in use there during the period under consideration.

  The clerk Seijūrō was a native of Murotsu. Following his dismissal from employment he rented a house on Nishi-kon Street. Saying that it was for the purpose of breaking in, he had a sword made. Every evening a man named Kakoya Shōzaemon from Sakata Street tried to dissuade him.

  On a certain day in the Sixth Month of 1659, the Year of the Wild Boar, Seijūrō broke in. As the father Kuzaemon was escaping from the house, he tripped over a barley-drying mat at the opposite north side of the street and fell down. Thereupon Seijūrō slashed him from behind, wounding him on the shoulder. From the neighborhood, people gathered but were unable to capture Seijūrō. The clan police were called, and Seijūrō was put in jail. Afterwards, at the foot of Sembakawa Road, at the eastern edge of the Ichimai Bridge, he was beheaded.

  His grave is behind the Kyūshō Hermitage (in front of the Keiun Temple), an appendage of the Nozato Keiun Temple, and is marked by a pine tree, still standing. It is said that Onatsu later went to Shōdo Island to be married; this is according to Aboshiya Dōsei.

  Seijūrō had been taken in and concealed for a time in the Kyūshō Hermitage. For this, the front gate was closed by official order.

  The above affair of Onatsu and Seijūrō was made into Jōruri and Kabuki plays and became famous.

  The Emperor Gosai has a verse:

  Seijūrō—

  Has not Onatsu [summer] come,

  The weeping cuckoo-bird?

  The straw hat so resembles his:

  O Moon of Ariake.

  Although a late source, in its relative simplicity this account may well represent the true story. The details of Seijūrō’s dismissal are not given, but presumably the occasion was the discovery of his affair with Onatsu (who in this account also is the daughter of Kuzaemon). For revenge, Seijūrō broke into the House of Tajima, wounded his former master, and for this was subsequently executed.

  It will be seen that any attempt to reconcile these varied sources must remain tentative and unresolved. Although the early Kabuki versions of the tale have been lost, they may well have exerted a strong influence upon Saikaku’s treatment of the story, particularly in simplifying the lover’s crime to love alone, whereas in the actual event an attempt at murder was also involved.

  In this connection it is interesting to note that Chikamatsu, in his dramatic version of the story, produced in 1709 under the title A Prayer-Song to Buddha on the Fiftieth Anniversary (Gojūnenki uta-nembutsu), follows the aforementioned utazaimon ballad rather closely. In this he was doubtless adhering to the theatrical tradition that had early developed around the story of the two lovers.7

  It should not be concluded, however, that the variations between Saikaku’s version on the one hand and that of the utazaimon and Chikamatsu on the other are entirely a matter of the differing requirements of the novel and the drama. Rather is this due to a basically different attitude toward life.

  Throughout Five Women Who Loved Love the actual crimes of Saikaku’s lovers are those of love alone. That Saikaku should have been the first Japanese writer to treat the subject in such detail will indicate his sympathies; at the same time, he does not evade the direct consequences. With Chikamatsu’s hero, the mistaken stabbing doubtless increases our sympathy for the man, but it also enables the dramatist to evade punishing his creature for his actual crime—forbidden love. Saikaku is not able openly to criticize the laws of his country, yet he lets his readers see clearly that—whatever the immediate causes of execution—his protagonist’s crimes are primarily those of passion alone.

  Chikamatsu’s characters are guilty primarily of unfiliality and disloyalty—the daughter to her father (who had gone to such trouble to arrange a good marriage) and Seijūrō to his master. But Saikaku’s protagonists are the more tragic: their crimes are human, natural, and uncontrived; they are victims not of Fate nor of the wrath of the gods, but of feudal law.

  Finally, let us examine something of this law that governed seventeenth-century Japanese society:8

  Item One. Illicit intercourse. Persons such as those who have engaged in illicit intercourse with their master's daughter, or who have attempted such: Death. At the master's request this may be reduced to banishment to a distant island, or may be pardoned.9

  Item Two. Abduction.10 In accordance with previous examples: Those who abduct persons: Death.

  Item Three. Theft. [No specific edict is known for the seventeenth century; the following edict, approved in 1720 and again in 1741, doubtless applied equally to the earlier period, when in fact, most punishments were more strict.] Those who take things given in their charge and flee with them: When money, more th
an ten ryō,11 and when goods, of a value exceeding ten ryō: Death.

  It must be added that, although not always specifically so stated, the punishment depended to a considerable degree upon the relationship of the offender to the offended. Illicit intercourse as such was not necessarily punished if both parties were of equal rank and no criminal offence was involved.

  The Confucian ideals of piety and loyalty to one’s master or teacher played, of course, an important role in the make-up of Tokugawa law. But perhaps more basic was the fact that shame (on the part of the injured) was the moralizing force in Tokugawa society, where guilt (on the part of the offender) would be in ours. A menial’s crime was thus the greater, for he made his master suffer a terrible loss of face—which might even cause the latter’s social or financial ruin. Thus, with the wife of an employer or teacher, or with his daughter, the punishment for illicit intercourse was often death. With the younger married sister of one’s wife, with one’s mother-in-law, or with another man’s wife (if an equal), however, the punishment was usually only banishment. Such laws were not consistent, however, and there were frequent changes, particularly in the eighteenth century. Thus, for example, an edict of 1741 states: “A man who seduces his master’s daughter is to be sentenced to medium deportation. The daughter, however, is to be handcuffed and turned over to her parents.”

  Psychologically, the most important factor to remember is that the accused, if wanting in influence, had no legal means of redress or appeal.

  Book Two: Osen the Cooper’s Wife

  The first notable element in this tale is the low social rank of the protagonists. Osen is an unlettered peasant girl, come to Osaka to work as a servant in order to help her impoverished family. The cooper is an artisan; and the old woman who effects their meeting, a former abortionist now making her living by grinding flour. This totally plebeian atmosphere marks a new element in Japanese literature.

  Next should be noted the readiness with which Osen, who has had no relations with men before, accepts the cooper’s suit. True, the cooper’s cause is put forward very skillfully by the old woman, and Osen may be supposed just to be reaching the age for romantic thoughts. But at the same time her enthusiastic acceptance, before she has even seen the man, indicates in her an uncommon susceptibility to the feminine weakness for being loved. This trait, in a way, prepares the reader for that act of willful passion that is to end the heroine’s life.12

  Saikaku’s emphasis upon the events leading up to Osen’s marriage, rather than upon the later tragedy itself, may best be understood when we recollect that he was writing of an actual event that had occurred but a year earlier. He purposely, therefore, prolonged the preliminary story of the romance of Osen and the cooper, bringing in the incident of the pilgrimage to Ise and the obstructive character Kyushichi, and effecting the marriage only toward the end of the last chapter but one. The very fact that the organization of the volume required five chapters for each novelette perhaps also influenced his treatment of the plot.

  Finally, at the end of the fourth chapter Saikaku gives a general picture of the current low state of wifely morality, by way of preparing the reader for the events of the final chapter. This moralizing must be taken as representing one facet of Saikaku’s own views, for though he was radical for his times in advocating freedom in the choice of a mate, irrespective of social rank, this did not extend to condoning adultery, or even remarriage on the part of a widow. It is important to stress the fact that although Saikaku sympathized even with adulteresses, he could not condone the morality of their act.

  The climax of the story is handled only briefly, and it is not the attempt at adultery which interests Saikaku so much as the psychological motivation of Osen, a happily married mother. There is no indication that she preferred the elderly Chōzaemon to her own husband; what moved her was primarily indignation at Chōzaemon’s wife. Her revenge took the only form that occurred to her—actually carrying out the act of which she had been unjustly accused.

  The ability to create an infatuation out of her own imagination had been but an amusing characteristic of Osen’s when first revealed earlier in the story; now it was to prove her destruction.

  Sources and background. Regarding the sources of this story, we possess no historical data at all. The date given for the final incident in Saikaku’s story is the First Month of 1685, the festival evening of the twenty-second day—less than a year before the novel was written. We have nothing to confirm or deny this date. The only other contemporary version of the, story is the utazaimon ballad Taruya Osen (Osen the Cooper’s Wife), evidently current at the time Saikaku’s novel was written, though the oldest extant version dates from a decade later. As we have noted in discussing the sources of the Onatsu-Seijūrō story, the utazaimon ballads tended to melodramatize the actual events and often introduced fictional incidents to that end. The Taruya Osen ballad tells this story:

  The Osaka cooper Chūbyōe and his wife Osen were a loving couple, with a son of four named Matsu-no-suke. One evening, while the cooper was out at a temple service, the neighborhood malt merchant Chōemon, who was in love with Osen, came visiting and attempted to force his attentions upon her. Osen refused him, whereupon he took hold of her son, who was sleeping nearby, and threatened to kill the boy with a dagger. Out of love for her child Osen conceded to Chōemon’s desire. Just at that moment her husband returned home. Osen killed herself on the spot, knowing excuses to be of no avail. She was but twenty-two when she died.

  In the absence of historical data it is not possible to state categorically which version is nearer to the events; yet the utazaimon scene of the threatened child is an obviously theatrical one and quite probably an invention. Certainly the incident of the dropped tray and Osen’s consequent impulsive actions—the weakest points in Saikaku’s story—would not have been sufficiently melodramatic for a sentimental popular ballad. Thus it may well be that the dramatic deficiencies of Saikaku’s final chapter are due primarily to an overadherence to the actual facts of the story. At the same time it is noteworthy that the utazaimon—which doubtless represents the popular concept of the event—concentrates entirely upon the immediate scene of the adultery. The first four chapters of Saikaku’s novel would thus seem his own invention (though perhaps based upon some other contemporary event)—probably added from a feeling that the adultery scene alone did not offer sufficient material for a novelette of this length.

  Regarding the legal aspects of Saikaku’s story and of the events behind it, the laws are most clear in cases concerning adultery with the wife of one’s master:

  Persons such as those who commit adultery with their master's wife, or with their teacher's wife: Death for both the man and the woman.

  Persons such as those who propose adultery, or those who send love letters to their master's wife: Death, banishment, or pardon.13

  Persons accessory to adultery with a master's wife: Death.14

  Although not considered so great a crime, adultery with the wife of an equal was technically punishable likewise, though such cases were rare, and the severity of the punishment in this case must certainly have startled the bourgeois society of the day. Chōzaemon’s crime was doubtless intensified by the fact of Osen’s immediate suicide—just as, in cases of double suicide, when the lover failed to die he was often executed anyway.

  Several edicts explicitly state, moreover, that a husband who finds his wife in the act of adultery may legally execute both her and the lover on the spot. Osen’s immediate suicide thus had its basis not only in shame at discovery, but also in a clear awareness of her probable fate. Whether she thought of the consequences before that actual moment is difficult to say.

  Book Three: Osan and Moemon

  Of the five stories which comprise Five Women Who Loved Love the third is the most skillfully organized. The opening chapter, in which the rakes of Kyoto (among them Osan’s future husband) survey the different women passing by, is an excellent introduction to the heroine Osan, del
ineating not only her beauty, but also evoking the sensuous atmosphere that is to suffuse the whole story.15 The introduction brings in no conflicting elements and leads naturally into the revelation of who this girl is and where her beauty is to lead her.16

  Although the events surrounding Osan’s marriage to the almanac maker are dealt with only briefly, the marriage has something in common with that of Osen, namely, that the proposal came from the man’s side and was accepted without the girl’s knowing her future husband. The character, education, and social status of the two girls are of course quite different. But they do have in common this element of passive acceptance of love, and doubtless it is one of the factors underlying their subsequent rash behavior.

  Not unlike the mortification Osen feels at the unjust accusations of Chōzaemon’s wife is the indignation felt by Osan when she reads Moemon’s churlish reply to the letter she has written him on Rin’s behalf:

  “Why, how abominable he is! There’s certainly no dearth of men in this world! Rin’s as pretty as they come and should hardly have trouble finding a lover the equal of this fellow Moemon anytime.”