Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900
Page 2
Much of Japanese literature, particularly the poetry, is highly allusive and elliptical. Consequently, considerable effort has been made not just to translate important and interesting texts but also to offer critical introductions to the various genres, sociocultural phenomena, and authors. Almost all the poetry is accompanied by commentary in the footnotes. Except where indicated, I have written all the introductions and commentaries, and I bear full responsibility for the accuracy and quality of the translations.
This anthology owes its existence to Jennifer Crewe, editorial director at Columbia University Press, who many years ago urged me to take on this project. Because of various other commitments, however, I did not begin working on it seriously until 1997. Since then, I have accumulated many debts.
My greatest debt is to Chris Drake, with whom I had long discussions about the texts, who took on a lion’s share of the translations, and, indeed, without whom this anthology would not exist. A number of scholars in Japan gave generously of their time, particularly Horikiri Minoru, Hori Nobuo, Ibi Takashi, Kawamoto Kōji, Kurozumi Makoto, Momokawa Takahiro, Nagashima Hiroaki, Ogata Tsutomu, Ōoka Makoto, Shirakura Kazuyoshi, Suzuki Jun, and Torii Akio. My gratitude goes as well to Lewis Cook, Andrew Gerstle, Howard Hibbett, Donald Keene, Lawrence Kominz, Lawrence Marceau, Mark Oshima, Thomas Rimer, Edward Seidensticker, Tomi Suzuki, and the anonymous readers who provided invaluable feedback.
Many thanks go to my graduate students—particularly Anne Commons, Cheryl Crowley, Torquil Duthie, Peter Flueckiger, Christina Laffin, Herschel Miller, Jamie Newhard, Satoru Saitō, Tomoko Sakomura, Michael Scanlon, and Akiko Takeuchi, all of whom assisted with the manuscript at various stages. I-Hsien Wu checked the pinyin, and Wei Shang helped with the Chinese references. Special thanks go to Tomoko Sakomura, who did extensive research on and wrote the legends for the ukiyo-e prints and for the kana-zōshi, jōruri, late ukiyo-zōshi, literati, kibyōshi, gōkan, late yomihon, and late kabuki illustrations. Melissa McCormick and Barbara Ford assisted with the illustrations. I am grateful to Sakaguchi Akiko, who helped obtain for me the illustrations from the National Theatre in Tokyo. Barbara Adachi, who recently donated her jōruri collection to C. V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia University, allowed me to use her superb photographs, and Amy Heinrich, the director of the library, provided much assistance with the photographs and other matters. Mihoko Miki, the Japanese studies librarian at the C. V. Starr Library, obtained important materials for this book. Yuiko Yampolsky helped me in many ways. Winifred Olsen was an invaluable editor and consultant for the first draft. Margaret B. Yamashita was a superb copy editor. Irene Pavitt at Columbia University Press provided invaluable advice.
My thanks to all the translators for their contributions and patience with what turned out to be an enormously complex and time-consuming project and for the seemingly endless revisions.
Most of all, my thanks to Shinchōsha for providing generous support to make these two volumes possible. Funding was also provided by Itoh Foundation (Tokyo) and the Daidō Life Foundation (Osaka).
HISTORICAL PERIODS, MEASUREMENTS, AND OTHER MATTERS
MAJOR HISTORICAL PERIODS
Nara 710–784
Heian 794–1185
Kamakura 1185–1333
North and South Courts 1336–1392
Muromachi 1392–1573
Warring States 1477–1573
Early Modern / Tokugawa 1600–1867
Meiji 1868–1912
MAJOR ERA NAMES IN THE
EARLY MODERN PERIOD
Kanbun
1661–1673
Genroku 1688–1704
Kyōhō 1716–1736
Hmōreki 1751–1764
An’ei-Tenmei 1772–1789
Tenmei 1781–1789
Kansei 1789–1801
Bunka-Bunsei (Ka-Sei) 1804–1829
Tenpō 1830–184
Bakumatsu 41853–1867
DISTANCE
ri 36 chō: approximately 2.5 miles or 4 kilometers
chō 36 jō: approximately 120 yards or 110 meters
jō 10 shaku: approximately 3.28 yards or 3 meters
shaku 10 sun: approximately 1 foot or 30 centimeters
sun 0.1 shaku: approximately 1.2 inches or 3 centimeters
WEIGHTS
kan or kanme 1,000 monme or 6.25 kinme: approximately 8.3 pounds or 3.76 kilograms
kin or kinme 160 monme or 16 ryō: approximately 1.3 pounds or 600 grams
ryō 10 monme: approximately 1.3 ounces or 37.6 grams
monme 0.1 ryō or 0.001 kanme: approximately 0.13 ounce or 3.76 grams
CAPACITY
koku 10 to: approximately 47.5 gallons or 180 liters
to 10 shō: approximately 4.75 gallons or 18 liters
shō 10 gō: approximately 3.8 pints or 1.8 liters
gō 0.1 shō: approximately 0.38 pint or 180 milliliters
AREA
chō 10 tan: approximately 2.5 acres or 1 hectare
tan 10 se: approximately 0.25 acre or 0.1 hectare
se 30 tsubo: approximately 119 square yards or 99.3 square meters
tsubo 100 shaku: approximately 3.95 square yards or 3.31 square meters
COINS
ōban, bankin largest “gold” coin (not pure gold), used only on special occasions, weighed 44 monme (5.8 ounces, 165.4 grams)
koban second largest “gold” coin, largest in everyday use, weighed 4.8 monme (63 ounces, 18 grams), equivalent to 1 ryō
ichibukin smallest gold coin, equivalent to one-quarter ryō
chōgin
largest silver coin, weighed about 43 monme (5.7 ounces, 161.64 grams)
zeni small copper coin, weighed 1 monme (0.13 ounce, 3.76 grams), smallest monetary unit
DATES AND SEASONS
The First through the Third Month of the lunar calendar (roughly the equivalent of February through April): spring
The Fourth through the Sixth Month (roughly May through July): summer
The Seventh through the Ninth Month (roughly August through October): autumn
The Tenth through the Twelfth Month (roughly November through January): winter
Conversion from the lunar to the solar calendar is complex. For example, the eighteenth day, Twelfth Month, in the third year of the Jōkyōera, was January 31, 1687.
TERMS AND TITLES
Whenever possible, a Japanese term or title is translated in its first appearance. Japanese literary terms are listed and defined in the index.
ROMANIZATION
The romanization of Japanese words is based on the Hepburn system, and the romanization of Chinese words follows the pinyin system.
NAMES
Names are given in the Japanese order, surname first, followed by personal or artistic name. After the first occurrence, artists and poets are referred to solely by their artistic name or pen name. Thus, Matsuo Bashō is referred to by his haikai name (haigō), Bashō, and not Matsuo, his family name.
ABBREVIATIONS OF MODERN SERIAL EDITIONS
KHT Koten haibungaku taikei (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1970-)
MNZ Motoori Norinaga zenshū, 21 volumes (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1968–1977)
NKBT Nihon koten bungaku taikei, 102 volumes (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957–1968)
NKBZ Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, 60 volumes (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1970–1976)
NKT Nihon kagaku taikei, 10 volumes (Tokyo: Kazam shobō, 1956-1963)
NST Nihon shisō taikei, 81 volumes (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970-1995)
RZ Ryōkan zenshū, 2 volumes, edited by Toyoharu Tōgō(Tokyo: Tōkyō Sōgensha, 1959)
SNKBT Shin Nihon koten bungaku taikei (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1989-)
SNKBZ Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1994-)
SNKS Shinchō Nihon koten shūsei, 79 volumes (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1976–1989)
Citations are followed by an abbreviation of the series title, the volume number, and the page. For example, NKBZ 51: 525 refers to page 525 of volume 51 of the Nih
on koten bungaku zenshū.
Provinces in the Early Modern Period
Chapter 1
EARLY MODERN JAPAN
One of the most dramatic transformations in Japanese history was the transition from the medieval period (thirteenth to sixteenth century) to the early modern era (1600–1867), when literary and cultural paradigms gave birth to a whole new body of vernacular literature. During the seventeenth century, urban commoners (chōnin) emerged as an economically and culturally powerful class; mass education spread, especially through the domain (han) schools for samurai and the private schools (terakoya) for commoners; and printing was introduced—all of which led to the widespread production and consumption of popular literature, which became a commodity for huge markets. As a result, traditional Japanese and Chinese literary texts were widely read for the first time.1
Until the seventeenth century, literary texts had been shared through limited quantities of handwritten manuscripts, almost all of which belonged to a small group of aristocrats, priests, and high-ranking samurai. In the medieval period, traveling minstrels (biwa hōshi) had recited military epics such as The Tale of the Heike to a populace that could neither read nor write. Even most samurai were illiterate, as were farmers and craftsmen. But in the seventeenth century, with the creation of a new socioeconomic structure, the government promotion of education, and the spread of print capitalism, this situation changed drastically. By midcentury, almost all samurai—now the bureaucratic elite—were able to read, as were the middle to upper levels of the farmer, artisan, and merchant classes.
The seventeenth century brought not only a dramatic rise in the standard of living for almost all levels of society but also a dramatic change in the nature of cultural production and consumption. In the medieval period, although provincial military lords were able to learn about the Heian classics from such traveling renga (classical linked verse) masters as Sōgi (1421–1502), the acquisition of these classical texts was limited to a relatively small circle of poet-priests and aristocrats, who were deeply rooted in the traditional culture of Kyoto. A monopoly—epitomized by the Kokin denju, the secret transmission of the Kokinshū (Anthology of Old and New Japanese Poems, ca. 905)—was established over a significant part of so-called refined culture, which was often passed on through carefully controlled lineages in one-to-one transmissions to the elected few. In the seventeenth century, by contrast, anyone who could afford to pay for lessons could hire a “town teacher” (machi shishō) in any one of the many arts or fields of learning. The transmission of learning was no longer dependent, as it had been in the medieval period, on the authority or patronage of large institutions such as Buddhist temples or powerful military lords. Such cultural activities as writing haikai poetry, singing nō (utai), and performing the tea ceremony (chanoyu) became not only available to commoners but highly commercialized.
THE SHŌGUNATE AND THE DOMAINS
The Tokugawa shōgunate (1603–1867), the third and last of three warrior governments (the first two being the Kamakura and Muromachi shōgunates), was founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu three years after he vanquished his rivals at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600. The first of fifteen successive Tokugawa shōguns, Ieyasu took the title of seii-tai shōgun (barbarian-subduing generalissimo), and his military government was referred to as the bakufu, generally translated as “shōgunate.” To control foreign trade and diplomacy, the shōgunate restricted many of the foreign contacts, under the seclusion (sakoku) edicts of 1633 to 1639, and to preserve social order at home, it attempted to establish a four-class system (shi-nō-kō-shō) in which samurai, farmer, artisan, and merchant were viewed as existing in a strict hierarchy.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Japan’s population had reached nearly 30 million. Of this number, roughly 10 percent were samurai, who were organized along feudal hierarchical lines, with ties of vassalage linking every man to his lord and ultimately to the shōgun, who ostensibly stood at the top. Immediately under the shōgun were two groups of vassals: the daimyō, or domain (han) lords, and the shogun’s direct vassals. The total number of daimyō, to whom the shōgun entrusted most of the work of provincial administration, was around 260. At the top were the collateral houses (shinpan), or cadet houses of the Tokugawa, which eventually numbered 23, followed by the “house” (fudai) daimyō, who had been Tokugawa vassals before the battle of Sekigahara and who numbered 145 by the end of the eighteenth century. The remainder were “outside” (tozama) daimyō, who had gained eminence before the rise of the Tokugawa. Many of these daimyōruled their domains like private princes. To help maintain control over them, in the 1630s and 1640s the shōgunate institutionalized the alternate attendance (sankin kōtai) system, which required daimyōto reside in Edo in alternate years in attendance on the shōgun. To perform this obligation, a daimyōhad to maintain in Edo a residential estate (yashiki)—which consumed about 70 to 80 percent of his income—where his wife and children were permanently detained by the shōgunate as political hostages. The typical daimyōtraveled to the capital every other year with a large retinue, using the main highways, which were under shōgunal control, and expending a considerable amount of money. For example, Kaga Domain (now Ishikawa Prefecture), on the Japan Sea side, belonging to the Maeda family, with an income of 1,030,000 koku, required a retinue of 2,500 when the daimyōtraveled to Edo.
The Tokugawa house itself formed the largest power bloc. The direct Tokugawa vassals were the hatamoto, the enfeoffed bannermen and the higher-ranking direct vassals; and the gokenin, the stipended housemen and the lower-ranking direct vassals. The hatamoto, about five thousand in number, occupying a position analogous to an officer corps in a standing army, drew annual stipends of at least one hundred koku and usually were descendants of warriors who had helped the Tokugawa before the battle of Sekigahara. Their civil positions ranged from grand chamberlain (sobayōnin), directly under the senior councillor (rōjū), to financial clerks. The gokenin, who numbered about twenty thousand in 1800, received annual stipends that were usually less than one hundred koku. Under the gokenin and the provincial daimyōcame the bulk of the samurai class.
With a few exceptions, such as Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (r. 1680–1709), Tokugawa Yoshimune (r. 1716–1745), and Tokugawa Ienari (r. 1787–1837), who wielded nearly absolute power, the shōgun was usually overshadowed by others in the shōgunal administrative system, particularly the senior councillors, most often house daimyō who met in formal council and conducted national affairs, foreign relations, and control of the daimyō. From time to time, powerful senior councillors such as Tanuma Okitsugu (1719–1788), Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758–1829), and Mizuno Tadakuni (1794–1851) were able to dominate the council and control shōgunal policy.
Politically and financially, the Tokugawa shōgunate was at its peak in the seventeenth century. Thereafter, many of its daimyō controls lost their efficacy, and its revenues began to decline. Periodic attempts were made to restore both authority and solvency, first with the Kyōhō Reforms (1716–1736), carried out by the eighth shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshimune; then with the Kansei Reforms (1787–1793), executed by the senior councillor Matsudaira Sadanobu; and finally with the Tenpō Reforms (1830–1844), administered by the senior councillor Mizuno Tadakuni. Although the Kyōhō Reforms temporarily restabilized the finances of the Tokugawa shōgunate, none of these measures had lasting success. They generally did, however, have a greater impact, in terms of censorship and other limitations, on cultural and literary production. Accordingly, the high points of early modern literature—the Genroku era (1688–1704), the Hōreki-Tenmei era (1751–1789), and the Bunka-Bunsei era (1804–1829)—tended to come precisely between these major reforms.
THE SOCIAL HIERARCHY
In order to strengthen their power and authority, the bakufu and the provincial domains created a rigid, hierarchical class society made up of samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants, in descending order. (Nobility were treated separately, and Buddhist and Shinto priests were given a posi
tion equal to that of the samurai.) Below the four classes were outcasts called eta and hinin (nonpersons). By the end of the early modern period, about 75 percent of the population were farmers; 10 percent, samurai; about 7 to 8 percent, urban commoners; 2 percent, priests; and 4 percent, a miscellaneous mix. To reinforce this social hierarchy, extremely harsh rules were instituted. Only samurai were given surnames; they also had the right to cut down a farmer or chōnin for an insult. Every aspect of clothing and living was regulated to bring each individual within the class system.
Among the samurai, a strict hierarchy was established as well, beginning at the top with the shōgun, daimyō, hatamoto, and gokenin and working down to the servants of middle-rank samurai families, each pledging absolute fidelity to his immediate superior. Similar hierarchies based on fidelity also existed in commoner society: between the main family (honke) and the branch family (bunke) in regard to kinship structure, between the master and the apprentice in artisan society, and between the employee and the employer in the merchant world. Strict laws governing residence and clothing were applied also to the eta, who were confined to farming and jobs related to dead animals (such as leather making) or criminals, and the hinin, who cleaned up waste and performed other demeaning tasks.
The fundamental social unit in the early modern period was the ie (house), which was centered on the family and governed by the house head (kachō), with preferential treatment given to the eldest son, who usually inherited the property and became the next head of the house. The ie included nonblood relations such as employees and servants, and it was possible, and not uncommon, for an adopted heir with no blood tie to become the kachō. The younger sons, who did not inherit any property, frequently left the house to be adopted by a family that lacked sons. The house was the principal unit within each class category (samurai, farmer, artisan, and merchant), with each house pursuing a hereditary “house occupation” (kagyō). The members of the house considered themselves as both individuals and part of the larger social unit of the house, with a sense of obligation toward other members of the house similar to that between child and parent or retainer and lord.