Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  Seamstresses (left) sew robes in the spacious sewing room of a daimyō’s Edo mansion. A needle box, a bobbin, a measure, and pin cushions are visible. A well-dressed young woman (right), who seems to be the daimyō’s daughter, stands with her parlor maid. Behind them, robes hang on a rack, waiting to be sewn.

  As I lay swearing this to myself, dawn came, and the other women sleeping beside me woke. I folded up my bedding, stacked it in a pile, and waited impatiently for my third of a pint of breakfast rice. I looked around for still-live logs from the previous night’s fire, lit my pipe, and puffed hard on it without bothering to smoke in the elegant way. I wasn’t planning to show my messy hair to anyone anyway, so I gathered it up roughly and tied it with an old paper cord. The chignon on top was leaning sideways, but I didn’t even care.

  Later I went out to throw away what was left of the oily water we’d used for smoothing down our sidelocks. As I was standing there in the shade of the grove of bamboos growing just outside the window, I caught sight of a man on the far side of the trees. He looked like a hired man who did odd jobs for the warrior retainers living in the mansion barracks.103 Unaware he was being watched, he’d put down the basket of fresh fish he’d bought early that morning by the shore in Shibaura and stood with the bottom of his plain, dark blue robe hitched up beside the barracks drainage ditch. In one hand he held a flask of vinegar and sulfur-tipped staves for kindling, and in the palm of the other he held his thing, pissing. The pure stream fell like a strand of sacred Otowa Falls,104 knocking lose a rock at the edge of the ditch and hollowing out the dirt beneath it.

  As I watched, longings came up from deep within me. Ah, I thought, that poor man. He never got any glory putting down the Shimabara Rebellion, and he’s certainly never made enough money to be able to raise his fine spear in the Shimabara licensed quarter.105 He’s getting old without ever making a name for himself with the women there. He and I, how pathetic we are. We’re both just wasting our lives!

  In the next few days my desire grew so strong I found it impossible to do my job. I claimed I was seriously ill, and with that excuse I managed to get discharged before my seasonal contract was up. I found a room for myself in a back-street tenement in an out-of-the-way part of Hongō, in the sixth block.106 On a post at the entrance to the alleyway leading to the tenement I put up a sign saying, “Seamstress for Every Need—Inquire Within.” I’d gotten out of my contract for the sole purpose of meeting men, and now I planned to enjoy whatever man came into my little shop. But things didn’t turn out that way. All my customers were women wanting me to sew the latest fashions! I had to take their orders, but I whipped their seams very sloppily, only here and there. My work was outrageous.

  My soul constantly ached to make love, but I couldn’t mention it to anyone. Then one day I remembered something. I told my helper to come along and carry my purse for me, so I would look proper, and I went downtown to Nihonbashi. There I dropped in at the Echigoya, a big dry goods store I knew about because it delivered cloth to the mansion where I used to work.

  “I stopped working at the mansion,” I told the clerks, “and now I live alone. There’s no one else in my room, not even a cat. The people in the next room to the east are almost always out, and on the west side there’s a woman who’s over seventy. Her ears are bad, you know. On the other side of the alley in front there’s only a prickly hedge. No one’s ever over there. I might as well be living by myself. Whenever you go up to the mansions on the main avenue in Hongō on business, be sure to drop by my place and relax for a while.” Before I left, I chose a roll of Kaga twisted silk, enough scarlet silk for one sleeve, and a sash of thick Ryūmon silk. Retail stores are very strict about not selling on credit, but the young clerks there, they were pretty infatuated with me. They handed over the merchandise without even thinking of asking for cash.

  Time passed, and there weren’t many days left before the fall collection day on the eighth of the Ninth Month. Fourteen or fifteen clerks stood arguing about who was going to get the chance to go collect from the seamstress.107 One was an older man who didn’t know the slightest thing about love or passion. He counted with his abacus even in his dreams, and he spent his waking hours brushing figures into the shop books. He was so loyal to the owner of the head store in Kyoto that people called him White Mouse.108 He was the main support of the store, and as head clerk he would watch and judge all the customers, something he could do better than anyone else. The way the other clerks were wasting time talking irritated him.

  “Leave the woman’s payment up to me,” he told the young clerks. “If she doesn’t pay up, I’ll pull off her head and bring that back instead.” So the head clerk went to the woman’s place himself. He yelled at her and ordered her roughly to produce the money, but she remained calm and relaxed.

  “I deeply apologize for causing you to come so far for so little,” she said and began to take off her plum red silk robe. “I dyed it this color myself, but I’ve only had it next to my skin for two days—yesterday and today. And here’s the sash!” She threw them at the man. “Right now I have no money at all to give you. I know you won’t be satisfied. Actually, I sympathize with you. But please take these instead.” She was crying and practically naked, with only her crimson petticoat on.

  Her body was quite attractive. She was neither fat nor thin, and her smooth, light skin glowed, with no scars from moxibustion anywhere on it. The head clerk was a serious and self-controlled man, but when he saw the woman like that, he began to shake uncontrollably.

  “How could I possibly take these with me?” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll catch cold.” When he picked up the clothes and tried to get the woman to put them on again, he already belonged to her.

  “By the gods, what a compassionate man you are!” she said, leaning against him.

  The man was visibly excited. He called his assistant Kyūroku, who was waiting outside, and had him open the carrying case. He reached in and pulled out a small silver coin.

  “Here,” he said to the young man, “this is yours. Just keep walking down Shitaya Street until you get to the Yoshiwara quarter. And once you get there, why don’t you take a good look around? There’s no need to come back right away.”

  Kyūroku’s heart was pounding. He couldn’t believe what the head clerk was telling him. He blushed and didn’t know what to say. Finally he realized the man was serious and wanted him out of the way while he was making it with this woman. The skinflint had never given him anything before, but here was his chance at last.

  “The licensed quarter?” he said. “How could I possibly go there in this cheap cotton loincloth?”

  “You have a point there,” the clerk said. He estimated roughly and cut a length of wide Hino silk. Without even hemming the edges, the young man tied it right on and ran off to do as he wished.

  After the young man was gone, the woman closed the latch on her door and hung a broad-rimmed sedge hat in the window. She and the man then pledged a very plain love. No one had even formally brought them together. Later the man forgot all about material gain and lost his head over the woman. There was no way he could blame it on youthful ardor, and when so much cloth was found missing that the store was on the verge of collapse, he was relieved of his post and sent back to the main store in Kyoto.

  The woman still advertised herself as a seamstress, but now she went here and there to nice houses, doing whatever made her customers happy. She set her price at one small gold coin per day, but she never once opened the needle box she always had her helper carry along. She made a fairly decent living for a while. As they say, though, if you don’t knot your threads at the end, they will come unraveled.

  Luxurious Dream of a Man (4:4)

  Even for women, there’s nothing as interesting as being a wandering seasonal house worker. For a long time I worked in houses in Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, but one year at the beginning of the fall contract period on the fifth of the Ninth Month, I went south from Osaka to the port of Sakai.109
I imagined that if I lived there for a while, I might see some things I’d never come across before. The first thing I did was go to a placement agency run by a man named Zenkurō in Nakabama, in the west part of Nishikinochō,110 and asked them to help me find something, although I had to pay by the day for my room and board while I waited.

  After a few days someone came looking for an odd-jobs maid for the retired former owner of a big shop on the main avenue. My job would consist only of staying near my employer’s room in the retirement house,111 getting out the bedding in the evening, and putting it away again in the morning. I met the employer’s representative, and the woman looked me over.

  “She’s the right age,” the woman said finally. “Her appearance is good, and she knows how to act and speak. Everything about her is in order. I’m sure my employer will like her.”

  The woman agreed to pay part of my salary in advance and didn’t even try to bargain me down. She seemed to be a nursemaid who’d worked for the family for many years, and she looked happy with me as we walked back together to the house. On the way she gave me some advice she thought I’d find useful. She had a forbidding face, but she spoke gently. Well, I thought to myself, they say the world isn’t all demons. I guess there really are kind people here and there wherever you go. So I listened carefully.

  “Above all,” the woman said, “remember that the retiree is very jealous and can’t stand to see women servants talking with clerks from the shop in the main house. So never repeat rumors about people’s love affairs. Don’t even stare at the hens and roosters when they’re going at it in the yard. Also, your employer believes in the Lotus sect. Never, never chant Amida Buddha’s name.112 The white cat wearing a collar is the retiree’s darling, so let it do what it wants. Don’t chase it even if it runs off with a fish from your tray while you’re eating. The eldest son’s wife in the main house likes to act big, but no matter how arrogant she gets, don’t take her seriously. Her name is Shun. She used to be the parlor maid for the son’s first wife, but after his wife died from a bad case of influenza, he got infatuated with that Shun and married her. Maybe if she were at least pretty—but you know, she isn’t at all, and yet she’s quite uppity. She says nothing but self-centered things, and when she rides in a palanquin, she sits up on extra cushions. It’s a wonder she doesn’t break her hip!” The woman went on and on, but I had to listen. The more I heard, the more ridiculous it got.

  Finally the nurse changed the subject. “At other houses,” she said, “all you’ll get is cheap red rice morning and night, but here we eat special reserve rice from Harima Province. And bean paste, why, we get as much as we need from the saké store run by the daughter’s husband. The bath here, well, it’s heated every single day. If you’re too lazy to use it, then you’re the loser. And the last day of the year is really something. You should see all the rice cakes and special dishes that arrive from the relatives and former employees.

  “Sakai’s a big place, you know, but every house south of Ōshōji Avenue113 owes us money. And if you go two blocks from here, you’ll see a big house on the northeast corner. The owner used to be our head clerk. And oh yes, there’s the big Sumiyoshi Festival114 along the shore. I’m sure you’ve never seen that before. It’s at the end of the Sixth Month, so there’s still quite a while before it comes around. The whole household goes to the initial god-descent ceremonies on the night before the festival, and we all stay overnight. Before that, though, in the Third Month, everyone in the house goes to see the wisteria blooming down near the harbor. The cooks cover the bottoms of big lacquered picnic boxes with nandin leaves and heap them full of steamed rice with red beans in it, and the men carry the boxes with us. Then we have a very nice lunch under the wisteria.

  “If you have to work, then you’re very lucky to be at a house like ours. Don’t you dare leave here without here asking your employer to set you up with a house and a husband. Just be sure to make your employer like you. Never ignore an order, no matter what it is. And never even dream of talking about private family things to people outside the house. Your employer is old and rather short-tempered, but remember, it’s just something that flares up for a moment. It never lasts very long. No one else knows this, but there’s a good deal of silver. If your employer happened to die tomorrow, think of what good fortune you might have. The retiree is already seventy and covered with wrinkles—definitely not long for this world. So whatever your employer says, remember, it’s just wishful thinking. You know, I still don’t know you very well, but I’m telling you this because I think I like you already.” The nurse opened her heart to me and told me everything she could think of to mention.

  After hearing all this, I felt confident I’d be able to handle the old man, who was obviously looking for a younger woman. I told myself that if I got along well with him and he renewed my contract, I’d have plenty of chances to find a young man for myself on the side. When I got pregnant, I’d tell the old man it was his and get him to write his will so his money went to me. I’d be set for the rest of my life. As I walked along, I had everything already decided.

  “Well, we’re here,” the nursemaid said, interrupting my thoughts. “Please come in.” We passed down a corridor through the shop at the front of the main house and went as far as the door to the living quarters in back. After taking off our sandals, we went around to a wooden-floored room next to the kitchen and sat down. Soon an old retired woman115 of about seventy who looked very healthy and energetic came into the room. She stared at me so intently she seemed to be boring a hole into me.

  “Everything about her is excellent,” she said to the nurse. “I’m very pleased.”

  The woman goes to work as a servant for a retiree. The woman (right) is shown to the house of her new employer by the family nursemaid, wearing a cotton cap. The two women are about to enter the lattice-windowed main house, in which the eldest son and his wife live and manage the family business. A hired man (left) hulls rice in a mortar by stepping on a beam that moves the pestle up and down.

  This was something I was completely unprepared for. I would never have agreed to take the job if I’d known my employer was a woman, and I regretted coming. Yet the old woman’s words were full of feeling, and my six-month contract would be up in no time. Having to endure it might even be a worthwhile experience. Walking on salt, as they say, is hard, but it’s supposed to be good for you, and there was plenty of salt in this harbor town. So I decided to stay there and work.

  On the outside, Sakai people look as easygoing as the people in Kyoto, but actually they’re stingy and small-minded. The hired men in that house stepped incessantly on their foot pestles, hulling rice in mortars without ever getting any rest; and the hired women were always sewing cotton socks whenever they had any free time at all. The employers in Sakai train their workers very strictly and make them work as hard as they can.

  There were six or seven other women working at the house, each with her specific duties. I was the only one who simply watched and waited, looking as if I didn’t have anything to do. That night I was told to get out the retiree’s mattresses and bedding and spread them so she could sleep. That much made sense to me. But when I was told, “Please go sleep with her on the same pillow,” I didn’t really understand any more. It was my employer’s orders, though, so I couldn’t very well refuse.

  I expected the old woman would ask me to massage her lower back or something like that. But I certainly was wrong. She had me be the woman while she took the part of the man. Then she made love to me all through that night.116 Well now, I’d certainly gotten myself into a real fix!

  The world’s a big place, and I’d worked inside a lot of houses, but this woman had a wish I’d never heard before. “After I die,” she told me, “I want to be reborn at least once as a man.117 Then I can openly do what I really want.”

  Streetwalker with a False Voice (6:3)

  By this time I’d worked at just about every kind of job there was, and wrinkles covered my fa
ce like waves on the ocean. Somehow I found my way back to Osaka again and to the Shinmachi licensed quarter, a sea of endlessly young love that never seems to change. I knew a lot about the place and how things worked there, and I looked up some people I once knew and asked them to help me out. I managed to get work as a lowly matron at a performance house, but unlike before, when I worked there catching customers and hated the matrons, I now felt ashamed to be in the quarter.

  All matrons wear the same thing and are easy to spot. Like the others, I also put on a light red apron and tied my medium-width sash far to the left. From my sash dangled a whole collection of different keys. I didn’t need to be elegant any more, and I would reach right around underneath my robe and pull up the back hem of my robe. I couldn’t afford a hood, so I usually wore a small folded cotton cloth on top of my head and walked as silently as I could, hoping no one would notice me. I made it a habit to go around with a sour look on my face. That way, the high-ranking tayū feared me even when I wasn’t angry. I taught the young ones many things, though, and took care of them. I trained even the timid ones to be self-aware and sophisticated, and I showed them how to make their customers like them. My job was to get them to work hard so they would have a customer every single day and make their manager happy.

  As a former tayū myself, I knew all too well what the tayū were doing and thinking, and after a while I began to stare and criticize them when they were having secret meetings with their real lovers. The women feared me, and the men were embarrassed and annoyed, so they all gave me special tips of two gold pieces even before the seasonal festival days came around. But when they handed me the coins, they looked at me as if I were the old demon woman who guards the river between this world and the next and grabs coins from the souls of those who’d recently died.118 If you treat people badly, you can’t expect to continue doing what you’re doing very long. Everyone around me began to hate me, and I felt uncomfortable in the quarter, so I left and went to live in Tamazukuri, at the edge of Osaka, where no one would know me. It was a dismal place, with no shops and nothing but small, poor houses and bats flying around even in the daytime. I found a room there in a tenement on a back alley, but I hadn’t been able to save anything, so I had to sell my one and only nice robe to pay for it. To light my cooking fire in the morning, I gradually broke up the shelves in my room, and for supper I had nothing to drink but hot water as I chewed on my parched soybeans.