Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  One rainy night, a tremendous thunder and lightning storm descended on us, and while other people were shuddering with fear, I prayed to the lightning and asked it, if it had any compassion at all, to fall directly on me and kill me. At that moment I felt utterly tired of the world and no longer wanted to live. I was already sixty-five, although people took me for just over forty because of my smooth, fine skin and small build. That was small comfort to me then.

  As I sat there, I began to remember all the lovers I’d had in my life, and I fell into deep thought. Then I happened to look out my window and saw the shapes of children wearing what looked like wide lotus-leaf hats. They had their placentas on their heads. From the waist down, the children were stained with blood. I looked at each one of them. All together, there were ninety-five or ninety-six children standing there.

  They were calling out something through their tears. I was sure they were saying, “Carry me on your back! Carry me on your back!” They must be the souls of women who died in childbirth, I thought. I’d heard about them. They’re supposed to fly around holding their dead children and weeping in the night. I watched and listened closely.

  “You terrible Mommy!” one suddenly said to me. Then each of them spoke to me in a voice filled with resentment.

  Then I realized these must be all the children I’d aborted over many years, and I began to feel very remorseful. If I’d had them and brought them up, I’d have more children now than the famous warrior Wada Yoshimori,119 who fathered ninety-three, and everyone would be congratulating me. While I sat there wishing I could return to the past, the shapes disappeared completely without a trace. I thought about this and decided it must have been a sign I didn’t have much time left in this world, and I made up my mind to accept my death. But when the sun came up the next morning, well, how pathetic I was. Once again I felt myself wanting to live.

  The woman (left) looks out the window of her room in a poor tenement and has a vision of small children wearing lotus-leaf hats, the spirits of the babies she has aborted who are crying out to her. Their lotus-leaf hats resemble placentas, and the dark strips tied around their waists represent blood. Three streetwalkers (right) living in the opposite room boil water while windblown rain pelts the board roof held in place by stones.

  The woman notices that her neighbors live surprisingly well and discovers they are streetwalkers. Finally she tries the job herself and has her young male bodyguard sing in a female voice in the dark to make men think she’s young. Failing to get a single customer the whole night, however, she decides to leave the profession forever.

  Five Hundred Disciples of the Buddha—I’d Known Them All (6:4)

  In winter the mountains sleep beneath leafless trees, and the bare limbs of the cherries turn white only with snow at dusk. Then spring dawns come once more, filled with blossoms. Only humans get old as the years pass and lose all pleasure in living. I especially. When I recalled my own life, I felt thoroughly ashamed.

  I thought I at least ought to pray for the one thing I could still wish for—to be reborn in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land paradise. So I went back to Kyoto one more time and made a pilgrimage to the Daiunji temple120 in the northern hills. It was supposed to be a visible Pure Land right here in this world. My mind was filled with pious feelings, and I’d chosen a good time to visit. It was the end of the Twelfth Month, when people gathered to chant the names of all the buddhas and to confess the bad deeds they’d done during the year and ask for forgiveness.121 I joined in their chanting.

  Afterward, as I walked down the steps of the main hall, I noticed a smaller hall devoted to the Five Hundred Disciples of Shakyamuni Buddha.122 All were wise and worthy men who had achieved enlightenment, and I went over and looked inside. Each virtuous disciple was distinctly individual and differed from all the others. I wondered what marvelous sculptor could have carved all these many unique statues.

  People say there are so many disciples that if you search hard enough, you’re bound to find someone you know. Wondering if it might be true, I looked over the wooden statues and saw disciples who obviously were men with whom I’d shared my pillow when I was younger. I began to examine them more closely and found a statue that looked like Yoshi from Chōjamachi in Kyoto.123 When I was working in the Shimabara quarter, we exchanged very deep vows, and he tattooed my name on his wrist where no one would notice. I was beginning to remember all the things that had happened between us when I saw another disciple sitting under a large rock. He looked exactly like the owner of the house in uptown Kyoto where I worked as a parlor maid. He loved me in so many ways that even after all those years I couldn’t forget him.

  On the other side of the hall I saw Gohei. Even the disciple’s high-ridged nose was exactly his. I once lived together with him. We loved each other from the bottoms of our hearts for several years, and he was especially dear to me. Then, closer to me, I saw a wide-bodied disciple in a blue green robe with one shoulder bared. He was working very hard—and he looked familiar. Yes, yes, it was definitely Danpei, the man who did odd jobs for a warrior mansion in Kōjimachi.124 While I was working in Edo, I used to meet him secretly six nights a month.

  Up on some rocks in back was a handsome man with light skin and the soft, gentle face of a buddha. Finally I remembered. He was a kabuki actor from the theaters down along the riverbank near the Fourth Avenue in Kyoto who’d started out as a boy actor selling himself to men on the side. We met while I was working at a teahouse, and I was the first woman with whom he’d ever made love. I taught him all the different styles women and men use, and he learned well, but pretty soon he just folded up. He grew weaker and weaker, like a flame in a lantern, and then he was gone. He was only twenty-four when they took his body to the crematory at Toribe Mountain.125 The disciple I saw had just his hollow jaw and sunken eyes. There was no doubt about it.

  The woman (left), with a cotton winter hat of the type worn by older women, stands in front of the Five Hundred Disciples of the Buddha, gazing intently at the statues inside the hall. Before the largest statue, representing Shakyamuni, stand two vases of lotus flowers and incense holders. A commoner (right) chants a prayer on the porch of the main temple hall, fingering his prayer beads, while a monk in black outer robe and surplice walks through the temple yard.

  Farther on was a ruddy-faced disciple with a mustache and bald head. Except for the mustache, he looked just like the old chief priest who’d kept me in his temple as his mistress and treated me so badly.126 By the time I met him I was used to every kind of sex, but he came at me day and night until I was so worn down I lost weight and had fevers and coughs and my period stopped. But even he had died. Endless storehouse of desire that he was, he, too, finally went up in crematory smoke.

  And there, under a withered tree, a disciple with a fairly intelligent face and prominent forehead was shaving the top of his head. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something, and his legs and arms looked as though they were beginning to move. As I gazed at him, I gradually realized he, too, resembled someone I’d loved. While I was going around dressed up like a singing nun, I would meet a new man every day, but there was one who became very attached to me. He’d been sent from a western domain to help oversee the domain’s rice warehouse sales in Osaka, and he loved me so much he risked his life for me. I could still remember everything about him. The sad things as well as the happy ones. He was very generous with what people begrudge the most,127 and I was able to pay back everything I owed my manager.

  Calmly I examined all five hundred disciples and found I recognized every single one! They all were men I’d known intimately. I began to remember event after event from the painful years when I was forced to work getting money from men. Women who sold themselves, I was sure, were the most fearful of all women, and I began to grow frightened of myself. With this single body of mine I’d slept with more than ten thousand men. It made me feel low and ashamed to go on living so long. My heart roared in my chest like a burning wagon in hell,128 and hot t
ears poured from my eyes and scattered in every direction like water from one of hell’s cauldrons. Suddenly I went into a sort of trance and no longer knew where I was. I collapsed on the ground, got up, and fell down again and again.

  Many monks had apparently come to where I was, and they were telling me that the sun was going down. Then the booming of the big temple bell finally returned my soul to my body and startled me back to my senses.

  “Old woman, what grieves you so?”

  “Does one of these five hundred disciples resemble your dead child?”

  “Is one your husband?”

  “Why were you crying so hard?”

  Their gentle voices made me feel even more ashamed. Without replying, I walked quickly out the temple gate. As I did, I suddenly realized the most important thing there is to know in life. It was all actually true!129 The Pure Land, I was sure then, really does exist. And our bodies really do disappear completely. Only our names stay behind in the world. Our bones turn to ash and end up buried in wild grass near some swamp.130

  Some time later I found myself standing in the grass at the edge of Hirosawa Pond.131 And there, beyond it, stood Narutaki Mountain. There was no longer anything at all keeping me from entering the mountain of enlightenment on the far side. I would leave all my worldly attachments behind and ride the Boat of the Buddhist Dharma132 across the waters of worldly passions all the way to the Other Shore. I made up my mind to pray, enter the water, and be reborn in the Pure Land.133

  I ran toward the pond as fast as I could. But just then someone grabbed me and held me back. It was a person who’d known me well many years before.134 He persuaded me not to end my own life and fixed up this hermitage for me.

  “Let your death come when it comes,” he said. “Free yourself from all your false words and actions and return to your original mind. Meditate and enter the way of the Buddha.”

  I was very grateful for this advice, and I’ve devoted myself to meditation ever since. From morning to night I concentrate my mind and do nothing but chant Amida Buddha’s name. Then you two men came to my old door, and I felt drawn to you. I have so few visitors here. Then I let you pour me some sake, and it confused my mind. I actually do realize how short life is, you know, though I’ve gone on and on, boring you with the long story of my own.

  Well, no matter. Think of it as my sincere confession of all the bad things I’ve ever done. It’s cleared the clouds of attachment from me, and I feel my mind now shining bright as the moon. I hope I’ve also managed to make this spring night pass more pleasantly for you. I didn’t hide anything, you know. With no husband or children, I had no reason to. The lotus flower in my heart135 opened for you, and before it closed it told everything, from beginning to end. I’ve certainly worked in some dirty professions, but is my heart not pure?

  [Saikaku shūjō, NKBT 47: 326–454, translated by Chris Drake]

  GREAT MIRROR OF MALE LOVE (NANSHOKU ŌKAGAMI, 1687)

  After the publication of Life of a Sensuous Woman in 1686, Saikaku suddenly stopped writing vernacular fiction concerned with male-female love in urban commoner society and began to explore new topics. One of these was male-male love (nanshoku) in both chōnin and samurai societies, which he wrote about in 1687 in Great Mirror of Male Love, his longest work. Because marriage in Tokugawa society was usually a formal arrangement to ensure heirs for the continuation of the ancestral household, an urban man’s “romantic” urges tended to be satisfied outside marriage with female or male prostitutes. Men pursued romantic relations with women in the licensed quarters and, in the manner of a connoisseur cultivating Confucian virtues, called it the “way of loving women” (nyodō). Or they pursued romance with male youths in the theater districts, calling it the “way of loving youths” (wakashudō or shudō). Male-male love in samurai society usually meant a sexual and emotional relationship between an adult man (nenja) and an adolescent youth (wakashu), who was recognized by his long, glossy forelocks. Then, when he reached manhood, around the age of nineteen, he shaved the crown of his head in the manner of an adult, signaling the end of his status as a wakashu. Because of the scandalous mingling of social classes in these places and the spending of money in exchange for sexual access, both the licensed quarters and the theater districts were regarded by the authorities as “bad places” (akusho). The fact that a hard-earned fortune could also be dissipated there rather quickly by a profligate son made it a genuinely “bad place” for the merchant class as well.

  Reflecting the social division between samurai and merchant in their practice of male-male love, Saikaku divided Great Mirror of Male Love into two parts. The first consists of twenty stories focusing on the world of the samurai, and the second contains another twenty stories dwelling on young kabuki actors, boy prostitutes in the theater district. In all probability, Saikaku began Great Mirror of Male Love with the intention of depicting kabuki wakashu and the world of the theater and chōnin that he knew so well, but in the process he was drawn into the world of the samurai, which had a long tradition of nanshoku beginning in the medieval period when young pages served samurai warriors in battle. The result was a new exploration of the world of the samurai, which Saikaku continued to write about in subsequent years. Great Mirror of Male Love, which no doubt appealed to the samurai in Edo as well as the wealthy merchants in Osaka and Kyoto, thus stands between Saikaku’s earlier chōnin fiction on male-female love and his later works on the samurai.

  In the samurai world, male-male love relationships were bound by the samurai code of loyalty, devotion, and honor in action, in which the relationship between lord and retainer, or samurai and page, was often transferred to that between a man and a youth. In this context, the mature man offered protection, support, or employment, and the youth in turn was expected to be loyal and dedicated to him. A close reading of Great Mirror of Male Love shows that Saikaku distinguished between two types of nenja. Those called “connoisseurs of boys” (shōjin-zuki) were usually married and had sexual relations with women in addition to youths, whereas those called “woman haters” (onna-girai) rejected women as sexual partners and loved only young boys. Interestingly, Saikaku chose to structure Great Mirror of Male Love around the exclusive viewpoint of the woman haters, who represented the single-minded devotion to “the way of loving youths” that he sought to romanticize for his readers. In a fashion reminiscent of Chikamatsu’s puppet plays, the result of Saikaku’s efforts often depicts a dramatic conflict, as in the following short story, between duty/obligation (giri), which was determined by a strict social code, and human emotion/desire (ninjō), which violated that social code.

  Though Bearing an Umbrella (1:2)

  How Nagasaka Korin, a filial son, made a living.

  He killed a creature in the cherry-viewing teahouse.

  He traded his life for a secret lover.

  The sea at Urano Hatsushima grew rough and the winds blew strong on Mount Muko.136 Thunderheads billowed up in layers, as if the ghost of Tomomori might appear at any moment.137 Soon rain began to fall. Travelers on the road found themselves in unforeseen distress.

  An envoy named Horikoshi Sakon, who was on his way back to Amagasaki from Akashi, took shelter from the rain under some hackberry trees in a field by Ikuta Shrine. Just then, a handsome boy of twelve or thirteen came running up with an unopened umbrella of the type called “fall foliage” (even though it was summer).

  The boy noticed Sakon. “Allow me to lend you this umbrella,” he said, and handed it to an attendant.

  “I am most grateful,” Sakon responded. “But it strikes me as odd that you let yourself get rained on, even though you have an umbrella.”

  At this, the boy began to cry.

  “Now, now. There must be some reason for this. Tell me what it is,” Sakon coaxed.

  “I am the son of Nagasaka Shuzen,” the boy said. “My name is Korin. My father became a masterless samurai and had to leave Kai for Buzen to take up a new position, but he became sick and died on board ship. My mo
ther and I had no choice but to bury him in this coastal town. The local people were kind enough to help us build a crude hut on the beach. The black bamboo outside our window became our only means of making a living. We watched the artisans making umbrellas and learned to do it ourselves. When I think of my mother doing a man’s work with her own hands, I cannot bring myself to use an umbrella for fear of inviting the wrath of heaven, even if it means getting wet.”

  So that was it. Not unlike an old lady selling fans who would rather shade the sun with her hand or the winnow seller who prefers to do his winnowing with a hat! Sakon was much impressed with the boy’s filial sense and sent one of his attendants to accompany the boy back to the village where he lived with his mother.

  When Sakon returned to Akashi, he immediately presented himself at the lord’s castle and delivered the other daimyō’s reply. Since the lord seemed to be in a good mood, Sakon mentioned Korin and told him the boy’s story. The lord was very impressed and ordered the boy to be brought to him. It was Sakon’s joyful task to fetch Korin. Obediently, the boy came to the lord’s castle with his mother.