“Once while I was sitting there thinking about what type of business I ought to try, my wife began talking to the child. ‘You’ve got ears, too,’ she said, ‘so listen well to what I say. Your real daddy was small, but he was very intelligent. And he even did the woman’s work of cooking. He let his wife go to bed early while he stayed up until dawn making straw sandals to sell. He himself never wore anything fancy, but he made sure his wife and child had nice cotton clothes at New Year’s. This brown robe is something he gave me. Everything used to be better in the old days, didn’t it? Cry, child. Cry that you want your daddy.’
“How I regretted then that I’d given up my family for hers! It was very hard to endure each day, but I had no choice. Finally I confessed to my wife that I had a little money that I had lent out back in Ise. I promised her I’d use that to pay off our debts and get us through to the New Year. So I went all the way back to Ise. But the people there to whom I’d lent the money had left, and I had to come back to Osaka with nothing at all to show for my trip. I finally got home just before supper tonight. Somehow my wife had managed to pound some fresh rice cakes and buy firewood. And the small tray of offerings to the gods was spread with green ferns. Well, I thought, the world has more than worries in it. When you’re down, some people look the other way, but others will pick you back up. It made me very happy to see that my wife had managed to pay off our debts and was preparing nicely for New Year’s.
The son of the elderly woman visiting the temple bangs on a gong (left) and leads a group of neighbors through the streets, pretending to look for his lost mother. In front of him, two neighbors carry lanterns. The man holding the long staff is the block elder.
“‘I’m back,’ I said, ‘and all in one piece.’ My wife was in an unusually good mood, and she came with warm water so I could wash my feet. A moment later she brought a tray with sliced raw anchovies on one plate and grilled dried ones on another to celebrate the last night of winter. As I picked up my chopsticks and began to eat, she asked me, ‘Did you bring back the money from Ise?’ She interrupted me before I could even begin to explain why I hadn’t. ‘You have a lot of nerve coming back here,’ she said. ‘A lot. We have to pay for this rice, half a bushel of it, by the end of the Second Month—a month earlier than usual. And because of your bungling, I had to buy it on credit at the year-end rate. That’s two and a half times normal. And I’m the collateral! It’s illegal, but I had to sign my name. It was the only way I could get the rice. So now I’m going to be that man’s servant for life! But don’t worry. The only thing you brought with you when you came to this house was your loincloth, so you won’t be losing anything. At night it gets very dark, you know. Get out while you can see where you’re walking.’
“She took away the tray I was eating from and threw me right out of the house. The neighbors quickly gathered round. ‘This is very hard for you as a husband,’ one said, ‘but unluckily you married into her family.’ ‘Show you’re a real man,’ said another. ‘Give up and go.’ Still another assured me I’d ‘find another nice place to go to.’ They, too, drove me out—with their words. I was so sad I couldn’t even cry. I made up my mind to go back to my hometown tomorrow, but tonight I have no place to stay. So I came here to your temple. Actually, though, I’m registered with your biggest rival, the Lotus sect.” The man’s frank confession was as touching as it was amusing.
The third visitor laughed loudly. “There’s just no way,” he said, “I could tell you all about myself. I owe so much, well, if I were at home tonight, my creditors wouldn’t let me see the dawn. No one will lend me even ten coppers. I need some saké badly, but I don’t have a coin to my name. I thought up a lot of dumb plans this year, but I just couldn’t manage to pay back my debts. Then I came up with an idea. A very, very shameful one. I thought a lot of people would come to your temple tonight to hear the story of Holy Man Heitarō, and I planned to take the straw and leather sandals the believers left at the entrance and sell them for the price of some saké. But there’s no one here at all. Or at any of your other temples, either. Tonight I couldn’t steal the eyes off a buddha statue.” The man wept as he revealed himself.
The head monk clapped his hands together in amazement. “Well, well,” he said, “poverty leads people to think so many unvirtuous thoughts! Each of you is a buddha in your own body, but you’ve all had to do bad things in order to get along in the floating world.” He was overcome with thoughts about how difficult life was for sentient beings passing through the human realm. Being reborn as humans was a wonderful chance for people to meditate and do good deeds and improve their karma, yet how easy it was for them to go astray.
Just then a woman rushed excitedly into the room. “I would like to inform you,” she told the monk, “that your niece has just given birth to a healthy baby. It was a very easy delivery.” A moment later someone came in saying, “Just now the cabinetmaker Kuzō got into a terrible argument with a bill collector. He strangled the collector and then committed suicide himself. Tomorrow’s New Year’s, so his funeral’s going to be held later tonight. We’re very sorry to trouble you, but we need you to chant some sutras at the crematory.”
Into the midst of this commotion came someone from the tailor’s. “Unfortunately,” he said, “the wadded white silk you gave us to sew into a formal underrobe187 was, well, stolen. We’re investigating, but if it doesn’t reappear, we’ll compensate you in silver. Rest assured, sir, you won’t lose a thing.”
“Please pardon the imposition,” came the voice of a neighbor from the house to the east, “but tonight our well suddenly caved in. We can’t get diggers to come until the fourth, so we’d like to use your well over New Year’s.”
Later, the only son of the temple’s largest benefactor came in. He’d squandered an outrageous amount of money, and his father had disowned him and told him he never wanted to see him again. His mother had intervened, and a message from her asked the revered head monk to kindly keep the young man with him until the fourth. The monk couldn’t refuse this request, either. People like to say that in the Twelfth Month, everyone is too busy finishing the year’s business to think about making donations to temples, leaving monks with lots of time on their hands. But monks live in the floating world and are actually just as busy as everyone else at this time of year.
[Saikaku shūge, NKBT 48: 235–239, 254–259, 300–306, translated by Chris Drake]
EJIMA KISEKI AND THE HACHIMONJIYA
Hachimonjiya Jishō (d. 1745), an ukiyo-zōshi writer and a publisher, was born in Kyoto, the son of the Kyoto publisher Hachimonjiya Hachisaemon (1648–1652). After inheriting the business around 1688, Jishō expanded it to include the publication of jōruri texts (jōruribon) and illustrated kabuki summary books (eiri kyōgenbon), and he eventually surpassed the other publishers in terms of number of titles and copies. The commercially savvy Jishō discovered Ejima Kiseki and formed an alliance with him that had a profound influence on vernacular fiction in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Ejima Kiseki, also born in Kyoto, was the son of a wealthy family of rice cake merchants (mochiya), and in 1694 he became the fourth-generation owner of his family business. As a youth, Kiseki loved drama, and he began to write jorūri in the late 1690s, about the time he became involved with the Hachimonjiya House. At the request of Jishō, who saw the talent in the as-yet unrecognized author, Kiseki wrote Actor’s Vocal Shamisen (Yakusha kuchijamisen), a new kind of actor’s critique (yakusha hyōbanki), which was published in 1699 and became an enormous hit. From this time until the end of the Tokugawa period, the Hachimonjiya became the main publisher of actor critiques. Following the success of Actor’s Vocal Shamisen, Jishō asked Kiseki to write ukiyo-zōshi, which resulted in the publication of Courtesan’s Amorous Shamisen (Keisei irojamisen) in 1701. This book was followed by a series of similar “love stories” (kōshoku mono) about the pleasure quarters. The Hachimonjiya, which made these books both portable and affordable and added attractive touches suc
h as illustrations by the contemporary artist Nishikawa Sukenobu, flourished as a result of these publications, becoming by the beginning of the eighteenth century the leading publisher of ukiyo-zōshi.
At first, Kiseki’s works appeared anonymously, but then they began to appear under the name of Jishō, an unsatisfactory situation for Kiseki. When his family rice-cake business began to decline around 1710, Kiseki sold it and used the money to establish his own publishing house under the name of his son, thus creating a rivalry with the Hachimonjiya. He began to sign his works in 1714, and the rivalry with the Hachimonjiya spurred him to even greater productivity. Kiseki wrote urban commoner (chōnin mono) collections such as Tradesman’s War Fan (Akindo gunbai uchiwa, 1712) and “character” pieces (katagi mono) such as Characters of Worldly Young Men (Seken musuko katagi, 1715) and Characters of Worldly Young Women (Seken musume katagi, 1717). At the end of 1718, Kiseki reconciled with Hachimonjiya Jishō, and the two publishers brought out publications jointly, under both their names. Kiseki’s own publishing house closed in 1723, and from then on, the Hachimonjiya house published a number of his books under both his and Jishō’s names.
Kiseki’s best pieces, such as Characters of Old Men in the Floating World (Ukiyo oyaji katagi, 1720), part of which is included here, are katagi mono in which he examines a particular social type that was representative of a larger group or category in contemporary chōnin society. In the beginning, Kiseki concentrated on family roles, on daughters in Characters of Worldly Young Women, on sons in Characters of Worldly Young Men, and on fathers in Characters of Old Men in the Floating World. Later ukiyo-zōshi writers wrote about mothers, mistresses, doctors, tea masters, and other occupational categories. Using the names of real places and people, Kiseki describes in concrete and vivid details certain habits and characteristics that he exaggerates to heighten the humor. The katagi mono focus on a specific vice or folly—in this case, miserliness—in preparation for the surprise ending, in the manner of oral storytelling (rakugo). Characters of Old Men in the Floating World, which contains fifteen stories and is signed by both Kiseki and Jishō, is believed to be the work of Kiseki alone.
In the modern period, Kiseki’s works have tended to be overshadowed by those of Saikaku, although Kiseki’s influence on late Tokugawa writers was greater than that of Saikaku. After Kiseki’s death in 1735, the Hachimonjiya turned, in 1739, to Tada Nanrei (1696–1750) as its ghost writer and continued to publish ukiyo-zōshi.
CHARACTERS OF OLD MEN IN THE FLOATING WORLD (UKIYO OYAJI KATAGI, 1720)
A Money-Loving, Loan-Sharking Old Man (2:1)
The splendor of the capital—viewed from Kiyomizu Temple’s West Gate, this splendor glitters forth in row upon row of tiled roofs that stretch off into the distance. It is also seen in the white walls of the treasure-filled storehouses as they reflect the morning sun, a sight that evokes, even in summer, thoughts of a snowy dawn. No wind pines among the evergreens of this realm,188 and thousand-year birds sport among its clouds,189 marking the munificence of the present regime.
The city fans out below as far as the eye can see, and the number of dwellings, once said to total 98,000,190 has so risen that this figure is but ancient history. Now even the bamboo grove beyond Hideyoshi’s earthwork stands within its boundaries.191
The people of the capital labor, each at his own family trade, and enjoy in moments of leisure refined diversions and entertainments that chase from their minds the pain of the year’s toil. Thanks to their work, they are able to earn fair sums of money with which they can provide their families comfort and put their own minds to rest, all because they dwell here in the capital with its myriad freedoms.
Here in the city of opportunity, here among the numerous masters for whichever of the arts one might wish to learn, there was an old man who lacked all artistic accomplishment and whose sole pleasure in life was the accumulation of wealth. He was naturally robust, like a pine that cleaves with its roots to a craggy boulder. And in Matsunaga Teitoku’s own Hanasaki Ward,192 next door to the very house in which the poet had long dwelled, this old man had opened a moneylender’s shop under the name of Koishiya Mataemon.193 There he made his living, convinced that there was nothing more important than his work, and although he cared not at all for the cherry blossom viewing in spring, he still chose to wear blossom-hued padded clothes because they were durable. An abacus of twenty-five rows served as his constant plaything by day; his pillow, at night. He and Teitoku had lived in the same ward for forty years, but the fact that Teitoku composed haikai merely indicated, this old fogy believed, that the poet was a man of discernment who was consulted about provincial legal suits.
“Teitoku may live just next door,” he thought, “but never in my life will I start a legal suit, so there’s not a chance I’ll ever beg him to write me any of those haikai.” If even in our flowering capital there can live such a codger as this, how can we laugh at a country bumpkin who mistakes a miniature flint box for a hina doll’s cotton-scrap spool?194
Although advancing years had left him as shrunken and shriveled as a dried salmon, this oldster had lost nothing on top. Rather than look to some future world, he set his sights squarely on this one, and since his youth he had never known an idle moment. He would pound flat a damaged pipe bowl to insert in place of one sen in a string of a hundred and would take old pieces of string even from the scrap heap to refashion as money cords.195 Having thus strung out his moneymaking ways over many years, he had become the second richest man in the capital, well known for the loans he negotiated with the military lords. The rumor that the old man’s fortune had reached thirty thousand kanme certainly could not have been far wrong. Despite his great wealth, he had never bought a new house or made a single improvement on his crude shingle-roofed dwelling, a small place, barely twelve feet across, that he had inherited from his parents. Here he resided with a single diminutive (not to mention light-eating) man-servant and also a sixtyish maid about whom he would never have to worry about the possibility of loose behavior. To the pickles he ate the year around, he added nothing out of the ordinary, not even one Third Month sea bream196 or a single bunch of mushrooms, even when they could be had for a pittance. “Look, don’t touch” was his rule. When thirsty, he drank hot water flavored with rice powder. As for lighting, he set a single oil lamp in the center of the house and snuffed it out at bedtime, for the wild scampering of mice in the dark did not bother him in the least.
Even for his loincloth, silk was out of the question, and he usually wore old padded garments of cotton. For ceremonial functions in the district or for dinners with other moneyed souls to discuss loans to straitened lords, he did, however, take into account what others thought. Despite his miserliness, he would adjourn to a used-clothing store in his debt and force the proprietor to lend him some ill-fitting garments. There he would put together an outfit, even down to the tissue paper he carried. His return from these social functions took him immediately back to the shop to exchange these borrowed clothes for his old cotton ones.
His sole interest was in accumulating interest, and he pursued it as avidly as a connoisseur of the pleasure quarters follows his crazed quest for beauty. He lent money to east-bank teahouses197 and actors at 50 percent interest and, as if that was not enough, set the repayment period at three months. “Who needs festivals?” the old man might have asked, for when it came time, those who could not pay up did their dancing to the tune of doubled interest. It was with such schemes that this old boy made seventeen months’ profit within twelve months.
Hoarding money alone brought him pleasure. With hair white as snow, he ran about the capital doing his lending and collecting with more vigor than a young man not yet twenty.198 He squeezed a 10 percent handling fee even from Buddhist mourners ordering a funeral bier for a departed parishioner. The jeweled eyes of a statue of a devil? Gouge them out! The gold leaf of a statue of the Buddha? Strip it off! Nothing escaped untouched by this greedy old man.
For most people, the
desire for money is the desire to enjoy security in life and to have a few modest diversions and amusements that will provide pleasure for the body and comfort for the soul. But the uppermost thought in the old man’s mind was that a family would only be a drain on the household finances, so he had no wife and thus no children, either.
“This fortune of yours—who were you thinking of leaving it to?” queried the head priest of his family temple in a sermonizing tone. “You can’t take it with you when you die. Give a thought to choosing an heir and making arrangements to have the proper services performed on your behalf after your death. If you don’t, your riches will go to a total stranger. Now is that what you want?”
Perhaps the old man took these words to heart, for afterward he made a nephew his adopted son, but even so, he did not take the youth into his home. Rather, he turned right around and apprenticed the boy to another shop. “Upon my death,” the old man told the boy, “all my wealth will pass to you. And as a sign of your appreciation of this great favor, you will bring me a gift of one hundred mon at both the Bon Festival and New Year’s.”
No, while he lived, the old man was in no way generously inclined toward the boy. In fact, he even went so far as to lay claim to the possessions of this apprentice, whose clothes had been provided by his new master.
One day the leading actor of an itinerant troupe invited the old man to his inn to ask for a loan of five ryō in gold, but he said nothing beforehand of his purpose. He treated the old man to a bowl of noodles and proceeded to use on him all the flattery at his command. In the end, when the actor made his request, the old man’s answer as he sat there with wine cup in hand was noncommittal.
“If I don’t raise this money,” thought the actor, “how can I hope to get my costumes out of hock? And without costumes there’s no way I can do the tour I’ve been hired for.”
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 24