As soon as Bagyū had muttered these words to himself, a respectable-looking samurai appeared, around forty years old, his forehead unshaven, his hair knotted, and wearing a robe with vertical stripes and black sleeves and decorated at five points with a family crest in a hermitage-and-flower design.15 The samurai, startling Bagyū, blocked his way, saying, “I have a minor favor to ask you. Would you wait, please?”
For a bandit, he has a courteous appearance, Bagyū thought. His tight-fitting robe was in the best old-fashioned style. Come to think of it, his appearance was splendid. Bagyū thought that the man might be a samurai from a respectable clan, but he noticed that he did not even have a sandal servant with him. The man might be a masterless samurai, but Bagyū saw that the man wore white silk sleeves.16 Maybe he had strayed from group following a Shintō priest in the Ōyama Mountains.17
He found the stranger suspicious, like the cloudy skies hovering overhead. In a hurry to get to Edo, Bagyū said, “I am heading to Edo on urgent business. I found the road impassable and was forced to make a detour, which has taken a toll on both my legs and my funds. I would like to be on my way as quickly as possible. The travelers behind me do not appear to be busy, so if you have a request, please ask them.” With this, he quickly went by, but the samurai grabbed his sleeve.
“Well, what an impatient fellow! Of course, it makes sense for you to hurry, but the nature of my business is such that I cannot ask others. When a samurai asks for a favor, you must listen without fail. But this is no place to talk. Please come this way.”
The spirit of Kudō Suketsune (left) speaks on a rock at the foot of Mount Fuji while Bagyū listens. Suketsune is dressed in official samurai attire, and Bagyū wears commoner travel clothes. From the 1752 edition.
Bagyū was taken by the hand, and his fear increased greatly when it occurred to him that even though the samurai did not appear to be a bandit, he might be taking him to a place where he could test his new blade. His legs wobbling and his teeth chattering, Bagyū shuddered violently and flinched. Seeing this, the samurai laughed loudly, “You seem to be frightened, but there’s no need to be so wary.”
The samurai took him along to the mouth of the cave, sat down on the edge of a smooth rock, pulled out a flint, and began stuffing a short-stemmed pipe with tobacco. Although it seemed a bit vulgar, he appeared to be a great lover of tobacco, and Bagyū thought the smell of smoke was surely that of Maidome.18 “It’s a fine tobacco, with a pleasant smell.” When Bagyū, out of fear, made these trivial comments, the samurai, perhaps out of vanity, quickly handed him the prepared pipe.
“It’s not very good, but why don’t you smoke a bit? It’s more enjoyable to smoke in a place like this than to smoke lying on the floor indoors. See, it’s not bad to smoke using tinder,” the samurai said, appearing to have no other designs.
“Why, I love unusual things! To smoke with a match rope is my favorite thing.”
“Indeed, it’s nice to smoke with a match rope, but it saddens me, since it reminds me of the theater,”19 the samurai said and began crying profusely.
“What a strange spectacle this is! I can’t understand why you should cry about the theater.”
Seeing Bagyū’s disturbed expression, the samurai said, “Your reaction to my suspicious behavior is understandable. For a start, you’re currently going to Edo to see your actor friends in Sakaichō and Kobikichō, aren’t you?”
“Indeed, that’s true, but how did you know what was on my mind?”
As Bagyū became increasingly uneasy, the samurai smiled and said, “You’re right to be suspicious, but there is nothing to be surprised about. I’m the spirit of Kudō Suketsune. For a long time, I have remained at the foot of Mount Fuji, waiting to express my thoughts. But because this area is no longer on the main road for inns, there have been no travelers, and I haven’t had a chance to speak my mind. Fortunately, because of the recent storm, travelers have been coming and going in unexpected numbers, but ordinary people will not do for my business. I want this letter delivered without fail to the playwrights in Edo. It is not a request for money.
“As you are well aware, for a long time, the Soga brothers and I have been the central topic of the auspicious kabuki plays performed at the beginning of the spring, in the First Month, in the Edo theaters.20 Even a three-year-old child knows about the Soga brothers—they’ve become the custom of the land. Nothing else—not even a play that tries to devise something new—ever becomes popular. New ideas are wasted, and such new plays do not even last past the First Month. At the end of the year, at the busiest time of the season, towns-people—whether young or old, master or apprentice—holding red sardines in one hand, argue with head clerks about the kabuki cast:21 ‘Shichizō should play Soga Jūrō at the Kanzō Theater.’22 ‘No way! It should be Utagawa.’23 They argue so vehemently that they almost poke each other’s eyes out with their New Year’s holly branch. The minds of the people are so tied to the Soga brothers that the clerks lose their heads and mark inventory books that they don’t even keep. Because hundreds and thousands of people—from the actors to those in the teahouses and bookstores—make their living in the shadow of the Soga brothers, every year there is the so-called Soga Festival on the twenty-eighth of the Fifth Month when people make offerings to the spirit of the Soga brothers. On that day, people can see the play for free.24 But from what I have heard, not one cup of bitter tea has been offered to me.
“This was before your time, but it’s because I died in pain that I am treated so poorly. If I had lived a careful and steadfast life, the Soga brothers would never have killed me. Since I wasn’t careful and let them defeat me, the reputation of the brothers is now as high as the lofty peak of Mount Fuji and has even become the source of new kabuki plays. By contrast, my reputation doesn’t even reach the Hōei knoll on the side of Mount Fuji,25 and many people hate me; nobody loves me. Even that Moriya minister who destroyed Buddhist temples is favored by Shintō believers,26 and in the nō play A Quiver of Arrows, even Kajiwara Kagesue is spoken of highly.27 It’s hard for me and completely unfair.
“What’s more, they often represent me, Kudō Suketsune, in a very vulgar manner, rudely addressing my relatives in a manner not befitting a daimyō. ‘Hey Tokimune!’ ‘Hey there, Suke!’ What cruel treatment! I’m embarrassed to be taken lightly by samurai spectators, but there’s no way to clear up these deep-seated delusions about me. It just makes me sad. Some time ago, the actor Mizuki Takejūrō played me at the Ichimura Theater in Edo and recited the line ‘Lord Tokimune, you should not treat the wounds in such an exaggerated manner.’28 This line stuck in my ears, and I was delighted. Famous actors after him have played me several times, but in the end no one learned from Mizuki. His performance was truly befitting a feudal lord. I was satisfied, and the spectators liked it, too.
“It all depends on the playwright’s lines. Things can be said in any number of ways. Also, illiterate actors who play villain’s roles would learn a thing or two if the star actors in each troupe did not ignore them but gave them instructions. These things may be considered unimportant, but they shouldn’t be. It is annoying to think that a future samurai will take me for a boor and a country bumpkin. Everywhere I look, Kudō Suketsune’s reputation is sinking. This is completely the fault of the playwrights. I thought about taking revenge by becoming a vengeful demon, but this would require a loincloth made of a tiger’s skin,29 and I would have to get my hands on drums to create thunder. Instead, I have devised a plan that requires no such things. Dressed in a paper robe, I will become a god of poverty and bring down the playwrights who distress me, and for this purpose, I have even bought a dark red fan.30
“And this is not all. In recent years, the playwrights have introduced a person completely unrelated to me, Oshichi, the grocer’s daughter.31 We have been mixed together like seven-herb rice gruel.32 It’s disgraceful for spring kabuki plays to perform stories about criminals. To urge the young girls in the audience to imitate the kind of depraved act tha
t Oshichi committed is outrageous. Oshichi may be young, but she is a monstrosity. If it were made clear why Oshichi was punished, then innocent young girls who don’t know right from wrong would become fearful of the consequences and behave themselves. But the plays are rewritten and freely rearranged every year, adding fools who die in double suicides. In recent years this illness—of committing double suicides—has returned, and I’ve heard of double suicides here and there.
“Generally speaking, since commoner audiences and young girls learn by directly mimicking the theater, the theater should not be a place for senseless things. No doubt there have been a number of instances in which a silly wife, desperate for money when the seasonal payments didn’t come in and reluctant to sell her hair for money, breaks the wash basin with a bamboo ladle in the hopes of receiving money, because she has seen this act performed on the stage.33 Why don’t the playwrights distinguish right from wrong and devise stories that will serve as medicine for the audience? The actors of the past were masters a hundred times superior. The stars of today find everything to be difficult. If the theater became a means of teaching the masses, it would be divinely protected.
“And there is another thing—when one looks at the plots of the chivalrous commoner plays in Edo,34 they differ from those in Kyoto and Osaka in that they generally find fault with a samurai and show him being pushed around and stepped on. As a result, all the commoner playboys in town imitate this behavior and show no restraint in bad-mouthing and abusing the maidservants of the samurai houses and being rude and insolent to the samurai. Even when the weather is sunny, they wear those wooden clogs that those chivalrous heroes wear, raising their shoulders and sticking out their elbows and causing trouble in liquor stores and noodle shops. They learn all this from the theater and end up tearing families apart and destroying lives. That’s why strict fathers fear the theater more than dangerous blowfish soup.35 If the playwrights understood right from wrong and wrote stories that could serve as medicine for the people, then even narrow-minded parents would take care of their young daughter’s lunch and buy the best seats in the house with their retirement savings, and brothers would do the same. This should be the basis for the theater’s prosperity and its eternal goal.
“But what is the state of affairs now? The playwrights introduce unnecessary things into their plays like those good-for-nothing bungo songs36 that tempt young girls and maidservants, giving them a bad name and destroying their lives. Simply wicked! To make Osan, the almanac maker’s wife who committed adultery with her husband’s employee, appear to be a good person is the biggest mistake made by Chikamatsu Monzaemon.37 Only by representing an immoral criminal clearly as an evil person can a play be called a lesson in justice. What’s more, the play should also be a confession of guilt. Obviously, no playwright should be illiterate. How could they cause people harm if they thought honestly about the ways of Heaven with a benevolent heart and kept in mind the world and its people? To think that it is fine as long as people fill the theater, even though the play may corrupt public morals, is the same as making vulgar jokes at a street performance. For talented playwrights, this should never happen. . . .
“From now on, be very prudent and careful not to portray in amusing and comical ways the idiots who commit double suicides, the adulterers, the arsonists, and the rest. No doubt some people will say that these stories are not worth making a fuss about. But this is the favorite phrase of someone who does not think about the world and its people. Everyone knows the proverb ‘A levee of three thousand meters crumbles from an ant hole and leads to a flood that washes away houses.’ So one should be careful about even the smallest things. Please show me the ways of a loyal retainer, a filial son, a benevolent aunt, and a chaste wife. I bring these things up only because if I keep my silence, then the clouds of deep-seated delusion will become the source of many more tears, more than the endless rains of the Fifth Month.
“When you get to Edo, please make sure you communicate these matters in detail and tell them to immediately shut down the plays about double suicides and about Oshichi, the grocer’s daughter.”
Saying this, Kudō Suketsune cleared his pipe, and with the smoke that rose from the ashes, his spirit disappeared without a trace.
“What a strange exchange!” thought Bagyū. Lord Kudō was of exceptionally good character compared with the Kudō who appears in the theater, but what a cheapskate! Because he asked for a big favor, you would think that he would at least have left some money for wine. But he just made the request and disappeared. What a cunning perversion of Kannon’s wisdom!38 Thinking what a thick envelope it was, Bagyū looked at it carefully and realized that it was just a leaf marked with insect bites. Oh, dear, could he also have been tricked earlier? Could the rice cakes that he ate at the teahouse have been made of horse manure? In retaliation for such treatment, he decided not to deliver the message. Bagyū resigned himself with the thought, “Since I am an actor who plays a horse, horse manure and I go hand in hand.” With that, he headed off for Edo.
[Inaka sōshi, Imayō heta dangi, Imayō anasagashi, SNKBT 81: 110–119, introduction and translation by Satoru Saitō]
HIRAGA GENNAI
Hiraga Gennai (1728–1779) was born in Sanuki Province (Kagawa), in Shikoku. His father was Shiroishi Mozaemon, a low-ranking foot soldier in the service of the lord of Takamatsu Domain. His elder brother died young, and when his father died, Gennai inherited the house and changed the family name to Hiraga. In 1744 he was employed as an herbalist by the Takamatsu daimyō Matsudaira Yoritaka and in 1752 was sent to Nagasaki, where he studied plants, minerals, and animals that could be used for medicinal purposes. Two years later he turned over his house to his younger sister’s husband and moved to Edo to study herbal medicine under the eminent botanist Tamura Ransui (1718–1776) and became acquainted with Sugita Genpaku (1733–1817), a scholar of Western learning. From his study of new medical products and resources came Gennai’s great work, the six-volume Classification of Various Materials (Butsurui hinshitsu), which he published in 1763. By this time, he had resigned the minor samurai post given to him by Takamatsu Domain and had become a rōnin in Edo.
Gennai was a polymath. He was interested in Dutch studies (rangaku); invented the magnetic compass needle, the thermometer, the electric generator, and other scientific machines; practiced Western-style painting; discovered his own pottery-making technique (called Gennai-yaki); and studied under the kokugaku scholar Kamo no Mabuchi (1697–1769). In 1763, at the request of a neighborhood library publisher and apparently in need of a change, he published two satiric novels under the pen name Fūrai Sanjin: Rootless Weeds (Nenashigusa, 1763) and The Modern Life of Shidōken (Fūryū Shidōken, 1763), both of which are now considered dangibon, or satiric sermons. These works attack contemporary society, specific individuals, and venerable institutions. They also reveal his own strong personality and are humorous, matching the mood of the time. In 1777 he finished “A Theory of Farting” (Hōhi-ron), a self-satirical comic essay. Toward the end of his life, frustrated by a lack of recognition and success, Gennai began to show signs of psychological deterioration. In 1779, during a fit of madness, he killed a disciple with a sword and died in prison later that year.
ROOTLESS WEEDS (NENASHIGUSA, 1763)
In 1763 the popular onnagata (woman’s role) kabuki actor Ogino Yaegiri drowned while pleasure boating on the Sumida River. In Gennai’s Rootless Weeds, which gives a comic twist to this incident, Enma, the king of hell, falls in love with a picture of Segawa Kikunojō II (d. 1773), an onnagata kabuki actor, and tries to summon him to hell—a satire of the scandalous infatuation by Mizoguchi Naonori, a castle lord from Echigo, with the real Kikunojō. Following orders from the dragon god, who has been asked by Enma to find Kikunojō, a kappa (water spirit) takes the shape of a young samurai and manages to become intimate with Kikunojō while he is pleasure boating, but in the end Ogino Yaegiri jumps into the water, sacrificing himself for Kikunojŋ.
Gennai was influenc
ed here by witty mitate (superimposition) narratives such as Tales of the Outrageous (Furachi monogatari, 1755) in which hell bears the features of contemporary urban life, including a new licensed quarter. In Tales of the Outrageous, news of these excesses in hell reaches the Pure Land, causing Shakyamuni, the buddha, to subdue this world. Gennai used the hell narrative found in works like Tales of the Outrageous, wove in satiric sermons and debates, and provided a completely uninhibited description of society—all of which revolutionized the dangibon genre. Rootless Weeds offered readers not only an elegy to a stage star but also a vivid depiction of the diversity of contemporary urban life in Edo.
The passage, translated here, that describes contemporary life on the bridge at Ryōgoku on the Sumida River became a famous example of haibun (haikai poetic prose), a kind of fu (rhyme-prose) about a noted place. Gennai was a great satirist who believed that fiction (“lies”) should be used to reveal truth. Rootless Weeds, a metaphor for “books without foundation,” is a book of such “lies,” revealing the truth about contemporary Buddhist priests and bakufu-domain officials. It appeared during the period (1764–1787) dominated by Tanuma Okitsugu (1719–1788), a powerful official in the Tokugawa shōgunate who was known for his corrupt ways and for his lack of interest in censoring the various arts, including Gennai’s books. The corruption and hypocrisy of the bakufu and daimyō are reflected in the behavior of Enma and the other officials of hell. Rootless Weeds was so popular that it was followed by A Sequel to Rootless Weeds (Nenashigusa kōhen) in 1769, generating debate about whether Rootless Weeds or Jōkanbō Kō a’s Modern-Style Lousy Sermons was superior. In later years, Rootless Weeds had two important influences: it spawned narratives describing hell, and it inspired imitations of the “Hiraga style” (Hiragaburi), with its sharp satiric observations.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 66