Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  A large group of court women quickly gathered to help Asanoshin change his clothes in preparation for assuming his new role. They took him to a room where, on a pedestal, they placed imperial robes of figured silk decorated with gold and jade. Then they gathered around Asanoshin and untied his sash. But when they removed his robes, they discovered he had no hole in his chest. In shock, they dropped the robes and ran away. Then Asanoshin heard many people talking excitedly in a room nearby. “He certainly is handsome,” someone was saying above the noise. “He has such a fine face and features you’d never know he was deformed.”

  “An emperor without a hole? Ridiculous!”

  “We must tell the emperor and the princess about this.”

  When Asanoshin heard what people were saying about him, he was as shocked as they were. Soon the prime minister came into the room and addressed him. “The emperor,” he began, “decreed that you become his adopted son. He did this because he liked your looks. But now the ladies in waiting report you are deformed. In this country, it is without exception the case that intelligent people have large holes and fools smaller holes in proportion to their lesser intelligence. That is the reason why it is very difficult for people with small holes to attain a high rank. As for those who have no hole at all, well, it would be more than just out of the question for one to become emperor. The wedding, therefore, has been canceled. Moreover, his majesty orders you to leave the country immediately. You are not to stay in the Land of the Chest Holes even a single day longer. Say nothing and leave now.”

  Palace guards beat loudly on the floor with sharp split-bamboo poles, making threatening noises all around Asanoshin until he finally realized that the proposed marriage, which had made him so happy, was actually not to be. Desperately, he searched his chest once more and was bitterly disappointed to find absolutely no hole in it anywhere—and no trace of there ever having been one. So he rode off once more on his feather fan to the northern islands of the Ainu, to the Ryukyus, to the Mogul kingdom, to Annam, to Sumatra, to Borneo, to Persia, to Moscow, to Pegu and Arakan in Burma, to Armenia, to India, to Holland, and beyond.

  After visiting several countries that satirize aspects of Japan, Asanoshin travels to Korea and then to China, where he uses his fan to become invisible and enter the women’s quarters of the imperial palace. He loves various women there until his footprints give him away, and his fan is burned during his capture. He escapes punishment by telling the emperor about everything he has seen and receives a commission to lead a fleet to Japan to make a full-scale papier-mâché replica of Mount Fuji to be used as a model for reconstructing the mountain in China.

  Island of Women (chapter 5)

  The great goddess of Mount Fuji is worshiped at the Sengen Shrine in Udo in Suruga Province. Her name is Konohana-sakuya-hime, the daughter of the god Ōyama-tsu-mi-no-mikoto. With her mysterious powers transcending human understanding, she immediately realized that plans were being made in a faraway place to build a gigantic papier-mâché model of Mount Fuji. It would be unbearably shameful if the sacred mountain she protected were copied and the model taken to China, so she consulted privately with her assistant, the god of nearby Mount Ashitaka, and sent the swift god of the Soga Brothers Hachiman Shrine, located near her slopes, to notify the Ise Shrine and the Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine of the impending danger. From there, warnings were sent out to every province, and in no time all the myriad gods of Japan had gathered for a conference on the peak of Mount Fuji.

  The gods discussed every aspect of the matter. Finally they decided to follow the venerable plan they’d used to sink the invading Mongol ships centuries before. They ordered the wind and rain gods from the Ise Shrine to promptly station themselves over the open waters at the border between China and Japan. As soon as the gods saw the Chinese fleet, they were to descend on it until nothing remained.

  But the wind god protested. “If I and my whole clan go out there,” he said, “no one in Japan will catch cold any more, and if no one catches cold, the doctors of Japan will have a very hard time making ends meet. I propose we leave a few of my relatives behind in Japan.”

  The assembled gods exploded in anger. “If Asanoshin and the Chinese succeed in copying Mount Fuji with papier-mâché,” they exclaimed, “Japan will never outlive the shame, never in all eternity. How can you dare compare such humiliation to the economic hardship of a few doctors? Anyway, most people who become doctors these days don’t really want to be physicians. They’re swindlers who know virtually nothing about curing people. A vegetable peddler opens a practice named Pickled Radish Hermitage; a fish seller changes his name to Mullet Anglerfish Clinic; a rice-cake dealer suddenly advertises Satō’s Sugared Treatments; a candy salesman turns into the Sage of Sweet Syrup; and a very suspicious character calls himself Mysterious Azabu Hermitage. Don’t worry about any of them starving. Earthenware returns to earth, as they say, and if people stop coming, these doctors can go back to doing what they’ve always done. Forget all your petty calculations. When the Chinese fleet enters Japanese waters, you, wind and rain gods, will use all your divine powers, and you, sleet and hail gods, will help them. Blow long and hard against the planks of their ships until the whole fleet is destroyed.” The other gods spoke so strongly that the wind, rain, sleet, and hail gods promptly raised billowing clouds and set off in a raging storm.

  Unaware of what lay in store for it, the huge Chinese fleet set out through the white-capped waves with a fair wind in its sails. When the fleet neared Japan, however, the waiting gods packed every quadrant of the sky with black clouds. The ships’ navigators no longer knew where they were, and as the millions of confused Chinese sailors and paper workers began to sail around in different directions, a tremendous storm burst over them. All thirty thousand ships were blown together, battering and splintering against one another until they were one great pulverized mass.

  Tens of thousands of the sailors managed to leap into the ocean. They were well trained and used many secret swimming techniques, but thirty thousand shiploads of paste and paper had been dumped into the ocean all at once, and the open sea was now as thick and sticky as water in a papermaking tub. The sailors stuck to the substance like flies in lime and were carried beneath the high waves. How pitiful it was. Sailor after sailor turned into what looked like white bean curd and drowned.

  Miraculously, the ship on which Asanoshin rode—was it because he was Japanese?—escaped damage from the storm. Where it had been blown, however, no one on board knew. The great ship drifted wherever the wind and the waves took it. Somehow the days passed, and the food and water began to run out. No one on board expected to live much longer. But then, in the distance, beyond the surging waves, lookouts saw an island. The excited sailors used all the life left in them to row toward it.

  It was the Island of Women, a country inhabited only by women. There wasn’t a single man on the entire island. When the women here wanted to have a child, they opened their robes and faced in the direction of Japan. Wind blew on their bodies and made them pregnant, and later they bore girl babies. They had a ruler, but it was always a woman.

  Island law required that if a ship from outside were blown here, the women had to go greet any person who came ashore. The women had to place their straw sandals on the beach facing toward the sea, and the law stipulated that if a man put on a pair he had to marry the woman whose sandals he happened to use. But the island was so far from anywhere that no one from outside had ever landed here before. When the drifting Chinese ship appeared, the women took it to be a gift from heaven. They gathered on the beach, took off their sandals, and placed them down on the sand as quickly as they could.

  Asanoshin stepped ashore with more than a hundred Chinese sailors, and they all put on the sandals they found there and began to walk around on dry land for the first time in a long while. The happy women whose sandals they’d put on soon came and placed their arms around the men, speaking to them easily and intimately, saying things like “I’ll bet wome
n don’t get husbands this way in China.” But the numerous women whose sandals hadn’t been chosen felt left out, and while they were making a great commotion, messengers from the empress arrived and announced that all the men, without exception, were to appear before her. The men were put in palanquins and carried off to the castle.

  The large crowd of women stood there stunned. They felt as if they they’d just awakened in the morning and found their navels had been pulled out while they were sleeping. How stupid they’d been. After they realized what had happened, they began to discuss the situation.

  “Every woman living on this island wants a man in the same way,” one declared, “whether she’s an aristocrat or a commoner.”

  “Just because those aristocrats have power doesn’t mean they can take away every single man for themselves.”

  “What sheer cruelty!”

  “How can we go on living like this?”

  All the women there signed their names to a pledge of solidarity, and soon every woman on the whole island had come to join them. In a great crowd they besieged the castle walls from all sides, shouting out their various demands.

  “Give us back the men!”

  “If you don’t, we’ll attack the castle and tear it apart!”

  “We may not be warrior women like Tomoe and Hangaku, who are so famous for bravery over in Japan. But a woman’s will can go through solid rock!”

  The women’s indignation filled heaven and earth. The empress had no idea what to do, and her ministers conferred desperately. Asanoshin felt he must speak.

  “The whole country is in turmoil because of only a hundred men,” he said. “If you aristocrats take us, the commoners will never be satisfied. And if we go back among the commoners, then you will never be satisfied. The country will be plunged into civil war. Please allow me, therefore, to make a suggestion. In China and Japan there are special houses where women perform various arts for men. My plan is this. I and the other men will work together, put up performance houses, and make our living by entertaining women. Then all the women in your country, high or low, aristocrats or commoners, can come, without distinction, to hire us, as long as they have the money. In this situation, there would surely be no grudges or jealousy among them. What do you think of this proposal?”

  The empress considered it an excellent idea, and soon the plan was publicly announced. The women surrounding the castle agreed to try the plan, and they ended the siege and returned to their villages across the island.

  The women had the men find a suitable spot in the northern part of the capital and dig a moat around it. Inside the moat, the men built everything from teahouses and performance houses to shops for the merchants who would do business there. They raised a single great gate to serve as the entrance and exit and placed guards there to watch everyone who passed through and to ensure that none of the men left the quarters. Then the women divided the sailors, including Asanoshin, into groups of five to ten men and placed them in various houses.

  If they had been women, they would have been called “courtesans” or “professional women,” but since they were men, they were referred to as “performer men” or “professional men.” The older sailors went to work as matrons, overseeing the younger ones, but because they were men, they were called “police.” The whole place was modeled after the Yoshiwara licensed quarter in Edo. The top-ranking men were called “great performers,” and those of the second rank, “men behind the latticework.” These men never performed in the houses where they lived but met women customers at elegant performance houses for considerable sums. Below them came the “powdered-tea men,” who met customers for a lesser fee right in the houses where they lived. The lowest-ranking men were sent to live in small houses by the moat around the quarter, and some had to stand by their doors and pull in customers for a few coins.

  The men displayed themselves in various fashions in front of the women. The Japanese styles turned out to be the most popular, so the Chinese sailors shaved the tops of their heads and tied topknots in back, combed their sidelocks upward and curled them around, and wore long cloaks like kabuki actors. They also made themselves up with lipstick and white face powder. Every evening, when it began to grow dark, a small bell would ring at each house, and women would come and stand along the front. Then when the lanterns went on inside, the waiting women would excitedly press their faces against the latticework at the front of the house, trying to decide which man inside to ask for.

  Soon some of the women were going directly to second-floor rooms with the lower-ranking men. Other women went to teahouses to negotiate with the owners to obtain meetings with the higher-ranking performer men. These women waited at performance houses while the men paraded through the streets to the same houses, each escorted by two young assistants, one of whom held a high parasol high above his head. The men’s collars curved seductively down in back, and they held up the hems of their robes as they walked with wide, dramatic strides. The sides and corners of the streets were packed with women trying to get a better look at the men as they passed by. No one had ever seen anything like it, and nothing in the island’s legends compared with it.

  Crowds of women jostled and competed for a chance to hire the man they wanted for the night. Some couples became intimate even at their first meeting,78 while other women had to pay to have men take time out from another performance and visit them. Women with enough money made promises to meet men on prestigious holidays, when the men’s fees were highest, and some women made regular visits and became more and more sophisticated in the way of love. There also were rivalries, displays of pride, graceful separations, and well-timed breakups. The only way that these performer men differed from courtesans in the outside world was in not going through women’s coming-of-age ceremonies when they debuted at their houses.

  At first, the men enjoyed their jobs so much they felt they must be in heaven, and they forgot all about their homelands. But as time passed, they felt less satisfied. When the winds of autumn began to blow, the men disliked what they were doing as much as the cold winds, and they complained and grumbled about how they really didn’t want to meet customers on rainy or snowy nights. Later, they didn’t even want to look at customers. But they found they couldn’t easily reject customers they didn’t like in the way that courtesans in Japan could. The women here weren’t restrained by a sense of decorum or concern for their reputations the way men in Japan were. Refusing to leave, snubbed customers grabbed hold of the men and poured out their bitterness on them all through the night.

  The men had to take customers day and night, and before six months had passed they were pale and thin. Their coughs grew rasping, and all of the more than a hundred men eventually succumbed to fevers and died, called to the other world by beckoning winds of desire. After they died, their contracts were transferred to new managers in Amida Buddha’s Pure Land paradise. How pitiful it was. But as the Buddha taught, all living things must also die. Human life lasts only as long as a drop of dew—or a stroke of lightning.

  Asanoshin, a high-ranking performer man, walks with dramatic steps and displays himself on his way to an assignation teahouse in the pleasure quarter, where he will meet a woman customer. Two assistants walk beside him, and an old male “matron” stands at right. Outside the quarter gate stands a tub of water for use in case of fire. The dark banner behind the open gate says “Edo-chō,” the name of a busy section near the main gate of Yoshiwara.

  Women across the land wept, and their grief was deep and intense. They remembered the performer men’s pledges of everlasting love, even into the next life, and still filled with longing, the women stumbled blindly onward along the dark road of love. They lit special incense reputed to have the power to bring back the dead and to show their spectral forms in its smoke, but incense was lit at so many gates around the island that the confused souls of the dead sailors didn’t know where to go and couldn’t appear at all.

  Somehow Asanoshin managed to stay not only alive
but vigorous. Since he was the only male performer left, the former customers of the other men also began negotiating to see him, and soon his schedule was divided up into short segments so that he could meet fifty women a day. But even then his energy wasn’t exhausted. He seemed to be made of iron. The women were amazed, as was Asanoshin. When he analyzed the situation, though, he realized he didn’t have much to look forward to. As the only man left, he’d have to keep on doing this for the rest of his life. They’d never allow any woman to buy out his contract and let him go into retirement. He liked entertaining and making love with all the women who came to enjoy him, but if this became a settled way of life, he knew it would turn into something rather unpleasant.

  While Asanoshin was thinking about what it really meant to be a performer and how tiresome the world was, he began to doze off. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the Vagabond Sage appeared. Indignantly he struck Asanoshin with his goosefoot staff and knocked him over. When Asanoshin realized who it was, he prostrated himself before the sage and begged his forgiveness.

  “In spring and summer,” the sage said in a resounding voice, “trees and grasses flourish. In fall and winter, they wither. In the human world, success and fame mean it is time to withdraw. This is the Way of heaven. Fan Li counseled a king superbly and retired to the Five Lakes. Zhang Liang advised an emperor on strategy, then left to follow a Daoist immortal, Master Red Pine. These exemplary men knew when to enter the world and when to withdraw. They are models of wisdom for all time. Even a horse that can run a thousand leagues a day won’t go anywhere unless it’s noticed by a good judge of horses. Trying to will your way to success is like looking for ice on a summer day. You may actually achieve something small, but it will be as unattractive as a hothouse plum tree. And as short-lived.