That plain white smock I took apart, retailored it, and dyed it:
now half of it’s a darling “mouse” and half bellflower violet;
right in the middle is his crest—the crest of Ogawa Eishi.41
I wear the highest platform clogs with thongs so slim and lacy.
Nearby there lives a fellow, name of Chūshichi “the card”;42
I asked him first for little loans—you know, when things were hard.
Sometimes he’d take me for a date, and where is it we’d go?
Off to the Nijō New Quarter or behind old Goryō.43
Two hundred coppers paid the rent, three hundred went for wine;
right after our night’s tippling was the time to say my “lines.”
The lines I fed him! Most of them were just my little scams.
But then Chūshichi ran out on me; the boy went on the lam.
Now since I’ve come to have a little money, just for me,
I wear crepe when I’m on the town; for casual wear, pongee.
The crepe and pongee range of silks seems easiest to wear.
Those Madras plaids from ō me—oh, they’re far too coarse to bear!
“But have you not heard?44
Your old dad in the country—long he’s dwelt in poverty!
How can you prance with lofty airs, your days a boundless spree?
Miss, tell us this! We know your wage, precisely what you earn:
just thirty monme—yes, that’s all—each semiannual term!”45
[Taihei gafu, hoka, pp. 18–20, 26–30, 67–68, translated by Andrew Markus]
________________________
1. “To count the number of hairs in one’s nostrils” meant “to fawn on a superior.” This was a satirical comment on the state of the samurai in the Tokugawa period, when ordinary samurai were no longer engaged in combat but had to concentrate on attending their lord.
2. One of the best-known premodern senryū. This little son has learned to open and close his fist at a very early age because he watches his father receiving bribes day in and day out.
3. Although doctors are usually not moved by the death of a patient, if the patient’s wife is beautiful, they may have a special interest.
4. The paradox of the robber, too, being afraid of being robbed. The same paradoxical phrase was used by men to their wives before they set off for the licensed quarter.
5. In a noted episode in the ancient chronicles, the god Susanoō used wine to intoxicate and slay a dangerous serpent, a practice that seems to continue today.
6. The choice of a ladder to explain the process of serious study and scholarship reflects commoner sensibilities.
7. The comparison is between pictures of heaven, with its buddhas and lotus flowers, and those of the Eight Great Hells, including the Lake of Blood and the Mountain of Needles.
8. Edo, where people gathered from the provinces, was a city with a large number of inhabitants living alone. The senryū humorously captures the dreary side of solitary life.
9. A scene so passionate that there is no time to stand and undo the sash. The maeku (previous verse) was “Things good from beginning to end” or “Things that come out well.” From 1765.
10. When invited to go out, he declines, saying that his wife will object. It is precisely these types who accumulate money, though implicitly at the cost of not appreciating the finer things in life.
11. The tattoo of a lover’s name, barely visible in the wrinkled skin, reveals a time long past when the father had fallen head over heels for the mother.
12. The master of the house is expecting a meal when he comes home, but the baby gets priority.
13. A student appears to be studying Confucius’s Analects but is in fact looking at a more interesting, unapproved book, which is hidden when a parent approaches.
14. Courtesans sometimes cut off the tip of a finger as a gesture of loyalty to a customer, suggesting that the nun may have been a courtesan. To the man who has noticed this, she responds with only a smile, creating a sense of mystery.
15. A reference to the numerous amorous adventures of Ariwara no Narihira (820–880), the protagonist of The Tales of Ise.
16. In the nō play Komachi on the Stupa (Sotoba Komachi), Komachi, a former passionate lover and now an old woman, is seen sitting on a stupa, the holy image of the Buddha’s incarnation.
17. The standard image of Genji in the Edo period was that he was so beautiful that women were always chasing after him.
18. In the famous death scene in The Tale of the Heike, Kiyomori, the leader of the Heike, dies of an extremely high fever, so hot that his body causes water to boil.
19. At the battle of Yashima, moments before Minamoto Yoshitsune, the Genji leader, was shot at by the enemy general Noritsune, governor of Noto, Yoshitsune’s loyal retainer Satō Tsugunobu (1158–1185) stepped in front of him and was killed, thus becoming a model of self-sacrifice. The senryū suggests that Tsugunobu did not really expect the shot to be so accurate.
20. Forty-six of the forty-seven rōnin in the Chūshingura incident died by committing ritual suicide at Sengaku-ji temple in Edo a couple of months after their successful vendetta. Hinted at here is the alleged penchant of Buddhist priests for seducing young widows.
21. Here the season greeter (reisha) began his rounds of the neighborhood in formal dress, but with each reception of celebratory wine, he becomes more tipsy. The kyōka celebrates the arrival of spring (which coincides with the arrival of the New Year under the lunar calendar), not, in the classical fashion, by referring to an aspect of nature but by capturing an aspect of contemporary social life.
22. This kyōka, written in praise of the Yoshiwara, the bakufu licensed quarter in Edo, is an allusive variation on a famous waka by Priest Nōin: “Coming upon a mountain village at nightfall on a spring day, I saw blossoms scattering in the echoes of the vesper bells.” Akara transforms the image of the sound of the vespers in the evening, which had become associated in the classical tradition with the quiet loneliness of the mountain village and with the impermanence of this world, into a bright celebration of the pleasures offered by the women at Yoshiwara at night. Noin’s cherry blossoms become the beautiful female “flowers” of Yoshiwara.
23. As in many kyōka, humor is generated through the treatment of vulgar subject matter and homophonic wordplay: the word “loan” (shakkin) suggests “balls” (kintama), whose exposure is implicitly as embarrassing as that of debts, and fundoshi (loincloth) is a homophone for “year” (toshi). Particularly striking is the rhythmic, musical quality of the poem, resulting from the repetitive sounds of “u” and “a.”
24. In this poem, the humor lies in the personification of the fallen chestnuts, which are fleeing the children.
25. One of the well-known conventions of classical Japanese poetry was to visually mistake the white petals of the cherry blossoms for snowflakes. In this kyōka, this elegant confusion is turned into a debate that is finally resolved by the rise of the dawn sun, which makes clear that these are cherry blossoms.
26. After beginning with a small pun on nazuke, which means both “pickled greens” and “to name/define,” the kyōka rides on a series of buoyant rhymes with taru, used to mean “to suffice” (kototaru), “a small container” (kotaru), “a wine barrel” (taru), and finally, “to be enough” (taru). This poem on knowing “sufficiency” (taru) reflects Tōsaku’s own modest life.
27. This kyōka, one of Meshimori’s most famous, is typical of Tenmei-style kyōka in the manner that it destroys authority. The kyōka begins with a surprising inversion—“that poor poets are better”—and then proceeds to prove it by twisting a famous phrase in Ki no Tsurayuki’s kana preface to the Kokinshū, which assumes that great poetry can move “heaven and earth.”
28. Ki no Sadamaru gives a comic twist to a classical and Buddhist theme, the impermanence of all things. The solemnity of the last line (aware nare, or the sadness of it all) stands in comic contrast to the risque
metaphor.
29. Senbon is a general designation for the area northeast of Kitano Tenmangu Shrine in Kyoto.
30. Her aunt provides a temporary place to stay and personally supervises her efforts to find a position—thus freeing the young woman from having to rely on temporary but costly lodgings or to pay exorbitant placement fees to unscrupulous job brokers. The young newcomer’s aunt serves as her guarantor and negotiates the “warranty” to establish responsibility in the case of unsatisfactory performance, damage, or absconding.
31. Presumably, the quilted garment is hopelessly countrified in its color and decoration.
32. “Bush-leave” (yabuiri) holidays, usually granted for a few days in the middle of the First and Seventh Months, immediately after the busy New Year’s and Bon holidays, were among the rare free days for a domestic servant.
33. Gion and Kiyomizu are still standard highlights of a tour of Kyoto.
34. Theater violence. It is possible that the heroine does not understand, at first, the nature of stage representation—it may be a stock comic situation.
35. In the kabuki play Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees (Yoshitsune senbonazakura, 1747)—a title that echoes the Senbon residence of the newcomer’s aunt—after the defeat of the Taira, Minamoto no Yoshitsune entrusts his beloved mistress, Shizuka, to the care of his valiant retainer Satō Tadanobu—who is in reality a fox drawn by the enchanted sound of a drum manufactured from its parent’s hide. In the “Sushi Shop” scene, a humble sushi maker’s son sacrifices his wife and child to ensure the safe escape of the hunted Taira general, Koremori. The sushi maker’s daughter, O-Sato, is a character of secondary importance in the scene. Onoe Kikugorō (1717–1783), known as Onoe Baikō, was one of the most celebrated kabuki actors in the 1750s and 1760s. The kabuki actor Nakamura Kumetarō (1724–1777), known as Nakamura Richō, made his debut in Kyoto in 1735 and became famous for his portrayals of young women.
36. The Shijō riverbank. The location was famous for gaudy attractions and as a location for escaping the worst of the summer heat.
37. “Wheat rice” (mugimeshi) and salty “miso stews” (zosui) are robust, though unrefined, country dishes. “Tea porridge” (chagayu) is a sort of gruel flavored with tea dregs—a dish more suggestive of economy than specifically rustic.
38. These are fashionable expressions. Sukan is a prostitute’s expression of distaste. O, shoshi is an exclamation of irritation at a patent absurdity.
39. The Kunidayū chanting style ultimately derives from the jōruri chanting style pioneered by Miyakodayu Itchū (1650–1724) in the 1660s. The sensual, inflammatory nature of the style—often known as Bungo-bushi—made it the ideal accompaniment for michiyuki, or lovers’ suicide scenes. Restrictions—either instigated by moral indignation or sponsored by commercial rivals—finally culminated in a ban on Bungo-bushi in 1739. The implication here may be that the housemaid, inspired by extravagant theatrical productions, is daydreaming about a sensational, passionate double suicide.
40. Kinshōjo is the patriotic heroine of Chikamatsu’s Battles of Coxinga (1715), the wife of Watonai’s Chinese ally, Kanki. The Kinshōjo “bun” inspired by this role and popular in the licensed quarters in the 1750s featured a thin protruding spindle of hair rising from the back of the head and an elongated “duck tail” at the nape. “Lantern flares” (tōrōbin), or flaring sidelocks, also become popular in the 1750s.
41. Ogawa Kichitarō (1737–1781), known as Ogawa Eishi, was a noted kabuki actor who became known from 1761 for his adolescent and male hero roles, particularly the down and out lover (yatsushigata).
42. Chūshichi was an epithet in the Kyoto-Osaka dialects for a glib or comical talker.
43. Nijō New Quarter was an unlicensed pleasure district in Kyoto, immediately east of the Kamo River and south of Nijō. Goryō, located just west of Ponto-chō, on the west bank of the Kamo, was, like the Nijō New Quarter, notorious for its many cheap, unregistered prostitutes.
44. From this line, the poet or the spectator intrudes to criticize the housemaid directly for ignoring the welfare of her parents in the country.
45. The thirty monme, a relatively small sum for a half year’s income, implies that the housemaid is living far beyond her modest income and probably is indulging in illicit side activities to subsidize her costly urban indulgences.
Chapter 13
LITERATI MEDITATIONS
The bunjin ideal was the Chinese-inspired scholar-artist literatus ideal which first emerged in Japan in the early eighteenth century. Because the bakufu system allowed for only a limited or restricted expression of talent, the bunjin sought liberation in the arts, particularly Chinese poetry, painting, and calligraphy. For well-educated clan officials like Gion Nankai (1677–1751) and Yanagisawa Kien (1706–1758), who resigned from their posts because they were unwilling to conform, the literati mode was an alternative lifestyle. But for commoners like Yosa Buson (1716–1783) and Ike Taiga (1723–1776), who came from more humble backgrounds, the literati mode also reflected a yearning for the cultural cachet embodied at the time in the Chinese tradition.
A bunjin (literatus) was someone who worked in several art forms as an avocation instead of a livelihood. A haikai master like Buson was a professional, although as someone who first turned to Chinese poetry and painting as an amateur, Buson could also be considered a bunjin. The bunjin also aimed for an ideal in which the various genres came together as one. For example, the objective of the bunjin painters was not realistically depicting objects or landscape but, rather, as in the Chinese tradition, capturing the elegance of nature and its constantly moving life force. Buson’s media were haikai and the three Chinese bunjin arts: poetry, calligraphy, and painting. He also became a master of a genre called haiga, or haikai painting, a pictorial style that used minimal brushwork and light colors to create a visual effect analogous to the seventeen-syllable haiku in its economy and stress on the moment.
YOSA BUSON
Yosa Buson (1716–1783), a noted painter, literatus, and haikai poet, was born in Settsu Province (Hyōgo) in Kema, a farming village in present-day Osaka, where his father probably was the village head. Buson lost both his parents at an early age, but little is known about the rest of his childhood. Apparently he showed an early interest in painting and received instruction from a Kanō school painter. Then, at around the age of twenty, Buson moved to Edo and became a disciple of Hajin (1676–1742), a haikai poet who had established the Yahantei circle in Nihonbashi. Hajin had been a student of Kikaku, a disciple of Bashō and the founder of the Edo-za school to which Buson later had close ties. After Hajin’s death in 1742, Buson left Edo and for the next ten years lived in various places in northeastern Honshū, working with Hajin’s disciples and working on his painting. Buson—who assumed the pen name Buson in 1744—traveled to the Tōhoku region and occasionally returned to Edo where he probably met with Hattori Nankaku (1683–1759), a major kanshi and bunjin poet-artist. In 1751 Buson moved to Kyoto and then shortly thereafter, in 1754, to Tango Province (north Kyoto), where he spent the next three years practicing bunjinga (literati painting), also known as nanga (southern painting), and produced both historical and landscape paintings. In 1757, he returned to Kyoto, married, and changed his family name from Taniguchi to Yosa, the area from which his mother had come. By the 1760s, his talent as a bunjin painter had been recognized, and he eventually became, along with Ike Taiga, one of most famous bunjin painters of the Edo period.
In 1766, Buson formed, together with Taigi (1709–1771), Shōha (1727–1771), and others, the Sankasha haikai circle. In 1770, at the age of fifty-four, he became the head of the Yahantei school, succeeding his teacher Hajin, and became a haikai master in Kyoto. In 1771 Taigi and Shōha, who had long been his poetic partners, died in quick succession, but Buson was joined by such new, talented disciples as Kitō (1741–1789), Gekkei (1752–1811), and Chora (1729–1780). Beginning in 1772, the Yahantei group produced a series of notable poems and linked-verse collectio
ns; Kitō edited both Dawn Crow (Akegarasu, 1773) and Sequel to Dawn Crow (Zoku Akegarasu, 1773). Buson reached the peak of his poetic powers in 1777 when he composed “Spring Breeze on the Kema Embankment” (Shunpū bateikyoku), a new genre that combined Japanese and Chinese poetry. “Spring Breeze on the Kema Embankment,” his masterpiece, focused on his longing for Kema, his birthplace. In the same year, he began writing New Flower Gathering (Shinhanatsumi), which he initially intended as a memorial to his mother but which became a loosely connected prose and poetry collection. In 1783, Buson participated in the events commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Bashō’s death but fell ill soon afterward and died at the end of that year at the age of sixty-seven.
The period in which Buson was active—from the 1750s to the 1780s—was the heyday of the bunjin ideal. Hiraga Gennai (1728–1779), Takebe Ayatari (1719–1774), Tsuga Teishō (1718?–1794?), Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), and Ōta Nanpo (1749–1823) all can be considered bunjin. But of these poet-intellectuals, only Buson was closely associated with the Bashō haikai revival, which took place in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The result, for Buson, was a significant cross-fertilization between the kanshi literati tradition and haikai—that is, between the Chinese and Japanese artistic cultures. One of the ideals of Buson’s poetry and painting was the notion of rizoku, or “departure from the common,” which was closely related to his awareness of himself as a bunjin. Although Buson was a great admirer of Basho’s poetry, his viewpoint differed from Bashō’s in important respects. Unlike Bashō, who advocated “awakening to the high, returning to the low” (kōga kizoku) and sought “lightness” (karumi), or the poetics of everyday life, Buson advocated “departing from the common,” an exploration of other worlds through Chinese literature and painting as well as the Japanese classics, wandering freely in a world of elegance and imagination that he found far superior to the life immediately around him. The difference between Bashō’s “return” to the common or low, which was an acknowledgment of everyday life, and Buson’s “departure,” which was a rejection of contemporary society, reflects a fundamental difference between the culture of the Genroku era, at the end of the seventeenth century, and the attitude of many late-eighteenth-century intellectuals.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 77