The Tender-Loving Technique
The client is a youth, and his companion for the evening is a high-ranking courtesan88 who has only recently made her debut. This is their first meeting.89 The courtesan is sixteen years old but seems well developed and is exceedingly beautiful. She has on Shimomura face powder, sparingly applied. Her disposition is warmhearted, and her face overflows with sweetness. Her hair, done up in the shinobu style, emits an alluring fragrance of Momosuke matrimony-vine oil.90 She is dressed for bed in a scarlet crepe kimono with a lavender satin border in a rugged-strand motif fashioned with gold and silver threads and secured with a crenellated silk obi adorned with the large-paulownia pattern,91 custom-made by Echigawa. In the same hand with which she is holding up the hem of her robe, she holds several sheets of fine, soft tissue paper. She is in the hallway.
In the frontispiece for Forty-Eight Techniques for Success with Courtesans, the text on the right reads, “Picture by Kyōden,” and that on the left, “Capital of Celestial Beings in the World of Desire, Country of Pleasure in Prosperity and Peace,” which refers to the licensed quarters. Kinkō Sennin (Sage of the Koto), a master of the koto instrument in Song China, was frequently pictured skillfully riding on a carp, a symbol of good fortune. In a mitate (double vision) allusion to the Chinese Sage of the Koto, Kyōden depicts an elegant courtesan reading a letter from a customer as she rides a gigantic carp. From the 1790 edition. (From SNKBZ 80, Sharebon, kokkeibon, ninjōbon, by permission of Shōgakukan)
COURTESAN: Hey, Kotoji!
CHILD ATTENDANT92 (carefully turning her head, with her heavy-looking coiffure held in place by a long, flat hairpin, thrust through sideways and adorned with flower ornaments at both ends): Yes miss?
COURTESAN: You haven’t forgotten what I told you earlier, have you?
CHILD ATTENDANT: I already told them! (That is, to lay out the bedding in a different place than usual, out of consideration for the client now waiting alone in the adjoining room, so that he will not be able to hear the intimate exchanges taking place next door. Tonight’s client is about eighteen and looks as though he would be very popular with the ladies. Well-built, handsome, and sparing of speech, he looks every inch the scion of a well-to-do family. He has come with one companion. Still wearing his haori jacket and reclining on top of a bed made up of five futon mattresses, he is now doodling in the ashes of the hand-warming brazier with the tip of a long metal charcoal-handling chopstick.)
COURTESAN (entering and bashfully kneeling in a dim part of the room): Won’t you take off your jacket?
YOUTH: OK. (Without further comment, he removes it.)
COURTESAN (folding it and placing it in the room’s small alcove): You’re making me awfully nervous.
YOUTH: How come?
COURTESAN: Well, because you’re not saying anything.
YOUTH: I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.
COURTESAN: That’s right, lie! You’ve obviously got a sure hand with the ladies.
YOUTH: The only hands I’ve got are these two right here.
COURTESAN: Oh, cute! (She seems on the point of pinching him but stops herself. She puffs on a pipe, trying to light it, but the pipe-lighting ember has gone out. She claps her hands in summons. The child attendant enters.)
COURTESAN: Put some charcoal in here. Make sure it’s properly banked, now.
CHILD ATTENDANT: Yes, miss. (She takes away the charcoal holder.)
FELLOW COURTESAN (from the other side of the wall, next door): My, aren’t we having fun!
COURTESAN (deliberately, though in fact she heard): What did you say? I can’t hear a thing! (She beams delightedly. Presently the child attendant returns carrying the charcoal holder, blowing on the ember inside it.)
COURTESAN: Hey! What have you done to your finger?
CHILD ATTENDANT: I got bit by a dog last night in Nakano-chō.
COURTESAN: You see? What did I tell you? Now, let that be a lesson to you; that’ll teach you not to trifle with dogs and whatnot! (Her chiding is childlike and without rancor. The Youth smiles, and the Child Attendant hangs her head.)
COURTESAN: Here, now put these away, then change your clothes and go on to bed. (She pulls out her ornamental combs and hairpins, wraps them up in tissue paper, and hands them to her.)
CHILD ATTENDANT: Yes, miss. Well, good night, then. (As she rises to go, her sleeve brushes against a koto leaning against the wall, and the instrument sounds discordantly: Plonk-twang!)
COURTESAN: Softly! (She pulls the tobacco tray over next to the head of the bed and lights a pipe. The flame flares up, and by its light she carefully, surreptitiously, examines the Youth’s face. After puffing briefly on the pipe to get it going, she offers it to the Youth.)
YOUTH: No, I don’t care for tobacco.
COURTESAN: You won’t have any? Say, are you from the same part of town as Hanagiku’s customer?93
YOUTH: No, I’m not.
COURTESAN: From where, then?
YOUTH: From Hatchō-bori, in Kanda.94
COURTESAN: You liar! How dare you try to fool me?
YOUTH: I’ll tell you where later.
COURTESAN: How come? This is really bugging me now. Come on, tell me! If you don’t tell me, I’ll tickle you!
YOUTH: Why should you care if I tell you or not? Anyhow, it’s a long way from here.
COURTESAN: Really?
YOUTH: See if you can guess.
COURTESAN: OK, tell me what syllable it starts with.
YOUTH: It starts with ni.
COURTESAN: OK, hold on. Ni, right? Let’s see, now . . . OK—Nihonbashi?
YOUTH (laughing): Wrong!
COURTESAN (thinks again for a bit): OK, then, how about Nikawa-chō or whatever it is?95
YOUTH: Nope.
COURTESAN (scratching her hair in front with an ornamental hairpin): Damn! So where is it?
YOUTH: Actually it is near Nihonbashi: it’s Nishigashi.
COURTESAN: There, you see? Pretty good guess, huh? Say, if you’re from Nihonbashi, then I guess you pass by the Asakusa Kannon Temple on your way, huh?96
YOUTH: Of course!
COURTESAN: I suppose you have a wife at home, right?
YOUTH: What? Not yet—no way!
COURTESAN: Then you must be seeing a courtesan somewhere, right?
YOUTH: My family is very strict, and I can’t get out of the house, so there was no way I could ever visit here before. Last year on the way home from the Tori-no-machi festival, I did go along with somebody to a different establishment. But instead of talking only about me, tell me about your love affairs!
COURTESAN: How could I have any such thing? Up until the end of last year I was in the dormitory97 at Minowa; I debuted only this spring. Even supposing if I wanted to have a love affair, nobody would take a person like me.
YOUTH: You do lie well. I’m going to name you Liar.
COURTESAN: It’s true!
YOUTH: OK, well, have you ever fallen in love with a customer?
COURTESAN: No, I don’t like to fall in love.
YOUTH: Well, then, that would be all the more true in regard to me, I suppose.
COURTESAN: You? (She looks into his face, smiling.) I’d better not say any more. (As she speaks, she is twisting the “binding monkey” attached to the corner of her mattress.)98
YOUTH: You do like to tease, don’t you?
COURTESAN: You know, I have only one wish.
YOUTH: What wish is that?
COURTESAN: That the customer I love would come.
YOUTH: Didn’t you just say you weren’t in love with anybody?
COURTESAN: There is just one person.
YOUTH: I envy him. Who is it? (The courtesan says nothing.)
YOUTH: Come on, who is it?
COURTESAN (gathering her courage and coming out with it): It’s you!
YOUTH (his heart racing): You sure are one smooth talker!
COURTESAN: It’s the truth. But considering the kind of person I am, I suppose this
is the last time you’ll be coming here, right?
YOUTH: You deserve better—a beautiful courtesan like you!
COURTESAN: Oh, sure, that’s right, make fun of me all you want!
YOUTH: But seriously—if you’d really be willing to make me a regular patron, I would like to come calling on you.
COURTESAN: What a lie!.
YOUTH: Suppose I did come?
COURTESAN: You mean it?
YOUTH: Of course!
COURTESAN: Ah, well, I’m glad, even if it is a lie!
YOUTH: Now that’s a lie!
COURTESAN: No, it’s true.
YOUTH (taking her in his arms and slipping between her legs): Which is it—the truth or a lie?
COURTESAN: Whoops, my feet are cold—I hope you don’t mind. (She wraps her legs tightly around him. Just as they are about to really get into it, another customer, holding in one hand a tobacco pouch with a pipe sticking out of it, enters the room.)
COMPANION CUSTOMER: It’s freezing tonight! (Belches) Mind if I come in? (This customer is fortyish and appears to be a long-standing patron. He presents himself as a man of the world, knowledgeable in every respect, but is in fact a great humbug.)
COURTESAN (though resenting the interruption at just the wrong moment): How good of you to drop in on us! Do, please, come on in.
COMPANION CUSTOMER (kneeling down): Well, then, perhaps I will have just a token pipeful.99
COURTESAN (lighting a pipe and handing it to him): Why don’t you come on up here?100
COMPANION CUSTOMER: No, here is fine—as Yoshino arrowroot powder.101
YOUTH (out of a sense of polite obligation): Please, come on in.
COMPANION CUSTOMER: Now, lady, this one’s like a kid brother to me, so you take good care of him.
COURTESAN: He’s been teasing me something terrible all evening.
YOUTH: What? I’m the one who’s been getting led by the nose the whole time!
COURTESAN: There he goes again! He’s hateful! (She pretends to strike at him with the pipe.) But you are his teacher, so of course he would know all the tricks.
COMPANION CUSTOMER: Look, Ei,102 you’ve got it all to look forward to, so do all the wenching you can—knock yourself out! As for me, I’m getting on in years. My vitality’s sapped—one little drink just knocks me right out—so there’s no way a high-ranking beauty’s going to fall for me now!
COURTESAN: Oh, come, now, I’d say you’ve done pretty well, getting Hanagiku to fall for you as hard as she has.
COMPANION CUSTOMER: Oh, please! No, that high-ranker’s103 not the type of girl I’d want to plant in my field! I won’t be coming to visit her again.
COURTESAN: The poor thing!—don’t say that! I’m gonna tell on you!
COMPANION CUSTOMER: It’s fine with me if she does hear. If I do say so myself, I’m a man who’s come to this quarter for three hundred sixty-odd days straight, a man with palanquin calluses on his behind, a man who can’t fall asleep unless he feels velvet against his face. . . . 104 (Warming to his topic, he fails to notice that the ember has dropped out of his pipe onto his lap; his brand-new pongee kimono, of striped Ueda silk, begins to smolder.)
COURTESAN (noticing): Look—your ember’s dropped out!
COMPANION CUSTOMER: Uh-huh. (He merely rubs it out. Hoping to save face in front of the courtesan, he shows no concern but continues.) That’s the kind of guy I am, so when a woman so much as twitches her left eye, I know exactly what’s up with her—I know every trick in the book—so even for a high-ranking beauty, I suppose it’s not so easy to entertain a guy like me. (Thus, having been poorly treated this evening, he comes over here and blows off steam. The courtesan, fed up, says nothing but looks bored and fiddles, twisting tissue paper into little strings and tossing them against the arrangement of irises in the alcove.)
COMPANION CUSTOMER: Well, I’ve ended up talking for quite some time. To overstay one’s welcome is the height of boorishness, you know.105 Lady, good night. (He gets to his feet.)
YOUTH: Hey, stay awhile.
COMPANION CUSTOMER: Naw—I’m getting awfully sleepy. It’s OK once in a while for me—but I imagine you’ve got to get up pretty early, so. . . .
YOUTH: That’s right—the earlier the better.
COURTESAN (though overjoyed that at last he is leaving): Oh, do stay just a little bit longer. But we’d better not keep you. Hanagiku will be cross with you, no doubt.
COMPANION CUSTOMER: We’re beyond that point. (Moving into the adjoining room) What do you know, everyone’s drifted off to dreamland, even the head apprentice courtesan.106 This is a situation made to order for stealing into a lady’s bedchamber. (He goes over by the wood-and-paper lantern, pokes an exploratory finger into the fresh burn-hole in his robe, and departs, greatly crestfallen. Behind him, the couple heave a sigh of relief. The clock in the office downstairs chimes the seventh hour.)107
TEAHOUSE MAN: Gentlemen, I’ve come to escort you back!108
NARRATOR: The use by the courtesan of the flame from the pipe tobacco to examine the Youth’s face harks back to the “Fireflies” chapter of the Tale of Genji and is very refined.109 At this stage of her career, she is still intimidated by the madam and the head apprentice courtesan, so even though she may be in love, her love will remain no more than a feeling locked inside her heart. And it will often happen that the head apprentice courtesan will instruct her, “Tonight, say thus-and-such to the customer and urge him to come on the seasonal festival day”;110 yet the girl will end up missing the chance to ask him, and the head courtesan will lie stewing in the next room, eavesdropping on it all from start to finish and fuming, “Ah! Why doesn’t she latch on to what he just said and make him agree to do it!” But since she is a courtesan with a promising future, she will not be dependent on her brothel owner for long and will soon clear the hurdle of launching her apprentice courtesans’ careers.111 And again, these little youths nowadays do tend to get carried away with trying to be the very height of style and sophistication, yet there is none of that about this customer—he is exactly the type a courtesan will fall in love with. Truly, a match like this is an enviable amusement. Someone once described as priceless the words of one high-ranking courtesan who, when staying in temporary quarters at Nakazu,112 remarked, “Now, I like the quarter, because there the weather’s good—but my, how it rains in Nakazu!”113 In any case, when it comes to high-ranking beauties, innocence is to be greatly prized.
[Sharebon, kokkeibon, ninjōbon, SNKBZ 80, translated by Herschel Miller]
The True-Feeling Technique
The setting: A large house in the Yoshiwara quarter. The woman wants to marry the man, and he wants to marry her.
A man wipes the floorboards of a second-floor hall. Another walks up and down calling out, “Bath’s closing! Bath’s closing!” Although the weather is good, a male customer has stayed the night in one room on the second floor and still hasn’t gone home. It’s already past noon. The courtesan is high ranking, a chūsan of twenty-two or twenty-three. She’s not feeling well and lies under a quilt with a torn strip of white silk around her head. She hasn’t bothered to put on makeup or fix her mussed hair. The man is thirty-three or thirty-four. His face is taut and somber, but he’s unaffected in his behavior and quite attractive. He’s wearing only his inner robe and sits beside the woman with one leg up, bent at the knee.
GEISHA MUSICIAN (plays her shamisen and softly finishes her song): “. . . in the quarter they drift and float day after day, pretending they’re wife and husband.”
JESTER: Well done!
CUSTOMER (holding out a saké cup to the musician): Here, have one.
GEISHA MUSICIAN: I’d like you to have it.
CUSTOMER: Please.
GEISHA MUSICIAN: Well, all right then. (She accepts the cup with one hand, holding her shamisen in the other.)
TEAHOUSE MAN:114 Let me pour.
GEISHA MUSICIAN (to the teahouse man): Hey, where were you headed this morning? On the way back from Bi
shamon Temple, I saw you going somewhere. (As those familiar with the licensed quarter know, women musicians often go in the morning to pray to the Buddhist demon god Bishamon at the temple dedicated to him in San’ya.)
TEAHOUSE MAN: Just on an errand. To a customer’s house.
GEISHA MUSICIAN: Hmm. Is that all? (The jester takes the musician’s plectrum, which she’s rested on a decorated saké stand, and he mimes playing the shamisen.)
JESTER: Wonderful wood. (He uses the quarter’s word for ivory.)
GEISHA MUSICIAN: Not really. It’s not quite right. It’s made for Katō-style playing. (The geisha musician has been there for some time already, and someone in the house calls the teahouse man out into the hall. He comes back in and says the musician’s time here is up and she’s wanted at a party somewhere else in the quarter. She pretends not to hear.)
TEAHOUSE MAN (whispers to the customer): Shall I have the musician leave now?
CUSTOMER (under his breath): All right. She can leave now.
TEAHOUSE MAN: Well then, let’s ask her to put her shamisen back in the case.
JESTER: I think we’re all about finished. (Just then, the thinnest of the three strings on the shamisen, now lying beside the musician, snaps with a sharp twang.)
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 94