12. Enjirō is greeted by his “jealous” mistress, who sits in front of a clothes cabinet framed with decorative metal fittings, visually echoing her request for new robes. On the wall hangs a special letter holder for love letters exchanged between a courtesan and a customer, a mark of a playboy. Enjirō wears a black scarf, showing that he, too, is now a pleasure seeker. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
The girls are doing it only because Enjirō’s promised each a doll, and they chat about all sorts of things as they go.
[ENJIRŌ] (his hood deliberately half off so people can see his face): Hey, let go, will you! (Lowers his voice) Getting dragged along like this will really make my reputation.
12. When Enjirō comes back after five or six days to the house he’s rented for his mistress, she shows she’s worth her pay. Going on and on, she remembers every line she’s practiced and displays fierce jealousy.
[MISTRESS]: How can men be so cruel? Tell me! How can you be so coldhearted? If you don’t want to be adored so much, you shouldn’t have been born so handsome. That courtesan’s shameless. She knows perfectly well she’s keeping you away from the woman who loves you. And it’s your fault, too. All right, go ahead and stay with her! Well, that’s a good stopping place for today. I really need a striped silk robe, you know, and a striped crepe one, too.
13. Kinosuke visits a lantern maker in Tamachi, his shop marked by a sign at the far left. An apprentice offers some tea to Kinosuke while the master, bald-headed with a pair of glasses dangling from his ear, reads the order. Materials for lantern making—glue bowl, brushes, inkstone case, and bamboo—surround the man. Three completed lanterns, hung on the right, are for the famous night cherry viewing held in Yoshiwara in the Third Month. The lantern next to Kinosuke has the crest of Matsubaya, a courtesan house in Yoshiwara, and says “Utahime of the Matsubaya,” indicating that she has ordered it. The lantern on the bottom right bears the name “Minoya,” suggesting that it was ordered by the Minoya House. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[ENJIRŌ]: I hate to admit it, but this is the first time anyone’s ever gotten jealous over me. It feels so nice I can’t describe it.
If you’ll just be jealous a little longer, I promise I’ll buy you both the silk robe and the crepe one that you’ve been craving. Just a little more. Please.
[MISTRESS]: After I get my striped silk and striped crepe robes, I’ll really let you have it.
13. In the fashion of kabuki actors and high-ranking courtesans, Enjirō decides to make a large offering to the Ekōin Pure Land Temple near Ryōgoku Bridge during the services for Saint Dōryō.24 He asks Kitari Kinosuke to go to a lantern shop in Tamachi in Asakusa with his order for lanterns designed with his and Ukina’s double crests. Kinosuke then goes to the Nakaya clothing store near the Yoshiwara and orders special handkerchiefs marked with their double crests to be prominently hung at the holy washing basins at various popular shrines and temples around Edo. These also cost a great deal, and Enjirō’s contributions to the shrines and temples are substantial. Yet he has no prayer to make. His offerings are intended only to create a reputation for himself as a famous lover.
14. A street sign is placed against a rain barrel (right), giving the reader a view from the side alley of the toughs beating up Enjirō. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[KINOSUKE]: He’s in a real hurry. And put a lot of ribs and folds in them. The round caps at the top and bottom should be the standard lacquer with brass fittings. Make them as fancy as you can. Money’s no concern.
[LANTERN MAKER]: Sorry, but it’ll take a little time. We’ve got a huge backlog of orders. They’re hanging lanterns on the cherry trees in the Yoshiwara every night now.
14. Enjirō goes to see some kabuki plays and concludes that sexy men get roughed up a lot.25 After that he’s consumed by the desire to get beaten up, and he gives three gold pieces each to four or five toughs who hang around outside the quarter and asks them to attack him on the main street of the Yoshiwara. He carefully prepares for the beating. He hires the jester Tōbei to wait on the second floor of a teahouse nearby and sing a sad, soulful passage from a kabuki play while Ukina combs his mussed hair for him, just the way Tora does for Soga Jūrō in the play. He brushes blue actor’s paint all over the shaved part of his head, and he doesn’t put oil on his hair. He uses only water so his hair will all fall wildly down as soon as anyone touches his topknot. The toughs are on time and begin to punch Enjirō as planned, but they beat him so well that he falls unconscious and gasps for breath. No one even notices his messy hair as they shout for strong medicine and an acupuncturist to try to bring him back to life. At last he regains consciousness, and he gains a little notoriety as a complete fool.
[TOUGH] (on the left): When a sexy dude like you starts hanging out around here, it’s serious trouble, see? The women used to meet us in their spare time, but now they won’t even look at us. I’m getting a bit jealous, understand?
All their words have been written by Enjirō.
[TOUGH] (on the right): This is where the audience in the theater shouts “Villains! You’ll be punished for that!”
[ENJIRŌ]: It’s three-quarters of a gold coin for each punch. I can handle the pain. Just make it look real.
15. Enjirō listens hard for rumors, but all he hears is talk that people are doing whatever he asks them to because he’s rich and they want his money. Suddenly he hates being rich, and he asks his parents to disown him. But he’s an only son, so his father adamantly refuses. Then his mother intervenes and
calms his angry father. Finally a temporary disinheritance of seventy-five days is arranged, since rumors, as the saying goes, last only seventy-five days. When the time is up, Enjirō will be taken back into the family.
[FATHER]: This is what you want, son, so I can’t refuse. Hurry up, get out!
[SOROBEI, THE HEAD CLERK]: I cannot believe that what the young master desires is really for the good.
[ENJIRŌs]: So I’ve actually been disowned. You’ll never know how grateful I feel. Being rich is more painful than any of the 404 diseases the Buddha talked about. Why in the world do popular songs always talk about attractive men being rich?
15. Enjirō’s heavyset father sits in front of a screen, exuding authority. The head clerk, Sorobei, sitting on the right, quietly watches Enjirō as he hears himself being disowned. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
16. Each of the three geisha holds straw tally slips, one of which they drop after each barefoot pilgrimage. A sign reading “Yanagiya Sugubei’s Toothpick Shop,” indicating a vendor of various toothpicks for brushing teeth, and a placard advertising an archery range on a reed screen appear in the upper-right-hand corner. The fallen ginko leaves, which indicate that it is now autumn, and the placard suggest that the geisha are standing by a ginko tree in Okuyama inside the large precincts of the Asakusa Kannon Temple (Sensōji), an area known for archery ranges and toothpick shops, each with a beautiful woman employee (kanban musume). (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
16. Enjirō hires seven or eight famous geisha musicians who live near Nihonbashi to pretend they’re distressed by his disinheritance. He pays them to make a hundred barefoot pilgrimages each to the merciful bodhisattva Kannon in Asakusa and fervently pray that his father forgive him and take him back.
Barefoot pilgrimages are a good way to get publicity, since everyone knows they’re usually made to pray for success in love affairs.
[FIRST GEISHA]: Let’s skip a few trips and go home early.
[SECOND GEISHA]: A few? Ten’s enough.
17. Enjirō has succeeded in being disowned, but his mother secretly sends him money for everything he needs. Still, he’s supposed to be banished, so he really ought to take up a disreputable trade. He wants to work at something unusual that will make people notice him, and h
e thinks selling fan paper in the street is the sexiest job there is. So even though summer’s a long way off, he sets out and walks around with boxes of curved fan paper on his shoulder. At the end of the first day he has big blisters on his feet, and that, he decides, is the end of that. But he’s gained a considerable reputation as a crackpot.
[WAITRESS IN A TEAHOUSE]: Hey, everybody, come quick. A Toba comic picture’s walking down the street. What a face!
[ENJIRŌ]: Outside like this, I’m really getting a bad tan. Oh no! Another woman’s whispering. She’s fallen in love with me, too. Handsome men really have a hard time.
18. Enjirō is just getting used to being disinherited when the seventy-fifth day comes. The people at home send him messages every day asking him to come back, but there’s still something sensational that he wants to do. He asks some relatives to intervene, and through their good offices he’s granted a twenty-day extension. He feels he must do the most scandalous thing of all—commit double love suicide with a high-ranking courtesan. If he succeeds, Enjiro’s sure he’ll get the ultimate reputation as playboy. He makes up his mind to throw away his life, but he’s unable to persuade Ukina to die with him. So he decides on a fake love suicide. He’ll ask Kinosuke and Shian to go ahead to the suicide site and wait there. As soon as they hear Enjirō and Ukina chanting for Amida Buddha to come and take their souls to the Pure Land paradise, the men will appear and force the couple to stop. It’ll be expensive, though. Enjirō will have to pay fifteen hundred gold coins to Ukina’s manager to buy out the remainder of her contract, and he also has to buy a lot of props and implements. He wants to imitate a famous old song that goes
17. Enjirō, dressed as a fan-paper vendor, passes by a café covered with a reed screen to shield it from the sun and provide privacy. The waitress holds a saucer in front of her mouth to hide her laughter, since Enjirō reminds her of a popular Toba cartoon figure, with dots for eyes. Disinherited sons often became vendors because the job required no training, and fan-paper vending was particularly attractive to playboys who wanted to walk around in dandy style. Enjirō is dressed in a flamboyant kimono with a large maple-leaf pattern and a scarf with the crest—the mimasu, or triple-rice measure—of the famous kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjūrō. The placard placed against the counter reads “Lottery tickets sold here,” a side business for the café. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
If you find some money
let’s dye our summer robes
with a crowbar at the shoulders
and an anchor at the knees—
and if we have to pawn them
we’ll always pay the interest
and never let them float away.
So Enjirō orders matching outer robes for himself and Ukina dyed with heavy crowbar designs over their shoulders and anchor designs at the knees.26 The Nakaya clothing store makes still more money off the pair, and the Yamazaki store also makes a nice profit.
18. In a scene that resembles a kabuki dressing room, Kinosuke, list in hand, instructs Shian to make sure that all the props are ready for the fake double suicide. They include a stack of folded surimono (privately commissioned prints for special occasions) with Enjirō and Ukina’s farewell hokku, an umbrella with a bull’s-eye design (a prop used in kabuki to indicate that they are lovers), a collapsible Odawara lantern, a string of Buddhist prayer beads (for the final moments), a sword, and a branch of Japanese star anise (shikimi) to purify the suicide site. A roll of felt carpet stands beside Kinosuke, alluding to Chikamatsu’s puppet play Double Suicide During the Kōshin Vigil (Shinjū yoi gōshin), in which the main characters, Ochiyo and Hanbei, commit love suicide on top of a red felt carpet. Enjirō, having his hair prepared, and Ukina, on the right, wear matching robes with the crowbar-at-the-shoulders, anchor-at-the-knees design, which was inspired by a popular song about indivisible love. Ukina’s mirror table, on the right, is decorated with a cherry blossom design, emphasizing a link to the real-life courtesan Hanaōgi of the ōgiya House: the third Hanaōgi actually committed a double suicide with a retainer. Ukina’s two child assistants, in matching kimono, watch the busy preparation. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
Enjirō and Ukina write final parting hokku verses and have them printed on fine, thick paper together with a picture to go with the verses. Then they have the prints distributed to all the main teahouses in Yoshiwara.
[SHIAN] (referring to the envelopes on the floor): What a superb idea you had,
asking Kitao Shigemasa27 to do the picture of them sitting together on a lotus in the Pure Land paradise. He didn’t use any ink at all. It’s perfect, pure white and completely embossed.
19. Two house employees hold lamps so that Enjirō and Ukina can see their way down a ladder in the dark. Both have their heads wrapped in cloth as if they needed to hide their identities. Actual double suicides were far more secretive. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[KINOSUKE]: I ordered a short wooden sword with silver leaf on the blade.
19. Ukina is strongly opposed to even a fake love suicide, since she’ll get a reputation as a woman with bad judgment who can’t choose good customers, and would-be suicides who fail, if caught, are publicly punished and made outcastes. But Enjirō doesn’t give up. He offers to buy out the rest of her contract and help her get together later with the man she loves if she’ll only play her part in his scheme. He imitates the ploy that Yuranosuke uses in Chūshingura to persuade Okaru to leave the quarters with him, and finally Ukina gives in. Enjirō also negotiates with the head of a kabuki troupe to have the love suicide made into a play in time for the fall season. In return for providing a no-interest loan to the troupe, Enjirō has the right to tell the playwright Sakurada Jisuke how the plot should be written. He’ll be played by Ichikawa Monnosuke II, and Ukina, by Segawa Kikunojō III, both great stars, but it’s one of those plays that don’t have a chance in the world of succeeding.
Sexy men, Enjirō is sure, never simply buy out the contracts of high-ranking courtesans. So he decides to run away from the house with Ukina, breaking the lattice along the second-floor hall and escaping down a ladder. “You’ve bought out her contract,” the house manager tells him, “so you can leave any way you want. But I’ll have to have the lattice repaired. I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a special discount price on that of two hundred gold coins.” The manager is a greedy man, so Enjirō pays ten times the normal repair cost. Then Enjirō lets a couple of house employees pocket some of the large tip he hands them to give to the manager, and in return they agree to spread news of the daring escape all over Edo.
20. Attacked by two masked highwaymen, who have their leggings pulled up, exposing their thighs, Enjirō and Ukina beg for mercy. Ukina holds a purificatory sprig. In this deserted area, they cannot expect anyone to help them. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[ENJIRŌ]: You all know the saying about trying to apply eye ointment from the second floor to somebody on the first floor. It’s very difficult. But now, for the first time, someone’s actually ransomed a courtesan from the second floor.
[EMPLOYEE] (in front): It’s dangerous, sir. Gently now.
[EMPLOYEE] (in back): Ukina, please have a pleasant escape.
20. Enjirō wants a stylish, eye-catching spot for the fake suicide attempt. So he chooses the dike on the far bank of the Sumida River near the famous Mimeguri Shrine. He’s afraid to walk through the area late at night, so they set out early in the evening. Representatives from the teahouses in the quarter and the Sumida River boat companies Enjirō has patronized also come along, together with amateur and professional jesters and male geisha comedians who have performed for him. They all wear formal cloaks and skirts and say farewell to the couple with as much ceremony as a Shinto group sending off specially chosen members on a pilgrimage to the Ise Grand Shrine. They make a big procession east across the Ōkawa
Bridge at Asakusa, and on the far side the good-byes continue along the embankment near the Tada Yakushi Temple. Alone now, Enjirō feels elated. At last he’s about to achieve his great wish, and he sets out with Ukina north along the embankment on their journey toward death. When they reach a spot that looks right for their final moments, Enjirō unsheathes his silver-leaf wooden short sword. Then the moment comes when two must do the act. Just as Enjirō is calling out to Amida Buddha to come for their souls and guide them to paradise, two highwaymen with black scarves over their faces jump out from some stacks of newly cut rice. They take everything the couple has except their underwear.
21. The upper bars of the shrine gate (torii) of the Mimeguri Shrine, a symbol of Mukōjima, appear to the right. The high dike hides the shrine itself. Enjirō drags his scarlet loincloth, and the fake tattoos on his left arm are exposed. (From SNKBZ 79, Kibyōshi, senryū, kyōka, by permission of Shōgakukan)
[ROBBER]: You’re going to cut yourselves up anyway. We’ll stand beside you and disconnect your heads for you.
[ENJIRŌ]: Hey, wait a minute! We’re not committing suicide in order to kill ourselves. Right now, some people are supposed to appear and stop us. I wonder why they screwed up. We’ve given you our clothes, so spare our lives. Spare us, please! I’ve learned my lesson. I swear I’ll never commit love suicide again.
[ROBBER]: You won’t even think about it? Are you sure?
21. LOVE-SUICIDE PASSION COOLS TO GOOSE BUMPS
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 100