Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900
Page 113
1. A thinly settled area east of the Sumida River in southern Koume.
2. Shunsui uses Futagawa to suggest Fukagawa, an unlicensed pleasure quarter in southeast Edo.
3. To avoid censorship, Shunsui uses the name of a warrior clan prominent in the Kamakura period.
4. Oblique reference to Kuramae, an area along the west bank of the Sumida River near Asakusa, associated with rich merchant playboys.
5. Variation on a requiem waka poem for the dead Kiritsubo lady in “The Paulownia Court,” the opening chapter of The Tale of Genji. The poem appears in Fujiwara Teika’s Okuiri commentary on Genji.
6. In present-day Yokohama.
7. Kanazawa (literally, Gold Marsh) is money in name only. The men evidently plan to sell Ochō later as a prostitute or an indentured servant.
8. The carrying beam was placed on vertical poles while the carriers rested.
9. Benten means Benzaiten, goddess of music, eloquence, intelligence, and wealth worshiped by Buddhists.
10. Nichiren’s memorial day was the thirteenth day of the Tenth Month.
11. Literally, Small Plums. A thinly settled area east of the Sumida River (on the eastern outskirts of Edo) near Tanjirō’s hiding place.
12. The ancient poet Narihira was commonly regarded as a divine lover. The man takes his name from the seventeenth-century outlaw Hirai Gonpachi, who loved the tayū Komurasaki, or Deep Purple, her name being a reference to Murasaki Shikibu.
13. Reverses the gender of Yoshibei of the Plums, a famous male outlaw.
14. The famous climax of act 4 of the puppet play Twenty-four Filial Exemplars in Japan (Honchō nijūshikō, 1766).
15. At the time there was a noted female jōruri chanter called Take Miyashiba. The location of Ichihara is unknown.
16. East of the Sumida River, not far from Fukagawa, on the eastern edge of Edo.
17. Probably the Nichiren-sect Jōshin-ji temple, near the restaurant.
18. That is, with Yonehachi in chapter 2.
19. Kiyomoto Nobutsuga, a writer and master of Kiyomoto-style singing and shamisen playing, helped Shunsui, who was a close friend, to write Plum Calendar and other ninjōbon. She appears as a minor character in Plum Calendar.
20. Kokinshū, Misc. 2, no. 807.
21. Hermit of Asakusa Kannon Temple, a title that Shunsui began to use after he moved to the precincts of the temple. At the end of chapter 2, he also uses the title Person with the Heart of an Old Woman (Rōbashinjin).
22. Kyōkuntei, literally, Pavilion of Crazy Teachings, another of Shunsui’s pen names.
23. In Fukagawa, on the eastern edge of Edo.
24. Because it is thinly settled and Ochō lives nearby.
25. She is compared with the popular female-role actor Segawa Kikunojō V.
26. Suggests Kameido, a place east of Edo.
27. Tanjirō is embarrassed that he has become Yonehachi’s shamisen carrier and does not want to talk with Ochō about it.
28. Two male geisha musicians from Fukagawa.
29. Another geisha from Fukagawa. Nakachō was in Fukagawa.
30. The popular third act of the jōruri puppet play Dannoura Battle Helmet (Dannoura kabuto gunki, 1732), in which a Minamoto ally questions the woman Akoya, the former lover of a Taira enemy, Kagekiyo.
31. Shinnai-bushi.
32. Analects 7:21. Shunsui is arguing that his main characters are good “teachers” for his readers.
Chapter 20
GŌKAN: EXTENDED PICTURE BOOKS
Gōkan (literally, bound books), bound picture books, was the last of the kusazōshi, or picture books, to appear. Gōkan were the direct successor of the kibyōshi, the satiric picture books that were in vogue from 1775 to 1805. After the Kansei Reforms, the kibyōshi shifted to vendetta narratives, which eventually could not be contained in the short kibyōshi format. Consequently, from around 1803/1804, writers such as Jippensha Ikku and Kyokutei Bakin began to bind together several kibyōshi booklets to form what came to be called gōkan. An important characteristic of the gōkan was the inclusion of the calligraphic text (which was primarily kana) in the illustration wrapped around the central images, as in the kibyōshi. Gōkan had even more text packed on the page than did kibyōshi, a ratio of about 60 percent text to 40 percent image, which was the opposite of kibyōshi. The artists, who came from the Utagawa family or school, appeared on the cover alongside the author of the gōkan.
One of the first successful writers of the bound picture book, Santo Kyōden adapted kabuki plays to this format, intended to appeal to young women who were enamored of the world of kabuki. The 1810s were the age of the kabuki playwright Tsuruya Nanboku, and Kyōden made Ichikawa Danjurō VII (the most popular kabuki actor in Nanboku’s plays) the hero of a gōkan that included illustrations of the handsome actor and his costumes by the renowned ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Toyokuni. The female audience thus had a chance to see the actor on the covers (which were in color by the end of the 1810s) and follow the action through both words and pictures. The gōkan, which specialized in kabuki-type vendettas (katakiuchi) and struggles for house succession (oie sōdō), brought the world of the theater into the hands of the average reader. This art of transforming the stage onto paper was perfected by Ryūtei Tanehiko, who also understood the importance of the prints. The gōkan peaked with Tanehiko’s A Country Genji by a Commoner Murasaki (Nise Murasaki inaka Genji, 1829–1842) before fading in the 1860s and finally being replaced by the newspaper novel in the 1880s.
RYŪTEI TANEHIKO
Ryūtei Tanehiko (1783–1842), whose real name was Takaya Hikoshirō, was born in Edo into a family of lower-level samurai. The family received an annual hereditary stipend of four hundred bushels of rice, which enabled Tanehiko to get an education and live without undue financial pressure. Tanehiko made a name as both a kyōka and senryū poet and a writer of yomihon and gōkan. The first chapter (four volumes) of A Country Genji by a Commoner Murasaki was published in 1829 and was followed by another thirty-eight chapters (152 volumes) over the next fourteen years. A Country Genji became one of the most popular books in the Edo period, selling more than ten thousand copies. But in 1842, during the Tenpō Reforms, Tanehiko was summoned by the bakufu and told to cease publication of the book. The blocks were confiscated, thereby preventing any reprints. Shortly thereafter, Tanehiko died.
A COUNTRY GENJI BY A COMMONER MURASAKI (NISE MURASAKI INAKA GENJI, 1829–1842)
Apparently inspired by Kyokutei Bakin’s success with the extended gōkan adaptations of Chinese novels such as Courtesan Water Margin (Keisei suikoden, with illustrations by Utagawa Toyokuni, 1825), in which the genders of the protagonists of the Water Margin were reversed, Tanehiko adapted The Tale of Genji to the gōkan format and placed it in a kabuki world, that of the tumultuous period of the Ōnin Wars (1467–1477), at the Higashiyama Palace of the Ashikaga shōgun. Genji was likewise transformed into a handsome warrior named Ashikaga Mitsuuji, who was skilled in both sword and the arts. Mitsuuji’s many love affairs differ significantly from those of the original Genji in that they fall into a framework of feudal morality in which the man pursues a woman in order to recapture a lost treasure or hostages or to effect a political marriage. Tanehiko also depicted characters who acted and spoke like contemporary urban commoners; he dressed the characters, particularly the women, in contemporary fashion, and replaced the original waka with original haiku. By the Edo period, commentaries on The Tale of Genji as well as simplified digests of Genji for women and young people had been published, but these texts remained difficult to obtain, and the original still was very hard to read. The title Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (literally, Imitation Murasaki, Country Genji) suggests a new Genji described in the local or country (inaka) language of Edo and eastern Honshu. In the preface, Tanehiko claims that the author is the Edo-born commoner woman O-Fuji, whose work is like “imitation lavender” (nise murasaki), an inexpensive synthetic dye that was very popular with Edo commoners but faded over time, unlike the “genuine�
� lavender dye.
This ukiyo-e woodblock print by Hishikawa Ryūkoku (act. 1804–1818) reveals the influence of Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806). The fan-shape cartouche reads: “Elegant Pastimes of the Five Seasonal Festivals” (Fūryū gosekku asobi). This print celebrates the first of these festivals, on the seventh day of the First Month. Together with her infant son, in a lozenge-pattern robe, a chōnin mother, absentmindedly adjusting her hairpin, reads a gōkan (extended picture book) describing warriors. (Gōkan were originally sold in the early spring and thus considered auspicious.) The young daughter, in a plover-pattern kimono with a cloud-design sash, is holding a wooden paddle (decorated with the red and white plum blossoms of spring) used for hanetsuki, a type of badminton and a traditional New Year’s girl’s game. Signed “From the brush of Ryūkoku.” (Courtesy of Museo d’Arte Orientale in Genoa, Italy)
A Country Genji appeared at a time when the gōkan was shifting from stories of vendettas to stories of romantic love. The story of the shining Genji and his many splendid women proved to be perfect material for illustrated books aimed at women and young people and for the new trend toward romantic love. Furthermore, the author’s special talent for mixing kabuki and jōruri materials into the gōkan worked well with the material of The Tale of Genji, which was given the kinds of unexpected plot twists and multiple identities that gōkan and kabuki audiences expected. By setting the narrative in the medieval period and adding kabuki plot devices such as the struggle for succession of a house and the search for treasure, Tanehiko evoked a feudal, military world in which he was able to combine the mood and romance of the ninjōbon with the kinds of fantastic elements found in the yomihon. Tanehiko, like many late-Edo gesaku (playful writing, usually in the vernacular) fiction writers, wrote to please his audiences, especially women readers, whose number had grown, owing to the spread of education, but who still had few sources of entertainment. The gōkan, particularly A Country Genji, opened up a colorful world to which they could escape, if only temporarily. For more learned readers, A Country Genji could also be enjoyed as a fascinating kabuki variation on a Heian classic. One of its main attractions was the dazzling illustrations by Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1864), a leading ukiyo-e artist, who followed Tanehiko’s initial sketches and gave the characters the faces and costumes of famous kabuki actors. The combination of pictures and calligraphic text in the illustration was extremely effective, a technique that continued into the Meiji period with illustrated and serialized newspaper novels. Indeed, Tanehiko’s Country Genji was so popular that it led to the introduction of such products as Genji rice crackers and Genji noodles and also was adapted for the kabuki stage, where it became a huge hit.
The main plot of A Country Genji resembles that of a mystery novel with constant echoes of The Tale of Genji. A beautiful, intelligent boy named Mitsuuji (suggesting Prince Genji) is born to the Ashikaga shōgun Yoshimasa (suggesting the Kiritsubo emperor) and his favorite, Hanagiri (suggesting Kiritsubo). As the boy grows, Yoshimasa loves him more than the boy’s older brother (suggesting the Suzaku emperor), his son by his official wife, Toyoshi (suggesting Kokiden), and so Yoshimasa goes against convention by planning to make his second son the next shōgun. Mitsuuji’s mother is tormented by the jealous Toyoshi, falls sick, leaves the shōgunal palace, and dies. Feeling sorry for his father, Mitsuuji arranges to have a woman who looks like his mother come to take his mother’s place at the palace, where she calls herself Lady Fuji (suggesting Fujitsubo). Mitsuuji then learns of a plot between Toyoshi and Yamana Sōzen—a powerful lord who officially supports the shōgun but is actually hoping to become shōgun himself—to smuggle Sōzen into Lady Fuji’s quarters in a large chest. To foil the plot, Mitsuuji enters Lady Fuji’s bedroom when the chest is delivered and asks to sleep with her. Before the act can be consummated, Sōzen bursts out of the chest, accuses Mitsuuji and Lady Fuji of a bestial act, and then gives up his interest in Lady Fuji. Exposed, Mitsuuji and Lady Fuji attempt suicide but are stopped by the shōgun, who warns Mitsuuji that his action is unworthy of a future shōgun.
The motives of Mitsuuji and the other major characters are rarely simple. In addition to symbolically satisfying his desire for his mother and stopping Sōzen, the intelligent Mitsuuji understands politics well and knows that if his father tries to make him shōgun, the succession will be challenged and the stability of shōgunate threatened. Moreover, he remains loyal to his older brother. Thus, although people call him the “shining prince” (hikaru kimi)—the name Mitsuuji means Shining Clan—he devotes his life to love affairs, thereby ruining his reputation for the sake of his older brother, his clan, and the shōgunate. Even when his father has him marry Lady Futaba, the daughter of one of his supporters, Mitsuuji rarely visits her. A playboy reputation, Mitsuuji hopes, will keep him from becoming shōgun, thus allowing him freedom of movement and the ability to act unnoticed behind the scenes.
One night, however, a thief breaks into the shōgunal storehouse and steals a precious sword, one of the three treasures that must be passed down to each new shōgun. This incident causes Mitsuuji to begin to live a dual life as both a prolific lover and an investigator. Running throughout the text is the constant tension between these different sides of Mitsuuji—on the one hand are his rational calculations and desire for knowledge and understanding and, on the other, are his sensitivity and capacity for deep feeling. His double personality is dramatically apparent in the following sections, from books 4 and 5, an allusive variation on the “Evening Faces” (Yūgao) chapter of The Tale of Genji, which combines its gothic and romantic elements with a plot and characters from kabuki and jōruri dramas.
CHARACTERS
AKOGI, a high-ranking courtesan who lives on Sixth Avenue (Rokujō), suggesting Lady Rokujō in The Tale of Genji
DOROZŌ, husband of Shinonome, father of Tasogare, and elder brother of Karukaya/Kikyō
FUTABA, wife of Mitsuuji and daughter of Akamatsu Masanori, the minister of the left, suggesting Lady Aoi, Genji’s principal wife in The Tale of Genji
HANAGIRI, Yoshimasa’s favorite concubine and mother of Mitsuuji, suggesting the Kiritsubo consort in The Tale of Genji
HIRUGAO, Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s concubine
KARAGINU, Kiyonosuke’s young wife, suggesting Utsusemi in The Tale of Genji
KIKYŌ/KARUKAYA, Kikyō, maidservant to Hirugao, referred to as Karukaya after becoming a nun, and sister of Dorozō
KIYONOSUKE (NIKKI KIYONOSUKE), Mitsuuji’s retainer from Iyo Province, suggesting the vice governor of Iyo in The Tale of Genji, married to Karaginu
KOREKICHI, Mitsuuji’s retainer, suggesting Koremitsu, Genji’s retainer
MITSUUJI (ASHIKAGA MITSUUJI), the second son (Jirō) of the Ashikaga shōgun Yoshimasa by Hanagiri, suggesting the Shining Genji
MURAOGI, Kiyonosuke’s daughter, suggesting Nokiba no Ogi in The Tale of Genji.
SHINONOME, mother of Tasogare
SŌZEN (YAMANA SŌZEN), a powerful lord who wants to displace the Ashikaga shōgun Yoshimasa
TAKANAO (AKAMATSU TAKANAO), son of the minister of the left, brother of Lady Futaba, and Mitsuuji’s brother-in-law, suggesting Tō no Chūjō in The Tale of Genji
TASOGARE, daughter of Shinonome and mother of Tamakuzu who lives on Fifth Avenue (Gojō), suggesting Evening Faces in The Tale of Genji
YOSHIMASA, Ashikaga shōgun, father of Mitsuuji, and husband of Toyoshi, suggesting the Kiritsubo emperor
Book 4 (concluding part)
Mitsuuji spent all his time and energy pretending to be a great lover while secretly searching for the stolen sword. But no matter how hard he thought, he was unable to come up with a good plan for retrieving it. Still, he couldn’t carry on his investigation in public, crowded places, so he went on discreet visits to the licensed quarter near Sixth Avenue1 and listened for the latest rumors and talk. When he learned that the mother of his retainer Korekichi2 had fallen very ill, he decided to visit her, and he set out for her house on Fifth Avenue. When the palanquin reached the
house gate, he had the carriers put it down and had one man go inside to tell Korekichi why he had come. Soon Korekichi came rushing out to welcome him.
“I haven’t been able to visit you recently,” Korekichi said, “because my mother is very ill. I’m quite surprised to see you here.” He bowed so low his forehead touched the ground.
“There’s no need to worry,” Mitsuuji said. “I came to see your mother. She was like a mother to me, too, and she fed me her own milk. When I heard she was sick, how could I possibly not come? Where is she?”
“Very good,” Korekichi told the carriers, “take the palanquin inside.” He went through the small side door and tried to open the gate from the inside, but the bolt was locked, so he rushed off to get the key. Mitsuuji lifted the hanging screen on one side of the palanquin and gazed at the avenue and the commoner area around him. Through gaps in the wooden fence surrounding the next house he could see that the sliding paper doors above the low veranda had been thrown completely open. Only a semitransparent white reed blind hung down, giving room inside a feeling of coolness. Mitsuuji made out women’s shapes through the blind and heard laughing voices. He wondered who the women could be. He knew he had never seen them before, so he got out of the palanquin to get a better look. The house was nothing to look at. It had two floors, but neither was very large. In front two boards leaned against each other, and on them pieces of an old summer robe had been stretched out to dry.
Tasogare, appearing through a gate entwined with crow gourd vines, holds out a round paper fan. Korekichi (center), having picked a flower from the gourd vines, takes the fan on behalf of Mitsuuji, who stands and fans himself near the palanquin. The crow gourd flower and the round fan allude to the yūgao (evening faces) flower and the folding fan in the “Evening Faces” chapter of The Tale of Genji. A gourd motif and the characters for Yūgao appear just above the palanquin carrier’s head, further accentuating the allusion. A Genji incense symbol (to represent The Tale of Genji chapters in one method of incense appreciation) for the “Evening Faces” chapter also marks the wall and the paper lantern. Parts of an old summer robe, patterned with unfolded cypress fans, are stretched on two sliding shutter boards. From the 1831 edition.