Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900

by Shirane, Haruo, ed.

  2. Roan composed this poem while living in Uzumasa, on the western edge of Kyoto, where he moved temporarily after his house was destroyed in the Great Tenmei Fire of 1788 and where he remained until 1792. Roan presents here a dynamic, powerful perspective on “autumn dusk” (aki no yūgure) that differs dramatically from the quiet, meditative, static view of autumn dusk in the famous “three evening” (sanseki) poems in the Shinkokinshū.

  3. Furu is a poetic place-name (utamakura) located in Isonokami in Nara. The title of Roan’s treatise alludes to a poem by Ki no Tsurayuki: “Had we never met, I would not long for you with a longing as long as the ancient middle road through Furu in Isonokami” (Kokinshū, no. 679).

  4. This phrase appears in the kana preface to the Kokinshū: “Just as a long journey begins with the first step and continues for months and years, and a tall mountain grows from the dust and dirt [chirihiji] at its base until it reaches up to where the heavenly clouds trail, so too must poetry have developed.”

  5. A reference to the Tsurayuki Collection (Tsurayuki shū).

  6. The konponka, ambiguously defined in the Chinese preface to the Kokinshū, may be a twenty-four-syllable poem in a 5–7–5–7 format. Roan is listing poetic forms in order of increasing length. The sedōka is a thirty-eight-syllable poem in a 5–7–7–5–7–7 format. The chōka is a long poem of indeterminate length, consisting of alternating five- and seven-syllable lines and ending with two, seven-syllable lines

  7. The first three lines are a “preface” (jo) to the word “faintly” (kasuka ni), which describes both the moss stream and the poet’s life. The verb sumu in the last line is a pun meaning both “to live” in the world and “to be clear” spiritually, like the water of the mountain stream. Note the repeated “a” vowel

  8. Ryōkan composed many poems about the begging bowl, which priests carried for receiving money and rice but was normally considered to be of no value or interest. This is the second envoy (hanka) to a long poem (chōka).

  9. This waka is an envoy (hanka), following a long poem (chōka) on the same subject. “Misty” (kasumi tatsu) is an epithet for “spring” (haru), the kind of phrase found in the Man‘yōshū, no. 846). But the rest of the poem, which describes his everyday life, avoids such archaic rhetoric. This stylistic mixture is typical of Ryōkan’s waka. The long spring days, which Ryōkan spends playing handball with the children, implicitly feel all too short after the long severe winters in Echigo. Ryōkan generates a rhythm through the repeated use of the vowel tsu at the end of lines 1, 4, and 5.

  10. This poem was written when Abe Sadayoshi, Ryōkan’s friend at the bottom of Mount Kugami, visited his hut, the Gogō-an (Five Measures of Rice Retreat), on the slope of Mount Kugami, and they drank sake together. A variant text has for the first word tsukiyomi, a Man‘yōshū word that originally referred to the god of the moon and, later, the moon. This term has rich mythic and poetic associations, including a sense of warm hospitality for neighbors, as in “Come under the light of the moon—we’re at the mountain edge, not far away” (Man‘yōshū, no. 670). The poem mixes the suggestion that Ryōkan wants to detain his guest as long as possible with the suggestion that he is concerned about his friend’s safety at night.

  11. The headnote, “Composed on the evening of the fifteenth day of the Seventh Month,” suggests that this is a poem about Bon odori, Festival of the Dead dances. Apparently, Ryōkan loved dancing. The poem breaks after the first two parallel lines, both of which end with the syllable shi, giving it a dance rhythm. The last three lines, marked by two opening o’s and two closing ni’s, continue the strong pulse. Faced with his own impending death and a profound sense of impermanence, Ryōkan takes a buoyant, active approach to life, creating a sense of both joy and sadness, youth and old age.

  12. Ukishimagahara is a swampy area at the southern foot of Mount Fuji. According to his travel diary, Kageki wrote this winter poem on the ninth day of the Eleventh Month in 1818 while traveling from Edo to Nagoya on the Tōkaidō, or Eastern Seaboard Highway. The poem establishes an implicit contrast between the green of the pines and the white of the snow-bound peak of Mount Fuji as well as between the near trees and the far mountain.

  13. A “Miscellaneous” topic poem.

  14. This “haikai” waka takes the voice of an “ōhara woman” (Ōharame), a term used to refer to the women who came to Kyoto from the village of Ōhara (north of the city) to sell blackened firewood, which they balanced on their heads. The repetition of the se and sa syllables recreates the rhythmic voice of the seller.

  15. This poem, which embeds the word ari (ant) in the phrase arige (seems to have) and creates syntactic symmetry in the first and last lines, belongs to a series of nine poems on the topic of “Gathered Ants.” Insects that traditionally appear in waka include fireflies, crickets, and butterflies, but there are almost no earlier examples of ants. Akemi also wrote a series of three poems on lice, another unusual insect topic. Here the personification of the ants, which are presented as a microcosm of human society, gives the poem a humorous haikai flavor.

  16. Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), a scholar and high-ranking minister, famous for his poetry in Chinese. After his death he was deified as the god of learning

  Chapter 27

  RAKUGO

  Rakugo is the modern word for the art of oral storytelling, a performance genre that can be traced back to the late medieval period when otogishū, or storytellers, were retained by samurai generals for entertainment and sometimes advice. The term rakugo (literally, words with a twist) was first used around 1887, in the Meiji period (1868–1912), and the art continues to be popular today. In the seventeenth century, the humorous stories of the more aristocratic storytellers in Kyoto were collected in Today’s Tales of Yesterday (Kinō wa kyō no monogatari, ca. 1615), which now is classified as a kana-zōshi. By the late seventeenth century, such performance conventions as the gestures of the storyteller and the assumption that the story was fictional had been established. Typically, the rakugo performer sits on a cushion, simultaneously employs mime and speech, uses a different voice for each character, and presents one or more humorous or frightening stories, each of which has an unexpected twist (ochi) at the end. The rakugo performer usually uses a fan or towel as a prop, abbreviates the kind of lyrical description found in naniwa-bushi, a late-Edo form of storytelling to musical accompaniment, and moves the story forward through quick dialogue and action. By the late eighteenth century, this art of storytelling had spread from the Kyoto-Osaka region, where it was established, to Edo, where it was called otoshibanashi (stories with a twist) and flourished alongside sharebon, kibyōshi, kyōka, senryū, and other humorous genres. Male geisha or jesters (hōkan) in the licensed quarters also used this art form. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were more than 120 storytelling halls (yose) in Edo alone.

  SANYŪTEI ENCHŌ

  Sanyūtei Enchō (1839–1900), considered the founder of modern rakugo, was born in Yushima in Edo and started to perform at the age of seven. He became a master of Edo rakugo, specializing in love stories (ninjōbanashi) and ghost stories (kaidanbanashi), the short-hand transcriptions of which became critical to the establishment of the movement in Japan to unify the written and spoken languages (genbun itchi). When he was seventeen, he took the performance name of Enchō, began performing his own compositions, and became noted for the composition and performance of long ghost-love stories such as Peony Lantern Ghost Story.

  PEONY LANTERN GHOST STORY (KAIDAN BOTAN DŌRŌ, 1861, PUBLISHED 1884)

  Peony Lantern Ghost Story, part of which is translated here, greatly expands Asai Ryoi’s short story “The Peony Lantern” (Botan tōrō), part of Ryōi’s Hand Puppets (Otogi bōkō, 1666) collection, and combines it with other ghost stories and real events. (In addition, the name of Ogihara, the male protagonist in Ryōi’s version, has been changed to Hagiwara in Enchō’s rendition.) In 1861 Enchō first performed Peony Lantern Ghost Story over a period of twenty-two nights. T
hen in 1884 Enchō’s performance was transcribed by the scribe Wakabayashi Kanzō and published as a twelve-volume book, the first printing of a rakugo performance. Enchō’s spellbinding performances of the tale became immensely popular, and in 1892 it became a hit kabuki play, starring Onoe Kikugorō V, who simultaneously played Kōsuke and Tomozō, the good and bad servants, and even the ghost of the maid Oyone.

  The story takes place in Edo in 1743. A hatamoto (direct vassal of the shogun) named Iijima Heizaemon, better known as Heitarō, kills an insolent and drunken samurai and then, by chance, hires the samurai’s son Kōsuke as a servant. Heitarō’s wife, Oyuki, gives birth to a daughter, Otsuyu, and dies, and Oyuki’s maid Okuni becomes Heitaro’s mistress. Okuni, however, is having a secret affair with the neighbor Miyagino Genjirō, and the two decide to kill Heitarō. Kōsuke discovers the plot and tries to stab Genjirō but mistakenly strikes Heitarō. Knowing that Kōsuke has been faithful to him and that he earlier killed his father, Heitarō allows himself to be slain. Okuni and Genjirō at this point flee while Kōsuke prepares to avenge his master’s death. Meanwhile, the daughter Otsuyu has fallen in love with Hagiwara Shinzaburō, a masterless samurai, whom Heitarō rejects. Otsuyu thereby dies of longing and becomes a ghost. Each night, she, led by her maid Oyone carrying a peony-design lantern, visits Hagiwara’s house. Learning from his servant Tomozō that he has been making love every night to a ghost, Hagiwara requests the protective prayers of a Buddhist priest and obtains a miniature Buddha statue, which he places around his neck, and also a paper talisman, which he places on his window. The thwarted ghosts thus turn to Tomozō and his wife, Omine, whom they bribe with a hundred ryō of gold to remove the talisman and statue. Possessed by the vengeful spirit of Oyuki, Hagiwara dies. Fearing that they will be discovered, Tomozō and Omine flee to Kurihashi (present-day Saitama Prefecture) where, using the hundred pieces of gold, they set up a hardware store. Tomozō, however, has an affair with Okuni and kills his wife, Omine, when she goes crazy with jealousy. Whereas Tomozō finally is arrested in Edo, Kōsuke remains faithful to his master and eventually avenges his death and restores his own family’s fortunes. The following translation is of the famous scene leading up to the entrance of the ghosts of Otsuyu and Oyone into Hagiwara’s house, in which Enchō used the sound of the wooden clogs (karan koron) to signal their approach.

  Volume 5, part 12

  While Tomozō talked with the ghosts, his wife hid in the closet with old clothes over her head, perspiring profusely and trying to breathe as quietly as she could. Finally the ghost maid Oyone left, followed by the young woman ghost. After their shapes had grown dim and disappeared, Tomozō knocked on the closet door.

  “Omine,” he said, “you can come out now.”

  “Are you sure they’re not doing something horrible out there?” she answered.

  “They’re gone now. Come out! Come out!”

  “How did it go?” she said, leaving the closet.

  “Well, it went this way and that way, and I negotiated as hard as I could, so all the saké wore off. When I have saké in me, I’m not afraid of anything, even a samurai. But when those ghosts came right up near me, you know, it was like someone poured a bucket of cold water on my head. I was completely sober again, and I couldn’t say things the way I wanted to.”

  “In the closet sometimes I listened, and I could hear your voice talking with them. I was terrified.”

  “I told the ghosts to bring a hundred gold coins. Both of us, I said, depend on what we get from Hagiwara. If something should happen to him, I said, you and I would have no way to get along. I said that if they brought us a hundred gold coins, I’d pull off the paper charm pasted on the back wall of his house by the window. The ghosts promised to come with the money tomorrow night and asked me again to pull off the paper charm. They also told me they couldn’t go inside Hagiwara’s house as long as he has a little statue of Kaion Buddha around his neck to protect him. So they also asked me to find a way to steal it and take it outside the house. They said the statue was pure gold and a little more than four inches high. I saw it myself when the temple was showing it a while back. The priest said something or other about it. Yes, let’s see, well, he definitely did. It’s supposed to be some sort of priceless masterpiece. The ghosts want me to steal it. What do you think?”

  “This has possibilities,” Omine said. “Luck’s beginning to come our way now. We could sell the statue somewhere, couldn’t we?”

  “We could never sell it in Edo. But we could take it somewhere in the country and sell it. Even melted down, it would still be worth a lot. We’d get a hundred gold coins for it minimum. Maybe two hundred.”

  “Two hundred? Really? We’d be set for the rest of our lives. So be careful, won’t you? Do this right.”

  “I will, I will. But it’s around his neck. Getting him to take it off won’t be easy. Have any ideas?”

  “Hagiwara hasn’t been bathing at all these days,” said Omine. “He just sits there inside his mosquito net chanting his sutra. Tell him he smells and get him to wash. Then while I’m bathing him, you go where he can’t see and steal the statue.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s good. But how can we get him outside?”

  “If he won’t go outside, take out three sections of the mat floor in the living room and have him wash there.”

  Omine and Tomozō talked their plan over carefully. The next day they warmed a large basin of water, and Tomozō carried it over to his employer’s house.

  “Mr. Hagiwara, sir,” he said, “we’ve heated some water today, so please use it to bathe yourself. I brought this right over so you could wash first.”

  “No,” Hagiwara said, “no, really, I can’t. Something’s come up, and I’m not supposed to bathe right now.”

  “If you don’t bathe when it gets this hot,” Tomozō said, “your body will suffer. Your sleeping robe’s dripping with sweat, and the weather’s good today. You can’t go out and wash if it rains. They say it’s very bad for your body if you don’t bathe.”

  “I go out and wash only after sundown. It’s a bit complicated to explain, but I just can’t do it right now.”

  “Well then,” Tomozō said, “take out three sections of the mat floor over there.”

  “That won’t work, either. I’d have to take off my clothes. I’m not supposed to.”

  “Don’t you know what Dr. Hakuōdō, the diviner next door, says? He says that when people let themselves get dirty, then pretty soon they get sick or ghosts and other bad spirits get inside. As long as you keep yourself clean, he says, ghosts and things like that have no way to get inside you. You let yourself get all grubby and grimy, and well, the sickness appears from inside your own mind. And not only that. If you stay dirty for a long time, ghosts will get in.”

  “You mean ghosts will come inside if I stay dirty too long?”

  “Come inside?” Tomozō said. “They’ll come in pairs holding hands!”

  “I can’t let that happen,” Hagiwara said. “Pull up three sections of the mat floor. I’ll wash inside.”

  Tomozō and his wife knew they had Hagiwara now, and they got ready as quickly as they could.

  “Bring the basin, will you?”

  “Get a bucket and fill it with hot water.”

  Hagiwara took off his robe, and then he took off the buddha statue hanging around his neck in a long pouch and handed it to Tomozō. “This is a very precious protective image. Go put it on the altar while I’m bathing.”

  “Yes, sir, right away. Omine, wash him, will you? Well, but gently, understand?”

  “Mr. Hagiwara,” said Omine, “please don’t move around. Stand still while I wash the back of your neck. Please hold your head down so I can get to it. Lean over, please. Farther than that, farther.

  Pretending that the back of Hagiwara’s neck needed a lot of washing, Omine made sure he wasn’t able to see what was happening. As she washed, Tomozō squeezed the long, belt-like pouch and pushed out the black lacquer box insid
e. He opened the small double doors in front and found layers of black silk inside cushioning the statue. Unwrapping the silk, he took out the four-inch pure gold Kaion Buddha statue and put it inside the front of his robe. In its place he put a tile statue of the fierce buddha Fudō he’d brought with him that was almost the same weight. Then he put everything back just as it had been before and placed the pouch belt on the altar to Hagiwara’s patron god.

  “Hey Omine,” Tomozō said, “you’re sure taking a long time. If you wash him too long, the blood will go to his head. How about finishing up?”

  “That’s enough,” Hagiwara said. He dried himself off and put on a clean bathrobe, feeling refreshed and satisfied. Being only human, he had no way of knowing that his bathrobe would also be his shroud and that his bath had also been his corpse’s final washing. He was in a wonderful mood as he had Tomozō lock the doors and windows, and when it got dark, he strung up his mosquito net, went inside, and began fervently reciting the Uhō Dharani Sutra.

  Meanwhile, Tomozō and Omine were in their house congratulating themselves for obtaining something they could never have expected to possess.

  “It’s impressive,” Omine said. “It must be extremely valuable.”

  “We have no way of knowing why, but this buddha’s so powerful the ghosts can’t get in as long as it’s in the house.”

  “Luck really is coming our way, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but what about tonight?” Tomozō said. “The ghosts are coming with a hundred gold coins tonight. And if we have this thing, they won’t be able to get in. We’ve got a problem.”