There was a good trade in aphrodisiacs for those who could afford them. Extracts and drinks were made from Chinese and Korean ginseng roots mixed with local herbs that could still be found along the banks of Edo’s rivers, tiger balm and pulverized rhinoceros horn. Fugu, the Japanese blowfish, purportedly another aphrodisiac, was a favourite among courtesans and wealthy guests, though the poison from the fish, if not properly extracted, could be fatal. The risk seems only to have increased the thrill of sampling the tissue thin slices of fish.
Pleasure boats moored along the Kanda river
The well-off among both sexes assiduously followed the fashions of the Yoshiwara and favoured the stage and off-stage costumes of Kabuki actors, wearing vividly coloured satin, crepe silks and damask. To have these fabrics embroidered with metallic threads or hand-painted by an established or rising artist was a hallmark of uncommon prosperity. Syphilitic sores, hidden under gorgeous silks, were often the true mark of the Edo flesh trade, however. Yet it was the rising popularity of the geisha, signalling a change in taste among the Edo populace, that was the harbinger of decline for the courtesans of the Yoshiwara, who would soon become anachronisms.
The Yoshiwara was not the only pleasure quarter in Edo. Others existed at various times at Itabashi, Shinagawa, Senju, Susaki and Shinjuku. And those who could not afford even the most sordid services at the official sites could walk down to Yanagihara (Willow Fields), a section of the Kanda river near Mansei Bridge, where the yotaka operated. The name, meaning “night hawks”, was given to prostitutes who made a living along the darkened streets and towpaths from a money-strapped clientele of farmers, apprentices and labourers. Customers were led into the rice fields beyond the willows for these short transactions.
Throughout, the Yoshiwara remained the most iconic of Edo’s “nightless cities”. Its main trade may have been prostitution, but its setting and protocols were sufficiently theatrical to make it one of the central stages for the city’s cultural life.
The Gilded Age
An extraordinarily efflorescence of Edo arts and commerce took place at the height of the Genroku era (1688-1704). It was a period partially coinciding with the English Restoration, whose wealth, extravagant gaiety and social mannerisms, confined to a small, highly discriminating but faddish elite, bear some comparison. The culture that bubbled up during this period, however, came increasingly from the Edo masses rather than any cultural elite. The relegation of warfare from daily reality to historical memory, combined with the rapid spread of literacy and learning among all classes, fuelled the growth and exuberance of Genroku culture.
The great literature of the Heian and medieval period, the diaries of noble women, Noh plays, the development of the 17-syllable haiku, the tea ceremony, flower arranging and bonseki (the art of creating naturalistic scenes using stones on beds of sand placed in a lacquer tray) - all had been focused on the imperial court, religious centres of learning and the military sphere. The women of the great daimyo residences, rarely venturing into the streets of Edo, took up similar interests. The monotony of their cultural interests and obligations was occasionally relieved by the appearance of entertainment troupes, puppet shows, performing animals and jugglers, brought from outside.
It was really the commercial districts of the shitamachi, however, that became the cultural focus of the new city. Chonin culture and tastes were expressed in forms as diverse as literature, woodblock prints, painting, rakugo storytelling, Kabuki, bunraku and joruri puppet plays, geisha arts, perfume and incense-discrimination parties, sumo wrestling and shamisen music.
For the aspiring Genroku-era writer, there was a surplus of material to draw from. The Edo cast included the newly empowered merchants and their sybaritic, occasionally wayward wives, congenitally unfaithful husbands, actors, dilettantes, rakes, courtesans, balladeers and hard-up samurai. These were the ensemble players in a city evolving in wondrous new ways, and it was hardly necessary to create art as there were such vivid characters on every street corner. Even so, the people of Edo seem to have craved a constant fix of entertainment. Thus, the antics and indiscretions of the ordinary life of the lower orders in particular, were freely adapted as subjects for ukiyo-e woodcuts, ballads, storytelling themes, the risqué, often pornographic ukiyo-zoshi and the flamboyant new Kabuki theatre.
The Dog Shogun
This belle époque of sorts was presided over by the fifth shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, a spoilt dilettante with few distinguishing abilities and a crippling dependence on his mother. His 29-year rule was marked by an unusual incidence of natural disasters, including the eruption of Mount Fuji. Though patently neither, he imagined himself an authority on literature and an accomplished Confucian scholar. He was, however, an undisputed authority on Noh drama, but like all things during his eccentric rule he took his interest to extremes. We know, for example, that in one single year, 1697, he performed as main actor no fewer than 71 times in some 23 plays, and a further 150 times in separate Noh dances. Actors who won his approval became affluent; some were even granted samurai status. Performers who displeased him could find themselves living on reduced stipends or in the worst cases banished to the provinces.
One did not have to be an actor to be punished for perceived transgressions. Hanabusa Itcho, a genre painter, was exiled to the isolated island of Miyakejima for a work lampooning a boating excursion taken by Tsunayoshi and his favourite mistress. After the shogunate’s attacks on the publishing establishment in 1790, woodblock prints were required to be stamped with an official seal of approval.
The dispensation of favours was often based on the shogun’s sexual proclivities, which were said to be largely of the male variety. As with everything else in this age of opulence, Tsunayoshi went to notable extremes. One particular historical record, known as the Sanno Gaiki, is explicit on the subject: “The ruler liked sex with males... no matter how humble, if they were handsome, he appointed them as attendants.” The document lists 130 such appointees.
Tsunayoshi was unable to produce a male heir to succeed him, and Ryuko, an influential priest and confidant of the shogun’s mother, persuaded him that the cause could be traced to his mistreatment of other creatures in a previous existence. As he was born in the Year of the Dog, he would have to take particular care of these namesake animals. Tsunayoshi duly set about authoring his Edict for Loving All Living Things. Dogs were henceforth to be addressed as O-inu sama (Honourable Mr. Dog) and accorded burial rites matching their new station. Accounts tell of Edo Castle swarming with countless spoilt and pampered canines. In 1687 orders were issued for the provision of shelters for sick and ageing dogs. Strict penalties were introduced forbidding their mistreatment. Anyone who beat a dog could be subjected to capital punishment. In Edo, in particular, the number of dogs increased dramatically, the streets swarming with often rabid animals that fought and barked at night, depriving townspeople of their sleep. Prisons now had a new type of inmate: people incarcerated on animal rights charges. One man was condemned to death for killing a swallow. This insanity continued until the shogun’s death in 1709.
Was an untoward revenge taken out on dogs after the shogun’s death? History fails to tell us, but his much put-upon subjects did enjoy a revenge of sorts by naming Tsunayoshi inu-kubo, the “Dog Shogun”, a title that persists to this day.
Affluence and Patronage
The Genroku age was one of preciousness and extreme dilettantism. One princess newly arrived at the castle from Kyoto and finding the water in Edo too hard for her calligraphy and painting brushes, had water sent to her daily from the imperial capital. If accounts of the day are to be believed, such over-refinements were uncalled for in a city that still remained ecologically wholesome. A Suzuki Harunobu painting from this era, entitled Picking Herbs on the Banks of the Sumida River, depicts five women and a boy enjoying a leisurely spring day in an Edo that could still boast natural surroundings.
The townspeople were mindful that ostentation could attract the unwanted atte
ntion of the authorities. The trick was to lavish money on luxuries that were unobtrusive. Connoisseurship revolved around the appreciation of finely finished miniature arts: handmade dolls, delicately decorated sword fittings and hair ornaments, subtly carved ivory netsuke, tiny boxwood statues, a valuable tea bowl, bonsai dwarf trees and inro, exquisitely embossed medicine flasks.
Kimono cloth shops became fashionable at this time, the preserve until then of the privileged classes, who bought fabrics at trade shows or private sales. One of the first shops to appear in 1673 was Echigoya, the forerunner of today’s Mitsukoshi Department Store. Echigoya’s clientele comprised the new, economically empowered urban masses. The woven and dyed goods, the textiles and accessories sold across the counter in such shops provided work for all manner of artisans, from bleachers, dyers, weavers, brocade and chintz makers to engravers, cotton beaters and needle-workers.
The effects of a commercial revolution that changed Japan’s cities beyond recognition can be seen in the woodblock prints of the day, celebrating the life of the merchant quarters. Guidebooks of the time feature shops brimming with customers and goods. Refined pastimes known as yugei, the traditional domain of the court, were increasingly adopted by members of the newly wealthy and leisured merchant class. The recreational arts practised by the townspeople of Edo were not confined to aesthetic pursuits only, but might include lessons in gardening, medicine and instruction in board games like go and shogi.
Those who could not resist the temptation to collect larger, more conspicuous objects such as lacquered chests and gorgeously painted folding screens placed their treasures discreetly in the confines of a kura, a fireproof storehouse made from white plastered mud and straw and a heavy tiled roof, bringing single items out for occasional display. The characteristics of the era, a savouring of momentary pleasures unalloyed by intellectual or moral distractions and the cultivation of discriminating tastes, were only defined long after they had vanished.
Red Snow
An extraordinary event occurred in 1701 that electrified the entire city. Because of its reverberations as both news and as a fitting subject for literature, the story is worth retelling. Assigned to perform ceremonial duties at the shogun’s court in Edo, Lord Asano, a daimyo from the western domain of Ako, was provoked into attacking and injuring Lord Kira. Though the reason for the provocation has never been satisfactorily explained, an oversight of etiquette, personal slight or grudge toward Kira - a condescending and spiteful superior by all accounts - have all been mooted. Having violated the strict rule of court banning the drawing of weapons, Asano was commanded to commit immediate seppuku (ritual disembowelment). With Asano’s death, his vassals automatically became ronin, masterless samurai stripped of crest, armour and a banner to serve under. His estates were seized by the authorities, the family castle razed to the ground and his widow driven into taking refuge in a nunnery.
Smarting from humiliation, 47 of the ronin secretly swore to avenge his death. Knowing that they would be under surveillance from the authorities, who posted spies to watch the men’s comings and goings, they took a full two years planning their revenge. To allay suspicion, they took up jobs as carpenters, labourers and peddlers, work that would have been inconceivable for a samurai. While quietly hatching a plan of action, Oishi Kuranosuke, Lord Asano’s former Elder Councillor, adopted a dissolute lifestyle, drinking and womanizing, a pretence that relaxed Kira’s guard.
During the winter of 1703, the ronin broke into Kira’s high-walled mansion at midnight. After fierce fighting, in which all the guards and retainers were slaughtered, they searched the grounds for Kira, eventually finding him hiding in a charcoal shed dressed in white satin sleeping robes. After removing Kira’s head with the very sword that Lord Asano had used against him at court, they carried the trophy through the snow-blanketed streets of Edo, washed it in a well, which is still there today, and placed it on the grave of their master at Sengaku-ji temple.
While the public in general lauded this violent act of revenge as a heroic deed consistent with the samurai code of absolute loyalty, the shogunate was obliged by its own set of rules to punish the offenders for having assassinated a member of the court. Rather than being decapitated, the fate of the common criminal, the 47 were, after long and spirited debates and deliberations among intellectuals and officials, granted the privilege of an honourable death by seppuku.
The story of the attack by the ronin appeared as a puppet play within weeks of the actual event, an example of the speed with which reality was transmuted into art and entertainment. The story has inspired countless novels, Kabuki plays and films. The best-known theatrical version is the puppet play Chushinguru (A Treasury of Loyal Retainers), first performed in 1748. For reasons of censorship, the story was re-situated in the fourteenth century. The poet John Masefield wrote a much inferior English version of the play called The Faithful.
Climbing the steps up to the time-weathered graves today, an acrid smell hangs in the air, the tombs banked up beneath clouds of smoke from incense sticks placed there by those who continue to honour the men.
Rudyard Kipling did just this in the spring of 1889, finding that “an animal of the name of V. Gay had seen fit to scratch his entirely uninteresting name” on one of the gold-leafed, lacquered panels of the tomb. “It is the handwriting upon the wall” he added: “Presently there will be neither gold nor lacquer - nothing but the finger marks of foreigners.”
The Literary City
Simple broadsheets called yomiuri, early forerunners of newspapers, began to appear on the streets. These were printed on blocks of engraved wood. Some of these newsletters, also known under the general heading of kawarabon, were illustrated. Although subject matter began to edge gingerly in the direction of more sensitive themes towards the end of the Tokugawa period, political commentary at this stage was strictly taboo. Publishers had to content themselves with human-interest reportage: accounts of natural disasters, fires, vendettas, tragedies, double-suicides, stories of strange occurrences and omens, the sighting of supernatural beasts and ghosts.
Providing that hedonism never conflicted with the aims and authority of the shogunate, the chonin were relatively free to indulge a range of tastes, from sexual freedom, literature, fashion, theatre and the arts, to the illustrated books and woodblock prints that, more than anything, captured the spirit of this floating world. Ukiyo-zoshi (books of the floating world) portrayed this phenomenon in lurid detail. In contrast to the highly nuanced tea ceremony and Noh play, ukiyo-zoshi titles feature characters whose energy and verve match that of a rising new class in Edo society. The themes in these often insightful documents of the age (adultery, arson, torrid sexual exploits, supernatural tales, fictional adaptations of recent events) were rarely subtle. Neither are the women portrayed as the heroines and victims of these stories the meek, submissive type the Tokugawa government extolled as models of virtue, nor the languid waifs of the later ukiyo-e style.
As literature was expected to be uplifting and even a touch pedagogic, the introductions and closing remarks in ukiyo-zoshi works, however scatological the pages between, were often edifying tracts in the sermonizing manner of the Confucian scholar. The circulation of such books was aided by the stunning growth of publishing in the seventeenth century. Although type printing had been introduced from Korea in the century before, the new spate of commercial publishers favoured wood-block editions of their works, which could be cheaply and easily illustrated. Suwaraya, a bookshop and publishing house located in the downtown Nihonbashi Tori-itchome district, amassed a fortune as its flagship store evolved into a chain. By the beginning of the nineteenth century there were twelve Suwaraya bookshops in Edo. As stores and book lenders for those who could not afford to buy their own books proliferated, so did literacy rates among the townspeople of Edo, creating an avid new reading public.
Books, which had small initial print runs, were extremely expensive. To buy a romance novel would cost the equivalent of one month’s
food expenses. More serious books, like the novel series of the esteemed writer Takizawa Bakin or scholarly works on Buddhism or Confucianism, cost considerably more. The solution for Edo’s increasingly literate residents lay in the rental libraries, which charged less than one-tenth of the purchase price. An 1808 record tells us that there were 656 such libraries in Edo alone. Though there were shops where bibliophiles could find as many as 10,000 titles at any one time, most people rented books from itinerant peddlers who carried titles in backpacks through local neighbourhoods. Books were lent out for five days at a time and were no doubt feverishly read and then passed on to others, the costs split.
Although Kyoto and Osaka initially led the field over Edo, book publishing picked up considerably in the eighteenth century. A useful counterweight to the fires of Edo, which reduced whole districts to the realm of collective, often unreliable memory, were guides to the famous sights of the city. Guidebooks like An Illustrated Guide to Places in Edo and The Naniwa Sparrow provide invaluable descriptions of the city during the late seventeenth century. Two quite different books, A Dappled Cloth of Edo and Records of Japanese Efflorescence, were published in 1687 and 1693. These works, documenting the social life of the merchant class as well as examining each residential and commercial block of the city, were extraordinarily precise in their details. Sharebon were novels set in the pleasure quarters, which also included practical information.
Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination Book 34) Page 6