Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination Book 34)

by Stephen Mansfield

  Yakusha-e (prints of male actors) were popular. Affairs between actors who frequented the pleasure quarters and exotic courtesans of high rank were the stuff of gossip and the subject of woodblock prints. The ukiyo-e painter Katsukama Shunsho started a vogue in producing prints of famous actors, who responded by becoming purveyors of fashion. Expensive cloth, perfumes, toiletries, and even cakes were named after them. When the actor Danjuro (the seventh in line of this hereditary family of thespians) took to wearing a costume with the symbol of a sickle (kama) embroidered on it, the design became an overnight sensation that generated much work for the producers of kimonos, dyed fabrics and stylish handkerchiefs. The two syllables added to the Chinese characters for Danjuro’s sickle, wa and nu, formed the word kamawanu, which could be read to signify “I don’t care,” a typical bravura touch that only increased the popularity of the design.

  Officially, the status of actors was not much higher than that of outcasts. On stage they were required to wear the simplest of cotton robes; when they ventured out from the theatre quarters they were expected to cover their faces with sedge hats. In practice, the more successful Kabuki actors lived lives of ostentation, surrounded by dozens of servants and doting fans. Theatres competed with each other in the artistry and glamour of their stage sets, costumes, wigs and other accessories. There were sporadic crackdowns, even the banishment of certain actors, followed by a short period of austerity and then the resumption of all the opulence the townspeople of Edo expected from their Kabuki.

  There were four theatres in the Low City: the Ichimura-za in Fukiyacho, the Yamamura-za, the Nakamura-za in Sakaemachi and the Morita-za in Kobikicho near Tsukiji. Theatres were occasionally shut down for disorderly behaviour or improprieties, particularly if they involved women of rank. Edo’s pleasure quarters, mainly geared to a male clientele, provided rooms where wealthy women could arrange paid assignations with Kabuki actors in much the same way that men bought the sexual favours of courtesans. If Tosei-otome-shiki, a book published in 1705, can be trusted, the practice was common knowledge. One rhetorical passage reads, “What do you suppose the theatre to be? It’s nothing more than a front for male prostitution! It only exists so that women can hire actors for their pleasure.” In 1714 a court lady named Ejima attended a Kabuki performance at the Yamamura-za theatre, where she entertained some actors in her box with sake. When word got out, the actors were promptly banished, the theatre destroyed and upstairs foyers where people could meet were removed from all other playhouses.

  The authorities remained highly suspicious of entertainers and other free spirits. The lower order of wandering entertainers who swarmed into Edo, comprising puppeteers, singers, conjurers, sword swallowers, male and female street walkers, as well as religious quacks, charlatans and bellringers collecting alms in exchange for chanting sutras, also concerned those in power. An attitude of open defiance, creeping into Edo literature, was another source of concern for the regime. Testing the limits of authorial tolerance could be a risky undertaking. Baba Bunko, a writer severely critical of the political system, was arrested by the authorities and sentenced to death by crucifixion.

  While the Noh stage was the traditional host venue for returning and reincarnated spirits, the wandering souls of warriors, lovers and priests, ghosts and haunted houses caught the popular imagination of early Edo. Lacking the contentious content and boisterous audiences associated with Kabuki performances, Noh rarely attracted the attention of the authorities. Largely patronized by an aristocracy living within the environs of the castle, Noh actors dressed in opulent robes and faces concealed behind masks, performed slow, graceful movements rich in nuance. In contrast to the realistic flourishes and melodramatic plots of Kabuki, Noh presented dramas of the human mind and soul. These were accompanied by restrained dance sequences and the chanting of utai music. Stages were small and devoid of all but the simplest background decor: a gnarled pine resplendently green against a gold leaf screen. The Noh repertoire, with its ghosts, spirits, goblins, voices and cries from the nether world, was also peopled by warriors, court nobles, fishermen, monks and peasants - flesh and blood figures spirited across a supernatural stage.

  Jidaimono or period plays, on the other hand, were written to excite an audience of merchants and artisans who wanted to be entertained by historical melodramas, warrior tales and stories about the overturning of powerful clans. The writers of a more lurid theatrical form known as sewamono (domestic plays) took their material from real life, changing it into semi-fictional drama portraying scandals, murders and that perennially popular theme, the double suicide of a prostitute and her merchant lover who, financially ruined by the affair, is unable to buy her release from the brothel.

  For those unable to afford the theatre or the pleasure quarters, there were entertainment booths set up under the great bridges, along wide fire-breaks and crowded crossroads, bazaars, the precincts of temples and shrines and other open spaces. Here they could watch dancers, listen to storytellers, receive a Buddhist exorcism, see strange animals and birds, brought to the country by the Dutch, and people with deformities. Magic lantern shows, impersonators, illusionists and performers of fan tricks were regulars at these venues. The actors who performed in the so-called “beggar’s kabuki” did a double turn, painting one side of their face to represent one character, the other in the likeness of a second. Likewise, the two halves of their body were dressed in the clothing of the two respective characters.

  Absurd novelties were dreamed up. Performers leapt through baskets bristling with sword blades or rattan hoops blazing with burning candles. Others swallowed rapiers or needles, or gave bizarre musical performances, using an egg or ladle in one instance as a plectrum to play the threestringed shamisen. Some of the performances were free, though likely to be commercials for snake medicines, wonder powders and other panaceas. Papier-mâché figures called iki-ningyo (living dolls), were exhibited in tents. One writer recalled seeing “inhabitants of the island of long arms, the island of long legs, the land of perforated chests, the land of no stomachs, and figures from other exotic lands.” Rather more lifelike models of courtesans from the Maruyama pleasure quarter in various stages of disrobing were also exhibited in voyeuristic tableaux vivants. Donald Richie describes the scene at Ryogoku Bridge in his book The Image Factory (2003):

  Here the onlookers could look at such educational exhibits as a large whale, a brace of dromedaries, an enormous image of the Buddha made of oiled paper over basketry. There were also attractions, which aimed only at entertainment. There was a giant toad made of velvet, there was a cannibal hag from Yotsuya...

  Apex of the New Order

  With the Tokugawa government struggling to understand the complexities of a new economy rising from beneath, the merchant class emerged as a moneyed elite. As the wealth of the chonin increased and spread to the artisans, labourers and craftsmen who served them, the samurai inexorably lost ground. They still retained their habit of glaring arrogantly at commoners as they strutted and swaggered along the streets of Edo, their swords commanding the respect that comes from fear, but in truth the samurai engaged far less in armed combat at this time than swashbuckling sword films would suggest. The class was gradually becoming impoverished.

  Merchants and wholesalers, moneylenders, clerks and brokers who benefited from association with them may have been despised for their money-grubbing, but the samurai increasingly turned to them for employment and favours, merchant families also exerting their influence through intermarriage with members of the warrior class. It was a baffling inversion of the social order, one the authorities never publicly acknowledged.

  By this time Edo’s prosperity was apparent to even the outsider. Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician to the Dutch in their trading enclave at Dejima in Nagasaki, visited the Nihonbashi commercial district of the city in 1691, remarking: “On both sides of the streets are multitudes of well-furnished shops of merchants and tradesmen, drapers, silk-merchants, druggists, Idol-sell
ers, book-sellers, glassblowers, apothecaries and others.” Kaempfer noted disturbing shifts in landscape as he entered the outskirts of Edo, passing first the execution grounds at Suzugamori, where heads and bodies in an advanced state of decay were picked over by dogs and crows, then a road along the bay whose slopes were covered with temples and exquisite gardens.

  On his second trip to the city he was granted an audience with the shogun Tsunayoshi. His own first-hand observations, included in his history of Japan, published in Dutch, English and French, are of greatest interest. Arriving at the castle moats, he passed over bridges whose pillars were hung with bronze balls, under sloping roofs decorated with golden dolphins. Once inside, the pillars and ceiling beams were made from cedar and camphor, finished in a transparent varnish that brought out pleasing patterns in the grain. The floors were covered in matting edged with gold seam. One detail was of special interest to the European: “I have heard,” he wrote “that there is an underground apartment which has a large water tank instead of a ceiling. The Shogun withdraws here when there is thunder because he believes that the force of the lightning will dissipate in the water.”

  Silver was the currency used in Osaka and Kyoto, gold the standard in Edo, though copper was used all over the country, especially in the retail trade where the bigger wholesalers and shopkeepers had to change this into gold in order to settle their debts. Money changing was the foundation of many family fortunes in Edo. In this intensely materialistic world, Edo merchants, like their Venetian and Florentine counterparts, having brokered more than just trade, had become important patrons of the arts.

  Basho, with signature staff and sedge hat

  A Riverside Hermitage

  In sharp contrast with the lavish indulgence in pleasure and the arts spurred on by the courtesan-infatuated townspeople was a modest wattle hut, a hermitage, across the river. This was the new home of the great haiku poet Matsuo Basho. Born to a samurai family in Ueno, in Iga province (Mie prefecture), he showed a great aptitude for literature from a young age. Basho arrived in Edo in 1672 at the age of 28, hoping to pursue his dream of being a poet and teacher.

  In 1680 one of Basho’s patrons, the fish merchant and poet Sugiyama Sampu, put a former watchman’s hut at the poet’s disposal, providing him with food and clothing. This was located on the grounds of Sugiyama’s villa in Fukagawa, now firmly situated within the boundaries of Tokyo but then a rural suburb to the east of Edo, from which the city could be observed from a distance. Although far from ready to retire, Basho was following a long tradition in Japan by which a literary man could withdraw from the world, spending his time in a life of quiet contemplation and civilized talks with friends and followers. The poet practised Zen meditation here with a priest named Butcho, who was serving at a nearby temple.

  Here he changed his name from Tosei to Basho, in tribute to a banana plantain palm (basho) that his disciples planted in the small garden beside his hut. According to his own account, he fondly identified himself with the ragged, easily torn but enduring fronds of the plant, comparing its leaves to “the injured tail of a phoenix”. Its flowers, he said, were not bright, “and as the wood is completely useless for building, it never feels the axe. But I love the tree for its very uselessness.” The tree, which the poet loved to sit beneath, appears in an early haiku from these Fukagawa days:

  Plantain tree in autumn storm

  As I listen all night to

  Rain in a basin.

  One of the least vainglorious artists to have lived in Edo, he appears to have regarded himself as a kind of literary scarecrow. In the days preceding a journey that provided the material for an account entitled The Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, Basho wrote: “Following the example of the ancient priest who is said to have travelled thousands of miles caring naught for his provisions and attaining the state of sheer ecstasy under the pure beams of the moon, I left my broken house on the River Sumida in August, among the wails of the autumn wind.”

  In 1689 he undertook his most famous haiku walk, a five-month undertaking that resulted in his masterpiece, Narrow Road to a Far Province. Under the iron rule of the Tokugawas, the roads were finally safe for travellers. After patching his trousers, putting new cord in his hat, and applying moxa treatment to his legs to strengthen them, he set off down the river to Senju, the starting point of the journey, on a day in early spring. Although the riverbanks and the hills of Ueno and Yanaka were covered in cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji lay bathed in the morning light, there was a tinge of anxiety in the departure: “When we disembarked at Senju, my heart grew heavy at the thought of the thousands of miles that lay ahead, and tears welled from my eyes on leaving my friends in this world of illusion.”

  Although he had a fixed residence, Basho chose to set out on one journey after another. Perhaps he understood that the ordeal of travel would be good for his work. Bidding farewell to his closest friends and disciples at Senju, he strikes a plaintive note in a haiku composed on the spot:

  Departing spring -

  birds cry,

  and in the eyes of fish, tears.

  The hermitage and grounds where Basho lived and wrote his bestknown journals were preserved until the end of the nineteenth century, when the site appears to have disappeared. After a great tidal wave swept over the area in 1917, a stone frog Basho was said to have liked was discovered, helping to re-establish the location. A second, nearby place of dedication, the Basho House Memorial View Garden, stands on a favourite spot of the poet overlooking the confluence of the Unagigawa and Sumida rivers. A small grove of basho trees complements a statue of the poet kneeling on a zabuton, a Japanese cushion, in the flowing, priest-like robes he favoured as he meditates over the scene. The statue is based on a painting by Sugiyama Sanpu. Given the poet’s insistence on veracity, the image seated on the plinth is likely to be a reasonably faithful one. Basho’s followers might be surprised, though, to see the statue at night, when a time switch swivels the work in a 90-degree arc, illuminating it with a spotlight that allows drivers crossing the nearby Shin-ohashi Bridge and passengers on passing water buses and night cruises to catch a glimpse of the master. The entrance to the nearby Basho Memorial Museum, a research centre with a fine display of the poet’s manuscripts and calligraphy, is also marked by a small garden with several examples of the iconic plantain. Another statue, beside the nearby Sendaibori river, shows him in the flat cap and black priestly robes he adopted, holding a wide-brimmed sedge hat and bamboo staff. His face, kindly if slightly weary, gazes into the distance.

  The Wit of Edo

  Haiku had been popular with the townspeople of Edo since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Publishers had brought out manuals explaining rules of composition and providing models for aspiring poets. Humour also flourished in the popular literature, storytelling and drama of the Edo period. Joke books became enormously popular, and there were even jokeexchanging parties held in private homes. Comic writers took as many liberties as they thought permissible. The samurai, Buddhist clergy, Confucian scholars and the more ineffective members of the aristocracy were often the brunt of jokes published in humorous books or told by professional and amateur raconteurs at informal and organized gatherings. The 31-syllable comic poem known as kyoka made its appearance into contemporary Edo cultural life at this time.

  Comic verse clubs sprung up, places where humorous poetry like senryu was read, a genre named after its creator, the poet Karai Senryu, who came to Edo in 1757. The “Toshiwara Group”, numbering the publisher Juzaburo Tsutaya and the print artist Utamaro among its members, was one of the best known of the senryu clubs to spring up in Edo. Piercing wit, sensitivity to the foibles and shortcomings of humanity, sharp-tongued commentary on political corruption, insights and epiphanies characterize this immensely popular seventeen-syllable verse.

  Although the samurai were often ridiculed in both satirical writings as well as the cruder joke books of the day, some members of this class were involved in comic writings
themselves. The samurai scholar, playwright and all-round iconoclast Gennai Hiraga was a leading figure in the world of popular humour. An unsparing satirist, he ridiculed the eccentricities and social foibles of both common people and respected public figures. Literature was beginning to blur class distinctions.

  Writers often took their themes from real life. Hardly had an incident occurred than it was being reworked into Kabuki, a puppet play, gazette story or novel. Sensational crimes like murder or arson were especially popular, and if a woman were the main protagonist, writers would waste little time getting to work. One of the best-known stories of this kind, written by Ihara Saikaku, concerns Oshichi, the daughter of a vegetable dealer in the district of Komagome. The tale begins with the chilling line: “A fierce winter wind blew in from the north-east and clouds moved with swift feet through the December sky.” The unlucky north-east, gateway for malevolent spirits, would be immediately recognized by the townspeople of Edo as a very ill wind indeed. Taking shelter in a local temple after losing their home in the 1682 fire, Oshichi fell in love with one of its young monks. In the spring of the following year, desperate to be reunited with her lover, she set fire to her own home in the hope that her family would again be forced to return to the temple. Unfortunately, the fire spread to neighbouring houses. Oshichi had barely turned fifteen, but the law was clear on the point of age and culpability: “...should the criminal be fourteen years of age or under: Banishment to a distant island. But when fifteen years of age and over: Burning at the stake.” Paraded through the city with other arsonists on the way to the execution grounds at Suzugamori, Oschichi’s beauty and fearless demeanour guaranteed her folk heroine status. Her tombstone can be found near Enjo-ji, the scene of the encounter between Oschichi and the banished monk. Actresses chosen to play her part on stage still come to burn incense and offer prayers and fresh flowers at her graveside.