Ihara Saikaku

This is a post I prepared for my class on Early Modern Japan.

Some words of introduction are needed for those of you unfamiliar with Ihara Saikaku, ( 井原 西鶴; 1642 – 1693). Until the age of 40, Saikaku was a Japanese haikai (haiku) poet renowned for his compositional prowess (one record indicates that he composed more 23,500 stanzas over the course of 24 hours in the year 1677. That's roughly one poetic link every 20 seconds!) However, he is better know as creator of the ukiyo-zōshi genre of fiction (stories of the "floating world").

Born into a wealth Osakan merchant family, Saikaku first studied poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku, and later studied became a leading disciple in the Danrin school of poetry.  In the mid 1680s, he began writing racy and humorous accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the chonin, or new urban demimonde.



This is my post for class on a number of these:

It has been suggested that we explore the possibilities and limitations of reading literary sources (like Saikaku) as historical documents, so that is the first thread I’d like to follow here. His mention of the poor reception afforded Greg Leupp’s Male Colors: The Construction of Male Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996) prompted me to read the vitriolic exchange between reviewer Peter Gordon Schalow (translator of Saikaku’s 1687 Nanshoku Ōkagami) and Leupp in the pages of the winter 1997 Journal of Japanese Studies.  This case certainly is a cautionary tale for the pitfalls inherent in injudicious handling of primary sources drawn from the literary canon.

 

Perhaps the crux of the problem lies in the needs literature serves for any given group of readers and the social structures which they inhabit. Fiction engages, sometimes critically, often satirically, cultural values and assumptions. In employing the common devices of style, however, the use of irony, allusion, and parody make literary texts something of a proverbial minefield for historians seeking to glean reliable data for analysis. 

 

Many prominent historians have demonstrated that, when evidence harvested from the verdant fields of prose literature is tested and substantiated with supporting data drawn from outside literary sources, it can greatly enrich our understanding of any given historical period. Two such examples would be the ways in which Karl Friday and Mikael Adolphson have engaged portions of the Heike war tale (gunki monogatari) in their historical analyses of medieval Japan. It is important to note that both Friday and Adolphson are engaging the Heike in limited ways and it does not figure prominently in their lengthy lists of non-literary primary sources.

 

It seems to me that Japan presents us a special challenge in this regard insofar as literary elements (poetry, literary allusions) are sometimes present in sources that would normally fall outside the categories of poetic anthologies or fictional prose compositions. In today’s classroom group discussion, Tom raised the salient question of how we should then approach the numerous “literary diaries” extant within the Japanese canon? It cannot be denied that sources such as Kagerō Nikki, Murasaki Shikibu Nikki, and others have been referenced by historians working on the Heian period. The propensity of Japanese individuals from ancient times to the present to chronicle their experiences has provided historians with a great deal of material with which to work. But the personal and subjective nature of these texts renders them, understandably, questionable unless and until the “truth” they purport to communicate meshes with a larger historical narrative drawn from sources that may be less compelling.

 

Now, to Saikaku: what material of use to historians can be found in the work of this author's  humorous depictions of chōnin life during the Tokugawa?

 

One way to, in Eric's words,  “distinguish literary representation from historical information” may be to examine the texts themselves as objects with something to say about the time of their commercial success with the widespread popularity of this and the kana-zōshi formats. (Schalow, 14). These new genres offered readers a marked change from earlier seventeenth century romances. Hibbett compares Kōshoku Ichidai Onna (1686) to the cliched tropes drawn from Urami no suke, a conventional romance from the period, stressing Saikaku’s “less sentimental” approach which “brought a new range of experience” and “new social types” to Japanese fiction. (Hibbett, 39-41).

 

Illuminating the oeuvre of the pleasure districts, merchant’s shops, and theaters that characterized urban culture, Saikaku’s work represents the active processes of cross-pollination being carried out in the author’s time between various sites of Genroku cultural production. A consideration of his career reveals many links to the worlds of ukiyoe prints, the kabuki and puppet theaters, and also connections to poetic circles by virtue of his long association with the Danrin school of haikai poetry. A number of Saikaku’s kōshoku-bon were illustrated by well-known ukiyoe artist Hishikawa Moronobu (菱川師宣 1618-1694). The publication and commercial success of Saikaku’s creations provides compelling evidence of a flourishing seventeenth century publishing industry and the prominence of the ukiyo-zōshi genre of which Saikaku is often named a pioneer, even an originator (Hibbett, 36). Both Saikaku and playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon were tapping the same source material – Saikaku for ukiyo-zōshi, and Chikamatsu for jōruri libretti (Kato, 108-109).

 

A consideration of Saikaku’s literary themes yields other clues to the possible uses of literature for historical examination. The focus on sexual love (kōshoku) in many of Saikaku’s works: Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko (The Life of an Amorous Man, 1682), Kōshoku Ichidai Onna (The Life of an Amorous Woman¸1686), Kōshoku Gonin Onna (Five Women Who Loved Love, 1686) and Nanshoku Ōkagami (The Great Mirror of Male Love, 1687) represents the function of human sexuality as one sphere in which townspeople (chōnin) could assert the primacy of their private experience in the “highly regimented world” of Tokugawa Japan (Schalow, 17).

 

As Eric noted in class lecture, the Tokugawa bakufu demonstrated little interest in direct regulation of sexual behavior unless and until such behavior interfered with other social strictures such as the segregation of status groups (ER, 4/14/09 lecture). The colorful characters Saikaku creates cross the boundaries of class, inhabiting both urban centers and rural settings, and include high-class courtesans, lowly prostitutes, actors, merchants, samurai, and priests. In this respect, they freely transgress what William Lindsey describes as the “dichotomy of difference” between sexual realms of “pleasure” (epitomized by the pleasure quarters and the courtesan who inhabited it) and “fertility” (symbolized by wives and their reproductive roles in virilocal marriages) (Lindsey, 2-3).

 

 Saikaku’s work both replicates and challenges the Tokugawa class structures with boundary-crossing characters like the erstwhile protagonist of Kōshoku Ichidai Onna, who at various times in her licentious career occupies social positions in various class groups: courtesan, street prostitute, mistress of a Buddhist priest, a tutor, a seamstress, even a merchant’s wife. The appeal of this “amorous woman’s” tale is partially attributable to her propensity to flout these distinctions, driven as she is by lust.

 

Close reading identifies numerous passages which reveal clues to the structure and function of Tokugawa society. One such example occurs in “The Tale of Seijuro from Himeji,” an episode in Kōshoku Gonin Onna which depicts the ill-fated flight of lovers Onatsu and Seijuro by boat. Saikaku’s detailed description of their fellow passengers offers a glimpse into both regional goods and the growth of domestic trade during the Tokugawa period:

 

“Here also was a group of fellow-voyagers, each with the luggage that betoken his business – a pilgrim bound for the Grand Shrine at Ise, an ironmonger from Osaka, an armourer from Nara, an itinerant priest from the monastery at Daigo, a maker of tea whisks from Takayama, a pedlar of mosquito curtains from Tamba, a draper from Kyoto, and a fortune-teller from the Shrine at Kashima. ‘Ten men—ten provinces’ is a true saying, and travel by ferryboat is indeed fraught with interest.” (68).

 

Cast against settings that his readers would certainly recognize from their own experiences such as this one, Saikaku’s fiction explores both nyoshoku (女色, “love of women”) and nanshoku (男色, “love of men”) variations on the multivaried courses of human sexuality (ER, 4/14/09 lecture). In the same manner that they transgress class boundaries, Saikaku’s characters sometimes also move between different sexual proclivities, reflecting contemporary views on sexuality that were not bound by modern notions like “homo/hetero-sexuality”.

 

An example is provided by a tale in Kōshoku Gonin Onna (1686), “The Tale of Gengobei: The Mountain of Love.” Gengobei is initially attracted to young boys (wakashū), pursuing them serially and temporarily at least, swearing devotion to all. But he himself is the object of female desire by Oman, who wins her lover by masquerading as a young boy. Just when the two seem fated to remain plunged into a life of poverty, Oman’s family accepts the relationship and assures material wealth. (100-118).

 

In Saikaku’s fictive world, the affections of both men and women all too often prove inconstant and this inconstancy results in sorrow, even death. But it also provides fertile ground for literary humor. One particularly droll moment occurs in “The Almanac Maker’s Tale” (included in Kōshoku Gonin Onna), when lovers-on-the-lam Osan and Moémon fake their deaths by paying some men to jump into the lake. Saikaku’s playful inversion of the time-honored motif of shinjū (心中double suicide) surely must have delighted period readers:

 

“‘Come what may,’ said Osan, ‘the longer we linger in the world, the more bitter will be our hardships. Should we not throw ourselves into this lake and in the Land of Buddha plight our lasting trough?’

 

‘I don’t cling to this life of mine,’ replied Moémon, ‘Yet…I have bethought myself of a plan. Let us … have it reported that we are drowned. Meanwhile we can quit this spot, betake ourselves to some place in the country—it matters not where, and spend our years together.’

 

Hearing these words, Osan rejoiced and said, ‘Even such was my intention from the time I left my home—and for this purpose I brought along in this box five hundred gold kōban.’” (89).

 

Of all of Saikaku’s work, perhaps Kōshoku Ichidai Onna (1686) best illustrates the tenor of the author’s careful balance between amusement and a stylistic lyricism evocative of earlier tale literature. After detailing her life of lustful pursuits in the guise of urban denizens such as a courtesan, street prostitute, mistress of a Buddhist priest, a tutor, a seamstress, etc, the protagonist ends her life (and relates her tale) in the guise of a Buddhist nun. This is driven home in the final episode of the tale “The Five Hundred Disciples Who Found a Place in My Heart,” in which she visits a hall containing five hundred Buddhist images at Daiunji, and recognizes a former lover in each image’s face. Ironically, it is this moment of reflection on her worldly loves that enables her at last to renounce venality and “bound by no fetters, freely enter the mountain of enlightenment.” The relation of her sexual adventures has become the very vehicle for salvation:

 

“By this confession of my sins I have cleared away the clouds of my own delusion, and I feel that the moon of my heart is shining forth … I may have lived in this world by selling my body, but is my heart itself polluted? (207-208). 

 

We may well imagine Saikaku’s presence behind the tale’s final question, offering this as a cloaked apologetics for his own work.
 

© Melinda Varner, 2009.

 

Works Referenced:

 

Adolphson, Mikael S. The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers, and Warriors in Premodern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000.

 

Friday, Karl F. Hired Swords: The Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

 

Hibbert, Howard. The Floating World in Japanese Fiction. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1959.

 

Ihara Saikaku. The Great Mirror of Male Love. Paul Gordon Schalow, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

 

Ihara Saikaku. The Life of an Amorous Woman and Other Writings. Ivan Morris, trans. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1963.

 

Kato, Shuichi. “Chōnin Ideals and Reality: Ihara Saikaku,” in A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. II: The Years of Isolation. Don Sanderson, trans. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1990: pp. 104-112.

 

Lane, Richard. “Saikaku's Contemporaries and Followers: The Ukiyo-zoshi 1680-1780.” In Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 14, No. 3/4 (Oct., 1958 - Jan., 1959), pp. 371-383.

 

Lindsey, William. Fertility and Pleasure: Ritual and Sexual Values in Tokugawa Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007.

                                                         

Schalow, Paul Gordon. “Review of Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan by Gary P. Leupp. In Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter, 1997), pp. 196-201.