Ihara Saikaku (1641-93) was born
Hirayama Tougo in Osaka to a prosperous merchant family. Little
is known about his early life, but his wife died young and his
only daughter shortly thereafter. Rather than enter the priesthood
as might have been expected under the circumstances, he began
traveling extensively and writing. He was recognized initially
for his skill as a haikai poet,
and is credited with being one of the most prolific renga
(linked verse) poets of all time. Late in life, however, he turned
his attention instead to writing novels, and it is for the brilliant
literary works of this period that he is best known today.
The Japan of the late seventeenth-century had existed under the
stern yet unified rule of the Tokugawa shogunate for nearly a
century before the publication of the literary classic The
Life of an Amorous Man. The work was the first novel
by then forty-one year-old Saikaku, and in its pages he recounted
the life and exploits of the ridiculously amorous hero Yonosuke
(lit.- man of the world), a rake who devotes most of his life,
from early youth till death, to pursuing and enjoying the intimate
company of women and, some cases, young boys. The work was an
important one for two fundamental reasons: first, it was the first
literary work to emerge in Japan that treated sex and sensuality
with a candor hardly before seen in Japanese literature. So influential
was it, in fact, that it produced an entire genre of fiction that
would become characteristic of the period, Ukiyo-zoushi,
or “tales of the floating world.”
The term “floating world”
was used to describe the environs of the pleasure quarters and
theater districts that were becoming popular at that time. Moreover,
the typically short passages that make up the work provide the
modern reader with an unobstructed (but decidedly masculine) view
into the brothels and pleasure quarters of feudal Japan.
The pleasure quarters (yuukaku)
were government-sanctioned districts, mostly urban, where men
could purchase the favors of the demimondaine.
In some cases, like that of the expansive Yoshiwara
district in Edo, the licensed quarters were active on a rather
grand scale. The insulated world of Yoshiwara
and other districts like it provided the writers of the time with
a world of superficial dazzle and ritualized pleasure populated
with rogues and hypocrites of all descriptions. “There
were devious merchants, scheming courtesans, fallen or slumming
samurai, slimy sycophants, lecherous monks, horny nuns, vainglorious
actors, ludicrous fops and fey spendthrifts.”
[Bornoff, 174] Saikaku used these figures, often drawn as caricatures,
as inhabitants of his own literary “floating
world.”
In his richly drawn portraits of life behind
the scenes in the world of recreational sex, Saikaku never treats
the reader to excessively explicit detail. One does find, though,
that although prostitution was very much present in current sense
of the word, the male patrons were highly selective of the partners
they chose to spend time with, and that a fulfilling “evening
of pleasure” may have included
little more than food, drink, and pleasant conversation. This
is wholly apart from what we might think of as prostitution today,
where services purchased and anticipated are almost exclusively
within the realm of physical, sexual gratification. For the characters
in Saikaku’s world a woman’s
manner and grace were as important or more so than her physical
attributes, and this reveals her to having been more than simply
a sexual object.
In addition to exploits in the yuukaku,
Saikaku wrote on other areas of the sexual spectrum. One theme
that received particular attention was that of same-sex love,
or more specifically, love between men and boys. This type of
affection was referred to as nanshoku,
or “male love,”
and it contrasted with joshoku, “female
love.” In Saikaku’s
day homosexual love among men had none of the stigma attached
to it today in Japanese society or that of our own. In fact,
the contemporary view of the rugged, lethal samurai might find
itself sharply at odds with the reality of the commonplace nature
of male love and its pervasive acceptance in medieval and Tokugawa
Japan.
Saikaku writes about nanshoku
at great length in his book Nanshoku Oukagami
(The Great Mirror of Male Love). In it he depicts male love as
it existed around the samurai tradition, as well as in the other
arena in which it was most predominant, the kabuki
theater. The short stories that make up the work are evenly divided
between the two types.
Nanshoku existed exclusively
between men and boys, and the age of nineteen was the point at
which a male would assume the role associated with the former.
Prior to that time he was exclusively a member of the latter,
and known as a wakashu. The
men who practiced homosexual love were divided into two categories:
onna-girai and shoujin-zuki.
Onna-girai (”woman-haters”)
were those men that dallied exclusively with wakashu, and
by contemporary terminology might be called “gay.”
Shoujin-zuki were those who continued to have sexual relations
with women in addition to their liaisons with boys, and in many
cases even had wives and families. Nanshoku Oukagami was
made up entirely of the former, however, and some critics argue
that it is for this reason that a discernible misogynistic bias
exists in many of the stories. Paul Gordon Schalow says:
Because he adopted the onna-girai’s
extreme stance toward female love rather than the shoujin-zuki’s
inclusive position, Saikaku was obliged to write disparagingly
of women in the pages of Nanshoku Oukagami. But Saikaku’s
misogynistic tone, which many readers of this translation will
find offensive, is directed not so much at women as at the men
who loved them. [Schalow, 4]
The status and perception of women had seen a noticeable decline
Japan in the Middle Ages and into the feudal period. Tokugawa
society, with its strict class divisions and clearly defined societal
roles, was inhospitable to women to such a degree that the fruits
of their artistic and creative pursuits, having reached their
apogee in the Heian Era, were now being stifled in almost every
quarter. One glaring example of this practice was the barring
of women from performing on-stage by the bakufu
in 1629. Although initially allowed to perform in the blossoming
kabuki theater, the role of women
had slowly shifted from that of performer to prostitute. This,
it was feared, would turn performance halls into brothels, and
women were summarily excluded from further participation in hopes
of averting the progression. Curiously, however, those selected
to fill the now-vacant female roles on the kabuki
stage (i.e.- young, feminine boys) soon experienced the same evolution
of role, and in like fashion became ready bedmates for enthusiastic
spectators. It is noteworthy that this form of the theater, called
wakashu kabuki, was subsequently
banned as well.
If anything, Saikaku only echoed the kind of biased, subjugative
view of women already well-established in Japan in his time.
One particularly apropos example is his treatment of the main
characters in the two works The Life of
an Amorous Man and The Life of
an Amorous Woman. In the former case the protagonist,
the ever-infatuated Yonosuke, progresses through his entire lifetime
experiencing successes and failures but ultimately achieving great
prosperity after many years spent in the familiar embrace of the
pleasure quarters. The heroine in Amorous
Woman, however, enjoys a wonderfully auspicious existence
in her youth, but experiences a steady, inexorable decline which
finds her a gnarled and pathetic wretch at the end. The same
similarly unpleasant yet inevitable fate seems to await many of
the female characters in Saikaku’s other works
as well, and the dual underlying messages seem to be that promiscuity
and licentious behavior are the bailiwick of men alone, and that
women are of little worth once their looks and sexual appeal have
waned.
The rake, the Lothario who demonstrates masterful skill in seduction,
holds a certain appeal for Saikaku. His protagonists are overwhelmingly
attractive, clever men who, much like the famous
poet Ariwara no Narihira, entice the objects of their fancy,
be they young women or wakashu boys, with carefully chosen
words and cultured manner. The ploy for luring widows regularly
used by Yonosuke’s elderly confidant
in The Life of an Amorous Man sounds so appealing to the
young dandy that employs it himself at the first opportunity [41].
It is known that Saikaku was an active patron of the pleasure
quarters himself, and one must wonder if his characters were the
product of his own self-image. Whatever the case, the sensual
world held great interest for him, and he traversed its broad
expanses with a keen eye and vigorous pen.
It is important to note that Saikaku’s works,
though often quite erotic, were not oblivious to the realm of
the heart, and some of his pieces relate tales of ardent love
by common people, not unlike the works of his contemporary, Chikamatsu.
Saikaku wrote of lovers who experience great depth of emotion
and caring. These figures are often torn between the love they
feel for one another, and the duty that conspires to keep them
apart. An example of this type is the first story in Five
Women Who Loved Love where, much like Chikamatsu’s
The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, the leading figures are
doomed to be separated against their will, deceived, shamed, and
decide eventually to die gloriously together. Although in Saikaku’s
work the ending finds the couple as somewhat apart from the “models
of true love” that die together,
the mettle of their devotion is nonetheless tested under dire
circumstances, and is found to ring true. I think it is these
works which must have led to his great popularity because they,
along with the stories of the bunraku and kabuki
stage, gave new voice to the lives and dreams of commoners and
townspeople.
Ihara Saikaku is described as “one of
the most uninhibited writers who ever published a tale”
by translator Kengi Hamada. His unabashed, straight-forward style
of writing may not seem to the modern reader to be especially
sensual or otherwise erotic, but for his time it was a new direction
in literature, and it launched an entire genre. In his characters
we can find a little of the author himself, his views of women,
and his love for the sensual world.
Works Cited
Saikaku, Ihara. The Life of an Amorous
Man. Trans. Kengi Hamada. Rutland, VT: Charles E.
Tuttle Company, Inc., 1979.
Saikaku, Ihara. Five Women Who Loved Love.
Trans. Wm, Theodore de Bary. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle
Company, Inc., 1956.
Saikaku, Ihara. The Great Mirror of Male
Love. Trans. Paul Gordon Schalow. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1990.
Bornoff, Nicholas. Pink Samurai: Love,
Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan. New York,
NY: Pocket Books, 1991.
An essay about the life and works of 17th century Japanese author Ihara Saikaku.