It may be proper to point out here that his so-called amorous stories are not to be taken as mere idle talks on love-hunters and wanton women. We may say that in them is hidden an inevitable resistance in disguise against the unnatural fetters put on humanity by feudalism.
The moral codes prescribed by Japanese feudalism laid all the restraints imaginable upon people in almost every phase of life. For instance, according to the moral code then current, a boy and a girl ought not to be seated side by side after their seventh year. Under such conditions, neither sex could be expected to develop proper manners toward the other. A boy had to become a too strict moralist, consciously evading the society of girls, if he was to be praised as an ideal boy; and a girl had to be too shy to say any words except “ Yes, sire,” or “Yes, madam,” if she was to enjoy the name of the incarnation of female virtues. But human nature could not long be kept suppressed under such restraints. And Saikaku triumphantly proclaimed humanity free from all the restraints of feudal morals. In the light of modern times, his ‘amorous stories’ may seem too wanton and too erotic. Wanton and erotic they are indeed, but when we stop to consider the age in which they were written, we can see that they were a sort of declaration of humanity against the despotism of feudal morals. In a sense his ‘amorous stories’ are a japanese version of Boccaccio’s Decameron. In Yonosuke’s amorous adventures, for instance, we can hear a cry of human resistance against the feudal fetters. It may appear far-fetched to argue that Saikaku consciously criticized the feudal world by the series of ‘amorous stories’; none the less they were the products of a rebellious spirit against feudalism.
A born townsman, Saikaku could not overlook the queer, unnatural customs to which the warrior class was bound-especially vengeance and sodomy. Modern readers may be perplexed as to why the latter was regarded as a virtue rather than a vice. But this is no place to dwell upon it; there must have been many complicated reasons. For one thing, a young warrior could not fall in love with a girl without being criticized as being too soft. On the contrary, he was openly allowed to love a boy who was his social equal and was not yet of age. When once this relation of love between the two was announced, others had to respect it and the two had to be mutually faithful at the risk of their honor, sometimes even at the risk of their lives. This peculiar type of love then current among the warrior class attracted Saikaku’s interest and in 1687 his Mirror of Sodomy was published.
Vengeance was another feudal virtue that attracted Saikaku’s interest. If a warrior’s father or elder brother or uncle was killed, he had to search all over the country to discover the murderer and take vengeance on him. Stories of successful vengeance taken after many years of hardships used to be told with admiration. But the truth was that not every case of vengeance was successful, and many of them brought misery to all concerned. So in the idealized vengeance stories current in feudal times it was inevitable that the truth was more or less distorted. Then Saikaku began to write. Born townsman, he could not compromise with the current morality and in the Tradition of Chivalry or Records of Vengeance, published in 1687, he reported all varieties of vengeance successful and unsuccessful, admirable and unreasonable, pathetic and cruel. It is notable that he dared to describe the darker aspects of vengeance in an age when it was eulogized as the very flower of chivalry.
But so far, the materials taken up by him were not good enough to show to the full his genius as a townsman writer. Only when he turned his writer’s eye on the life of his fellow townsmen and started writing what are now known as ‘townspeople stories’ could he give full play to his unique genius. His ‘townspeople stories’ are quite significant in the history of Japanese literature in that they were the first literary works in which the main characters were anonymous. Yet, although the people described in these books were men of low birth and no rank, because the economical hegemony was in their hands, they were mighty giants. In The Everlasting Storehouse of Japan, published in 1688, Saikaku boldly declares: “Genealogy is nothing to a merchant. What is important to him is money. Even if he comes of the highest family of the land, if he is a poor tenant of a back street, he is no better than a beggar.”
The newly-risen bourgeoisie knew very well what was the source of their power, why they could have an overwhelming influence in the world though lacking either family lineage to boast of or any military power to rely on. The secret of their power was money and nothing else. With money they were everything; without ‘it they were nothing. So they clung to money desperately. How to increase it, however foul or dangerous the means might be, was the greatest concern that occupied their thoughts day and night. One of them was reluctant to walk fast, even on an emergency call to express sympathy after a fire: he feared he would work up an appetite and have to eat too much, which would mean a waste of money. Another, who was a tea-dealer, adulterated new tea leaves with used ones. All these strugglings of men that centered around money Saikaku described with a very realistic touch.
Despite all these frantic efforts, however, not every body could become rich. On the contrary, nine persons out of ten were destined to be failures. Especially was this true when the market was established and its shares were divided definitely, once for all, among existing merchant princes; there was then little room left for any empty-handed adventurer to aspire to wealth. Saikaku rightly wrote in Saikaku’s Last Fabrics, published in 1694, the year after his death: “Contrary to former times, this is an age in which money begets money. Today it is the man of common ability with capital, rather than the man of rare ability with no capital, who gains profit.” Indeed, in the train of a handful of shining successes there were always a host of failures groping aimlessly in the dark. And for such a realistic writer as Saikaku it was all but impossible not to pick them up in the spotlight of his works. Thus during the last stage of his career he produced a series of masterworks in which the main characters were the petty misers and failures of the world, and This Scheming World (Seken Munasanyo), published in 1692, is one such masterwork.
In structure This Scheming World is one of the most consolidated of all his works. Most of the stories are told as incidents or episodes relating to New Year’s Eve, when in those days it was the custom to balance all debits and credits for the year. On this particular day of the year, the drama of life came to a climax: there were tragedies, comedies, farces and other human incidents that could not be classified into any of the regular categories of stage-plays. The players were of the nameless masses. They were not in the least aware that they were involved in a drama; they were so intent on tiding over this day of days that they were all the more pathetic for it. And Saikaku portrayed them with so life-like a touch that even though three centuries have already passed since the days of Saikaku, it seems as if they were our contemporaries.
Modern readers, especially European and American readers, who are accustomed to reading works written strictly according to the pattern of modern short stories, may criticize Saikaku as lacking ‘system.’ It is true that he lacks system in the modern sense of the word. But then it must be taken into consideration that he was a writer of the 17th century, when even in Europe the pattern of short stories had not yet settled down. In a sense Saikaku’s stories resemble the random chats of a worldly-wise man. Now he talks of this, then he talks of that. His talk lacks ‘consistency.’ Nevertheless we can picture from his description ‘real men of flesh and blood characterized by common human weaknesses and frailties.
Had he lived longer, Saikaku might have written more works on the life of the masses, but unfortunately even as he wrote This Scheming World his health was already declining, and one year after its publication, in 1693, he died. He left us a short farewell poem, composed perhaps on his deathbed, the gist of which is:
“The span of human life is destined to be fifty years, which is rather too long for a man such as I. Nevertheless I was allowed to enjoy the sight of the moon of this world for two more years.”
His tomb may be found in the Seiganji Temple, Osaka.
THIS SCHEMING WORLD
THE EXTRAVAGANT WIVES OF WHOLESALERS
IT IS the way of the world that on New Year’s Eve the