The Sensual World of Ihara Saikaku

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.