It is difficult to depict in words the large buildings in the pleasure quarters, the grand multistoried bordellos, and the splendor of the bedchambers that go with the world’s affluence. The paper on the sliding doors to the sitting rooms is decorated lavishly with patterns in bright colors, gold, and silver. The alcoves and their decorative shelves for curios are made from rosewood, ebony, Bombay black wood, or other foreign trees, and rare Japanese or Chinese paintings or calligraphic hangings, incense burners, and vases are displayed there. Clothing, bedding, and nightclothes are made of gold brocade, damask, velvet, multicolored brocade, satin, or felted wool. Hair ornaments are decorated with finely wrought tortoiseshell, coral, gold, and silver. Nothing today or in the past can compare with such opulence. This is indeed to be expected, given that in these places the wealthy and the debauched throw gold and silver about with abandon. This business is based on luxury.
Today is no different from the past in that the prostitutes have no fixed abode and suffer from being swept along by the current, living lives of shame. On the other hand, their hardships have increased far beyond ancient times, because ours is a world in which people are insincere by disposition. It is an easy enough business, but one without kindness, and the prostitutes’ expenses are great. In today’s world the high-ranking courtesans of Yoshiwara known as tayū and chūsan cannot cover all their expenses unless they take in 500 to 600 ryō or as much as 700 to 800 ryō a year. The customer, to be sure, must pay the so-called summoning fee for a courtesan, both during the day and at night, but the standard practice is for the brothel owner to take this for himself; this money is not something that the courtesan keeps.1 Thus all she thinks about is how she can trick and coax her customers, because she will be unable to survive in the cruel world of prostitution if she cannot acquire the large sums of money needed for her expenses.
Right now, bedding and nightclothes cost from 50 to 100 ryō, and the hair has to be decorated with over ten tortoiseshell hairpins, which cost 100 to 200 ryō. Clothing for each of the four seasons and everything else has to be in the same range. Today 600 or 700 ryō is the price of 2,000 bales of rice. A hundred ryō for bedding equals 300 bales. Compared with a warrior’s means or a farmer’s livelihood, this is a huge sum. Even the prostitutes lower in rank cannot afford the things suitable to their position unless they take in a large amount of money. Because the entire world has become accustomed to luxury, and splendid surroundings are indispensable for their line of business, expenses have increased enormously in comparison with the past, and it is difficult to keep up with them. This basically means that the prostitute’s mind, which is her only resource, becomes totally absorbed with tactics for gaining more and more. She exerts herself day and night to acquire huge sums of money, knowing that her life depends on it. Selling her natural true feelings places severe hardships on a woman’s limited spirit.
In today’s world, the customers on whom a prostitute depends truly lack all human feeling. Since prostitutes have to take irresponsible playboys as their partners in order to appropriate these large amounts of money, they have no other choice but to make up lies and get money by deception. Such lies become their habitual practice, so that everything today’s prostitutes say is a falsehood from beginning to end. Since even children know this, deceptions become more and more difficult. All the customers have become skilled at deceiving and tricking courtesans and prostitutes. Because conditions have gotten to the point that prostitutes always lose in matching trickery with trickery, it becomes difficult for them to endure [their lot], and from that we can know the depth of their hardships. Is it not a hard profession that violates a woman’s chastity, the core of her femininity that she received from her parents and with which she was endowed by Heaven? One that turns the roots of her feelings into objects for sale and teaches her the technique of ceaselessly competing in trickery with all manner of men day and night, morning and evening? She is the most pitiful of people, to have been born a human being but with nothing to rely on as she struggles futilely only to fall into a profession devoid of humanity.
Brothel Keepers and the Women Who Run Their Brothels
We should not hate prostitutes. Rather, we should hate the brothel keepers who engage in the business of selling women. Theirs is a business that goes against the Way of Heaven and the Way of man. They are not human beings; their behavior is like that of beasts, and it is more than hateful.
In this business, first they buy up someone’s beloved child for a small sum of money, then they cage her like a domestic bird inside their house, and finally they force her to deplete her true feelings down to their very roots. They lead hot-blooded youths into debauchery without a care for whether those youths might cause hardships for their parents, be formally expelled from their household, or be separated from their wives and children. They show no restraint in snatching other people’s goods; they do not mind doing business with robbers, swindlers, Buddhist priests who have left the world, pariahs, or outcasts; they easily treat muggers and murderers as honored guests; and they turn on all their charm to plunder people of everything they own. When those whom they have plundered fall into destitution, they spare them not the slightest glance, and should one of their victims come to pay a visit, they will not even offer him a cup of tea, in glaring contrast with before. If among those honored guests there is one who breaks the law and becomes the subject of an official investigation, they make a secret report and have him arrested. Sometimes it happens that the brothel keeper himself drives someone to break the law by squeezing him too much, but even at such an extremity, the brothel keeper cares not a fig for the obligations he owes that person and, having stripped him of all he has, lets him become a criminal. This is not the deed of a human being.
The brothel keeper always wears silk crepe with a haori of imported felted, worsted, or grogram wool. Sometimes he wears sateen, batik, or stripes, all in the latest Chinese or Dutch fashion. His wallet, short sword, pipe, tobacco pouch, and accoutrements are delicately inlaid with gold, silver, and coral. He leaves the running of his business to his wife and concubines, while he goes to see plays and sumo. When he goes on sightseeing trips or even pilgrimages, he rides in a palanquin with attendants in tow. At shrines and temples he spends great sums of money in making offerings of canopies, draperies, lanterns, washbasins, votive pictures, and so forth, spreading his reputation as far as possible. Free to do as he pleases, he gathers with his cronies to make a regular practice of drinking parties, wagers on games such as go or shogi, or gambles, treating money lightly. He sets up a second house or retirement cottage where he installs a prostitute he has selected and indulges in carnality to his heart’s content. Whether at home or abroad, he satiates himself on tasty food, drink, and sweets. Unlike other people making their way in this world, his business is such that his face is soft, glistening, and plump, and he decorates everything about his person. He throws gold and silver coins lavishly about as though they were pebbles, and no matter where he goes, he is recognizable to anyone with eyes to see as the master of a brothel.
With several tens of prostitutes under his employ, he drives them to deplete the roots of their human feelings in exchange for gold and silver and brings hundreds of customers to financial ruin—or else he makes them into disloyal, unfilial types who indulge in robbery, mugging, and murder while he alone devotes himself to pleasure. The term for brothel keeper, “lost eight,” was originally written as “forgotten eight,” meaning that such men had forgotten the eight human qualities listed in the Gozasso: etiquette, duty, uprightness, shame, filial piety, deference, loyalty, and trustworthiness.2 To abandon these eight human feelings means you are not a human being, that is, you have the face of a person and the heart of a beast. If you have even one of these eight qualities, you cannot run a business like this.
Only a woman can accomplish the task of breaking in a prostitute. It is said that old women are particularly good at this. For that reason the brothel keeper employs his wife or concubine, or else the brothel handler or manager—any mature woman of bad disposition—and leaves the matter up to them.3 A woman selfish to the marrow of her bones, greedy, with a bad basic character, and, in particular, a strong disposition, is good at breaking in the women under her care. The more mature such a woman becomes and the further she travels down the road of greed and ill temper, the less she minds the lack of sleep at night or the lack of time to eat, but concentrates on her work. For that reason the brothel keeper builds up his business by making use of his wife or concubine or a woman treated as his daughter, or else he brings a woman over to his side through adultery and such, or ropes in a disreputable old woman. This is his secret. In all the ways of erotic desire, beginning with greeting and seeing off a customer, the entire management cannot be done well except by women. Because a man who tries to get involved will only be in the way, the brothel keeper is merely a façade for the house. Without any work to be done, he indulges in pleasure noon and night.
Because the business will get done even without such a master, a woman can also openly act as the proprietor while her husband stays in the shadows. In some cases he wants to keep his face hidden because he is a criminal. In other cases the wife assumes the role of official proprietor, while the husband acts as her adviser. Sometimes the husband will set up a separate establishment at a different place, and when he makes deals with the shogunal authorities and other people, he receives them at that other place, which he calls his official business office or reception office. You can get away with a lot in this business.
The Life of a Prostitute
Now, when these sorts of women break in a prostitute, they ordinarily do not give her much to eat, they check on her occasionally to make sure she curries favor with her customer without nodding off, and at times when she looks sleepy or not very appealing, they scold her severely, all to ensure that she does not become lazy in spirit. Fearful of such scolding, the prostitute treats her customer very well. She ingratiates herself with him by tolerating him even if he gets drunk to the point of making unreasonable demands. Should he become so drunk and overflowing with food and drink that he vomits, she nurses him. She gets some young nobody who knows nothing of obligations even to his parents and brothers to fall in love with her, she plays up to a country bumpkin, and she manages to curry favor with a white-haired old man over twice the age of her father by rubbing, stroking, holding, and helping him along. In this way she has relations with all sorts of customers, sometimes three or five from morning to night, sometimes six or seven. To each she turns a smiling face while hiding her grief in her heart, and she depletes the roots of her feelings in allowing each to do as he pleases.
If she is unable to ingratiate herself with a customer and he becomes unruly, or she is indisposed and does not provide good service, or she is left at loose ends when no customers come, she will surely receive a beating. In all this the old woman is the one who metes out the punishment, with the wife, concubine, or so-called daughter giving the command, and the prostitute is beaten with the force of a demon. When that punishment is not enough to bring her around, she might be denied food for several days, or put to work cleaning the toilets or some other dirty place, or stripped naked, bound with hemp rope, and doused with water. When moistened with water the rope shrinks, causing her to shriek in pain. Sometimes a woman will be tortured to death. Such severe reprimands did not exist in the past.
According to the proverb, a courtesan is a wife for a night or a spouse for a day, which shows that a woman used to have no more than one or two customers a day. With no more than one or two customers, a prostitute could not fail to ingratiate herself with them. Laws against trade in people were issued at the beginning of Tokugawa rule, and it is said that strict regulations stipulated that … and also that a prostitute could have only one customer during the day and one at night.4 Recently such laws have broken down, and now we have what is known as “revolving,” whereby a prostitute has to move from one man to the next so long as there are customers, whether she goes through five or ten. Not only does this force her to work at an occupation unsuited to her natural human feelings, it is too much for her to have so many customers, especially because nobody cares whether she is an adult or still a child. Because she is made to work unreasonably, forced to deal with strong and lusty adults, and tormented regardless whether she is sick or well, she unintentionally stops providing good service and earns a reprimand. This is truly unreasonable and unjust.
Should it appear that she has contracted a disease such as syphilis or exhaustion, she is sold to some other lower-class house of prostitution. This is known as “changing the horse’s saddle.” The amount of money she has earned up to that point is treated as profit, and she is sold for the full value of the original contract. She might as well be a horse or cow. Even if a prostitute tries to get through life avoiding that sort of misfortune [she will not be able to because] everything has to be splendid, from fashionable ornaments for her hair to the style of her clothing, and she has enormous expenses for fete days called monbi or monobi.5 Seeing that she is a woman, everyone around her tries to take advantage of her, interferes with her, and steals from her. Since she has lots of expenses, which have doubled since times in the past, she can never earn that much money on her own. In today’s world, customers think it clever to deceive a prostitute. Because she needs to make a fortune while dealing with such insincere men, it is not easy indeed for her to pull off such a trick.
Regardless of right or wrong, she deceives a youth into spending so much on her that his parents formally expel him from the household, or she gets a man to divorce his wife, or she makes a promise to any number of men to marry them by pledging her troth—presenting them with a written deed, cutting off her finger, or cutting her hair—and she ruins them financially. Monks who have left the world steal alms and utensils from their temple, bringing it to ruin. Warriors are tricked into absconding or even committing suicide, employees embezzle from their masters or run away. Even when her customers do even worse and commit the crimes of robbery, mugging, arson, or murder, she still shows no qualms at all, for it will not do unless they are stripped of everything. Words cannot possibly describe behavior that strips people so completely. From this we can know how the prostitute’s hardships have doubled since ancient times, and how they have been led to an entirely evil, perverted Way. Today there is not a single courtesan of a graceful and modest spirit as in the past; they are all like foxes and tanuki, at heart muggers and murderers who make their way through this cruel world by deceiving people as long as they have life.
Should a woman prove unable to endure this life, go crazy, and try to escape, seeking the help of an accomplice, breaking a window and climbing up to the roof or crawling under the floor, going over the embankment and trying to cross the moat [that demarcate the boundaries of the Yoshiwara], she will be punished when she is discovered. If she succeeds in running away but her hiding place is found and she is reported to the authorities, no censure will attach to her master, whose misconduct was the cause. Rather, the authorities will regard it as a matter between master and servant in which the servant has absconded and will put the blame solely on the runaway, who will be censured and scolded and then returned to her employer with no excuses allowed. Punishment on such occasions is particularly severe. She may be beaten with a bamboo stick until she faints, or be stripped naked, gagged with a hand towel stuffed in her mouth, her four limbs tied together behind her back, and suspended from a crossbeam to be beaten. This is called “stringing up.” As I said before, the wife, concubine, or the old woman administers ordinary punishments, but the brothel keeper himself does the beating with the bamboo stick or the stringing up. For the brothel keeper to terrorize by occasionally displaying his authority in this manner is the basis of his business. This is another of his secrets. Throughout the year this is his only duty.
In addition to being punished like this, the prostitute may be sold to some other place. This extends the length of her contract and piles up expenses for legal procedures and other things. Twice the money of her original contract is collected from her, and despite having already endured hardships to no avail, she embarks on new ones. If she becomes ill from exhaustion of mind and body, or if her body is destroyed by syphilis so that she cannot be sold off to become a lower-ranking prostitute, let alone recover, she receives no treatment for her illness and is as much as left to starve to death. Some women die an unnatural death by hanging themselves, throwing themselves into a well, piercing their throat, or chewing off their tongue. In some cases these unnatural deaths are investigated according to the law, but most are covered up. The dead are buried in a temple’s collective grave or simply dumped. In some rare cases, they revive when they are being washed prior to burial or at the grave. I have received definite information that this has happened in two or three places. Tormented to an unnatural death before having lived out her natural span of life, left to starve to death, and thought to have already died while she was still alive, once in a great while she started breathing again.
As I said before, the laws instituted at the beginning of Tokugawa rule have become disordered, and benevolent government that shows mercy to the people cannot penetrate this far. This is truly something to be lamented. Because a woman who dies this kind of unnatural death holds a grudge against the house that employed her and curses it, the corpse is bound hand and foot, rolled up in a straw mat, and buried that way as a charm against the curse. This is the secret method employed in this business. It is the way cats and dogs are treated, signifying that she has been turned into a beast. It is said that these extreme measures mean that she cannot curse human beings. It is truly a brutal deed.
Some women are punished by the authorities because they commit arson out of resentment against their severe treatment. Arson occurs fairly frequently, but in most cases [the brothel keepers] see that it is hushed up. [When it does come to light], the authorities punish the arsonist strictly in accordance with the regulations, but they do not take action against the brothel keeper, who, breaking the laws of former times, treated the woman so cruelly that she was unable to endure her suffering and was driven to set the fire. This is a truly heinous situation. Further, since it is the authorities who punish the woman for the clear crime of committing arson, the brothel keeper need not fear retribution [from her resentful spirit]. Instead, as in the expression “to fatten after a fire,” the affair ends with its becoming the basis for subsequent prosperity.6
Even though a prostitute may be driven to extremity by her misfortune, no one will come to console her. When a kind soul shows her some sympathy, truly her long-cherished only desire, how could she regret to give up her life? Those rare double suicides occur when a couple has mutual sympathy for each other’s misfortunes. Indeed, someone who has even the slightest resources will never become a partner in suicide. A man who becomes a partner in a double suicide has no standing of his own. Neither he nor his lover has a reason for living on; they simply are completely overwhelmed. It is not at all the case that they choose death because they are drowning in love. Having talked together about their bad luck, they die because sympathizing with hardships that are impossible to bear has left the man confused. People say that this was decreed by karma, or that it is the sort of thing done by beasts, and no one really takes the matter to heart. There are also women who falsely pretend to be ready to commit double suicide. They claim to endure terrible hardships, and having exhausted all other means of trickery and deceit, they appear ready to die. Nowadays such devices as cutting one’s hair or cutting off a finger have become old-fashioned, and these will not convince a playboy of a woman’s seriousness. She has to show herself willing to wager her life. That people go through such contortions shows how much more complicated the cruel world of prostitution has become compared with former times.
The Transformation of an Ordinary Woman into a Prostitute
Even when a prostitute has endured these various hardships, evaded death, and completed her contracted term of service without a hitch, it is still impossible for someone who has fallen into prostitution to return to being an ordinary woman. Because she is ruined for life, it is said that making a woman a prostitute is to send her to hell. There is good reason for this.
When an ordinary woman first becomes a prostitute, her entire body becomes wracked with pain within two to three or five to six months, or else it swells with pus, and she truly suffers. In her profession this is called “getting accustomed to the chicken coop.” While she is thus afflicted, she is shut up in a separate room and nursed. It is called a coop because it is like the conditions under which a chicken lays an egg. While she goes through these afflictions, her body loses its fat, and she becomes pale, thin, and frail. Thereafter she is truly a woman of the floating world. Since at the outset she was an ordinary woman, her true feelings were engaged to the utmost every time she had sexual intercourse with men. These feelings penetrated to her bones and produced the afflictions seen above. Once she has gone through such afflictions, she is called an expert in her profession. Thereafter she has been stripped of ordinary human feelings, and no matter how many men she meets, she never loses her heart, nor does she get pregnant.
This transformation from an ordinary woman into a woman of the floating world is an affliction that washes away her natural chastity. There is the saying that “a loyal retainer does not serve two masters, nor does a chaste woman serve two husbands.”7 Not serving two masters has its source in the feeling that arises from a sense of righteousness, and not serving two husbands is the commitment that arises from natural chastity. This natural feeling of commitment leads a woman to cleave to the husband to whom she has entrusted herself and not to allow her heart to be swayed even at the cost of her life, or even if it means putting her parents aside. Prostitution is a profession that makes a woman take countless men as her partners and thereby crushes the natural chastity that ties a woman’s body to one man for life. As such it is an atrocious practice impossible for an ordinary human being to perform. If a woman does not go through the transformation described above, she cannot do it. This perverted Way truly contradicts the Way of Heaven. You should know that in our world, this sort of perverted Way is flourishing.
Once she has become a prostitute by going through this transformation, a woman will not bear children, she will not perform manual labor, and she will not do weaving or sewing, laundry, or cooking. In short, she is no good for any kind of normal work in this world. Instead, she becomes a wastrel for her entire life. The only things she knows are how to fix her hair and makeup and to dress herself up every day, to spend her time singing and playing the samisen, to ingratiate herself with men, and to melt the hearts of honest men. As a consequence, it is said that whenever a man of means makes a prostitute the woman of his house, all his relatives bewail it as betokening the house’s ruin.
For that reason, the only ones who will marry prostitutes are men of low status who do not even have a fixed dwelling place, and [the prostitutes who become their wives] know no security their whole life long and end up as derelicts and drifters. A prostitute who fails even to become the wife of such a lowlife will change her abode from one place to another without ever being able to leave the world of prostitution. As she becomes older she will gradually fall into ever lower categories of prostitute. Even when she has aged she will not be able to do any other work, so she may become what is called a “night hawk,” or “everyone’s bride,”8 or end up an outcast or a beggar. Truly, becoming a prostitute is nothing other than falling into hell. As the proverb says, “Seen from the outside it is paradise; once inside it is hell.”
The Causes of Prostitution
Various reasons lie behind women’s becoming prostitutes. Women from Edo or other similar places are sometimes sold into prostitution because they have fallen into an adulterous relationship. Or they may have been seduced by a young man or abducted by troublemakers and thrown into prostitution after that. Needless to say, there may be cases in which women become prostitutes because of their parents’ faithlessness or dissipation. However, it is contrary to the principle of the Way to sell a daughter, to abduct a woman for sale, or to sell a wife or sister. It is particularly inappropriate for a parent to sell a child. If such a thing should happen out of filial piety, as a result of extreme poverty, it is somewhat understandable, but that is rarely the case in today’s world. Women are sold owing to the seller’s dissipation or lust. It is contrary to the laws of Heaven. If this were times past, such things would have become subject to government sanction.
However, the prostitutes who come [to Edo] from faraway provinces and remote regions do not do so for the reasons given above. They all come because of their parents’ hardships. Out of all the provinces, most come from Etchū, Echigo, and Dewa [in the north]. It is said that when parents are pressed for as little as three or five ryō, the sale is done. Sometimes it is at the approach of winter at the time of accounting for taxes. Or perhaps the destitute have somehow managed to get through the end of the year but are unable to hold on until summer through the lean months of spring. Anticipating that the destitute will be unable to survive, brokers called zegen go into these regions to buy girls.
Even for people with a city disposition it is not easy to sell a child, and it is a fearful thing to send her to hell for life. In distant provinces and remote regions, where people grow up with constant shortages and live together in hardship, what must it be like to sell off a beloved child raised at your bosom to a faraway place you have never seen, and for parents and child never to see one another again? Even to send a child off for legitimate employment causes a parent anxiety and worry. Think then how it must feel to send a daughter off to work as a prostitute. Indeed she goes bravely off, wholeheartedly determined, knowing that she can save her parents from their suffering. These are the true feelings between parents and child. And that is as it should be. Of course, it is said that in the past, everyone used to point their fingers at a person who had sold a child and shun him as inhumane, even in Etchū and Echigo. The seller too would be ashamed and reluctant to show his face among his fellows. That is not the case anymore, and it is said that the number of people who sell their children has gradually swelled.
Another point is that places where children are sold have little circulation of money. You may think that money is so precious in those places that people will exchange a child for just a meager amount, but the matter is not so simple. In those areas there are extremely wealthy people. As I have said before, the wealthy suck up the soil’s abundance, and therefore an excess of destitute people appear; some strangle or drown themselves, and others sell their children. This accords with the principle that peasant uprisings break out in places where there are extremely rich people. Generally speaking, the old customs remain in remote areas: each is strict in his obligations to others, all money accounts are kept honestly, and borrowers try to repay both principal and interest without fail. Therefore the prosperous gradually become even more prosperous, the destitute even more destitute, and poverty and wealth become sharply divided.
Townspeople are not taxed to the extent that they have to sell their children. They never sell their children out of a sense of obligation to others. Whenever a townsman sells a child, it is for selfish reasons. Even if by some chance a person is driven by destitution to make a sale, destitution in the provinces is different in kind from destitution in urban areas. If a farmer sells his daughter in the fashion described above, the parents do not thereafter live a secure life. They will not even be able to survive at ease for one or two years. Rather, they use the money to compensate for immediate hardships into which they have been cornered. But the daughter who has been sold becomes permanently derelict, and neither parent nor daughter benefits from that sacrifice.
Parents carefully raise their children in hopes that they will grow up to become respectable people and take care of them when they grow old, but they lose this all in trying to gain a moment’s respite. By expending the filial piety that she owes her parents in order to overcome a moment’s hardship, the daughter ends up separated from them for life, and she too becomes an object abandoned for a lifetime. Generally speaking, it is standard practice for a person who exercises filial piety to receive a reward from the government,9 and if it is a form of filial piety to vainly abandon one’s life for the sake of one’s parents, no one should be less overlooked than a woman who has ended up a prostitute for this reason.
Let me say this as an aside. In the three cities and other towns, people often receive rewards for filial piety. In the provinces and the countryside, such rewards are rare. However, the sort of filial people who receive rewards in the cities are so numerous in the provinces and countryside that they cannot be counted. Whether one is close or distant to the authorities makes a big difference in benefit and loss. In general, people of the soil are the ones who perform corvée for public works levied by the shogunate, and for that reason it would be appropriate that the filial among them be the ones to receive prizes. Townspeople and idlers do not pay annual land taxes nor perform corvée labor, and thus it is a waste for them to be granted a prize for what they consider to be filial piety. Besides, it is deplorable to distribute to townspeople and idlers the tribute in taxes that the people of the soil have produced through severe austerities. Yet in the everyday way of things, it is all like this. We ought not to remain indifferent to the fact that farmers sell their children out of an excess of poverty, which results from their devotion to the duty of paying taxes and performing corvée for public works levied by the shogunate.
Kidnappings
In various provinces, kidnappers abduct children at play who have wandered off at places where crowds gather, or at dusk. They take them along to distant provinces and sell them there. Because the eight Kantō provinces are close to the seat of power, kidnappings are few, but they occur frequently beyond the barriers. Such practices are not thoroughly investigated in faraway provinces but are just overlooked.
In the provinces around Kyoto, where children go in groups to make pilgrimages to Ise or travel around a pilgrimage circuit,10 the kidnappers press their way into the group. They select a good-looking child, trick her into separating from the others, and take her. In these cases, people back home do not know that she has been kidnapped and think that she was hidden by the gods. Some are delighted, some are grieved, others may mark the day of her disappearance as her death day or hold a funeral. I have heard that in Hyūga province, people buy old and young men to make them into servants for farmers. For that reason there are kidnappers for boys in the provinces around Kyoto. In Hyūga they are treated like dogs or cats. They are not even given clothes, straw sandals, or geta to wear and are left to sleep on the ground. What I have heard is so inhumane that words cannot do it justice. Since my subject here is young girls, I will not pursue it further.
Let me describe the situation for a young girl of this sort bought and brought here from the provinces at a young age, particularly one abducted by kidnappers. Dragged to a place where she is totally at a loss, she is handed over to deplorable people, taken to those brothel keepers, and called a trainee from the age of seven or eight. As such she meets with strict discipline, sometimes being punished with large doses of moxa burned on her skin.11 Always bullied by fellow workers, she wakes up early in the morning, is chilled by the night cold, and is not allowed to sleep during summer nights. Not conscious of night or day, she aimlessly passes the years not knowing whether her parents in the provinces are alive or dead, unable to remember even their names or their province, forgetting how many siblings she has. The only thing she knows is fear of her master’s strength and the importance of doing as she is told. Penetrating to her bones, all this becomes her ceaseless torment.
Not having anyone to rely on, she has nowhere else to go, no matter how severely she is punished. Knowing nothing of the ways of the world, she relies on an inhuman house as her sole support and believes she must consider the brutal brothel keeper as important to her as a master or a parent. Her enjoyment consists of seeing a plenitude of exotic and tasty food and admiring the hair ornaments, makeup, and clothes of the elder prostitutes, so she, in her young heart, is encouraged to grow up as quickly as possible and become a good prostitute so as not to be scolded by the master, to have free access to hair and cosmetics, to wear beautiful clothes, and to eat delicious food. Finally she falls into the cruel world of prostitution, and she ends up a being that is no longer human.
Under such circumstances, the parents who struggled to raise her are set aside, she is bound to a man who should have no place in her life, and the fullness of years that should have been devoted to the benefit of her all-important parents end up being plunged into inhuman suffering because of the doings of evil people. The most unfortunate will fall ill, and as I said before, not a few of them die because they have not received treatment. During the previous measles epidemic, it is said that over 120 women died among the prostitutes and trainees employed at Ogiya in the Yoshiwara. From this you should know the lack of care provided for the sick that leads to unnatural deaths.
Brothel Keepers’ Profits and the Spread of Prostitution
Despicable above all is the brothel keeper. For just a small sum he plunders people’s jewels, he has no qualms about employing a man’s wife or daughter or kidnapped children, he unjustly uses up the full bloom of their maturity, he turns a person into something no longer human in order to secure an immense profit for himself, and he takes in at least a hundred times more than he has invested. If during her term of service a woman has a good customer who redeems her contract, the brothel keeper collects a huge sum. For a child whom he has bought and raised for 3 to 5 ryō cash, or a woman whom he has bought for 30 to 50 ryō, he collects all the profit she would have made for him in the future. No other business can compete with his. When a woman who has no special customer to redeem her contract but who has worked for the length of time specified has received advances or goods against her earnings, not even a tiny portion will be forgiven. She will be charged high interest on those advances and goods, which adds months and years to her contract and ends up requiring extra years of service. Should she manage to finish working without problem and without such debts, she will be driven away without the slightest concern for what will become of her. This too leads to lifelong destitution. In any case, every woman who falls into the hands of these brothel keepers loses her life.
In truth, [brothel keepers] bankrupt men of property; create men who are disloyal, unfilial, and end up being formally expelled from the household; cause monks to break their precepts; do not properly discriminate against pariahs and outcasts; create unregistered wastrels and troublemakers; make deals with arsonists, robbers, muggers, and murderers; and cause damage to many people. In this fashion they spread poison everywhere and make great profits for themselves. They truly personify the Demon King of hell.12 A huge number of men and women go through life as accomplices in this business. They are the foot soldiers of hell. In today’s world even ordinary people are ashamed of duty, abandon human feeling, and pursue greed. Because this is a business in which one can make profits of one-hundred-fold or more, those seeking to earn a living by personifying the Demon King of hell or hell’s foot soldiers have steadily swelled in number. More and more have appeared every year, not only in the three cities but also along the roads, at every port and inlet, and in the post stations and rural towns.
Long ago, in the Tenshō years during Lord Hideyoshi’s reign, a survey of the number of courtesans in and around Kyoto showed that there were over 230. It is said that this was seen as insufficient, and thus permission was granted for a total of up to 1,000. At present there are twenty-seven locations in Kyoto with prostitutes, and they must number at least 20,000. In Osaka, previously there was just Hyōtanmachi, but now there are also Kita no Shinchi, Shimanouchi, Naniwa Shinchi, Horie, and other places, which between them have tens of thousands of prostitutes. Following unification [under Tokugawa rule] in the early years of Keichō, prostitutes appeared here and there in the shogun’s capital. I have heard that in 1617 a man named Shōji Jin’emon appealed to the authorities and received a grant of land measuring two chō square below Fukiya-chō, where for the first time he put up a fence and gathered in one place all the brothels previously scattered here and there. The number of prostitutes at that time was around 300 to 400.
Today, however, the number of prostitutes in Yoshiwara has reached 3,000 to 4,000. In addition, there are said to be 300 to 400 women called geisha.13 Other places where prostitutes are found are called “restricted areas.” They can be found in the six sections of Fukagawa as well as Shinagawa, Senju, Itabashi, Naitō Shinjuku, Kozukappara, Nezu, Yanaka, Ichigaya, Akasaka, Honjo Matsui-chō, [Honjo] Irie-chō, and other places. As the term implies, these are places where prostitution is “restricted,” so they all operate under the guise of restaurants, taverns, and tea stands while secretly engaging in prostitution. I do not know how many thousands of women they employ. In the past, the authorities ordered the land seized or confiscated and cleaned the place out whenever secret prostitution was exposed. Such things are rare nowadays. Whenever the secret trade in women is exposed, the facts are twisted this way and that with promises for the future, and a lid is put on the matter so that the houses of prostitution can make a living. For these reasons, “restricted areas” and “secret prostitution” have become only empty words, and houses of prostitution operate openly.
In places like these, men referred to as bosses undertake to solve any problems that may arise in connection with this line of business. They are in constant contact with the lower officials in charge of city administration, whom they are forever sending presents. Whenever something happens that might hinder business, such as a quarrel, murder, arson, robbery, or a prostitute’s unnatural death, those bosses immediately send a bribe to get the matter smoothed over. Since the lower officials have been well primed, they readily show favoritism in disposing of the problem. Generally speaking, the bosses distribute gifts more lavishly than do great and small daimyo when seeking some favor, and so the lower officials go out of their way to bend the outcome in a manner beneficial to the bosses. To cover their expenses, the bosses collect money on a monthly basis from the masters of the prostitution houses.
It is said that in Nezu, the amount of money regularly collected by the bosses in this fashion is over one thousand ryō a year. The same is true in Yanaka. I am told that in Honjo Irie-chō and other places, it is also over one thousand ryō. This is just the basic charge, and when there are emergency expenses, additional funds are collected to cover them. The other places follow suit. By using such large sums of money to manage affairs, the bosses keep all flanks covered, they enjoy fame as gallants, and they indulge in arrogant extravagance. This is what the business of secret prostitution is like today. Flourishing without the slightest hindrance, the business of hidden prostitution is said to employ several hundred women inside the capital, but in the near future such women are more likely to be counted in the tens of thousands. And what must be added to this number are the so-called geisha. They have increased a hundredfold since former times.
What are called entertainers in the townsmen’s blocks began to appear around the Hōreki era, and I have heard that according to an Edo census, by An’ei there were at least 106. Now it is said that there are over 3,800 geisha. These so-called entertainers engage in the same kind of business as prostitutes. With this sort of trend in the three cities, the number of prostitutes all over the country—in places such as Nara, Sakai, Fushimi, Shimonoseki, and Nagasaki, as well as in the post stations throughout the provinces—must be several tens of thousands. Totaling up all the places in Japan, the number must exceed 100,000 women.
The Damage Done by Prostitution
Owing to this flourishing of prostitution in the provinces, some have come to sell their children, others have begun to take people’s wives and daughters through deception, kidnappers and other troublemakers have appeared, and, as a consequence, all too many old men and women have suffered hardships because the children who were to take care of them have been snatched away. Now that prostitution has become fashionable in the provinces, people have become addicted to sex, many people have become derelict either because they suffer from debilitating illnesses or because they have contracted syphilis, and many people have failed to live out their natural life span. Disloyal and unfilial people proliferate, and all sorts of evil people who commit atrocities have appeared. The 100,000 prostitutes who now exist daily turn several million men into evildoers, and it is difficult to calculate how many tens of thousands of lives they take.
In all cases, the road to becoming evil starts from prostitution. Second is gambling. However, only one or two out of ten of those who become evil do so through gambling. All the rest begin by being driven mad by prostitution and ruining themselves. How regrettable it is to think of the damage this does to the true people who support the state. Furthermore, businesses based on splendor waste various goods that should have been used for clothing, food, dwellings, and other useful purposes, to a degree that exceeds other businesses many times over. Since the amount used up by a single prostitute is sizable, the total amount spent today by prostitutes throughout the country, plus what the millions of people involved with them also spend, is incalculable. Prostitution damages tens of thousands of people, it wastes products needed by the country, and it is worse than the deeds of those who are called the enemies of the country. The damage it does to people affects the revenues of the state; the waste it causes all comes home to the people of the soil and creates hardships for the poor.
At the beginning of Tokugawa rule, prostitution districts were allowed in the three cities and in two or three other places as well. It was strictly forbidden in all other provinces. Two hundred years later, these regulations have collapsed one by one, and now prostitution is everywhere. In truth, good ways are easily abandoned and bad ways readily arise. It does not do to be negligent in running the state. The Way of prostitution goes against the Way of Heaven, it is against principles of the Other World, and it is the prime cause of disaster for the state. The practices of the Honganji sect of Buddhism and prostitution are the two great perversions of our world. They must be reduced. However, since these two great perversions have become ever more popular with the passage of time and have risen up everywhere, will it not be difficult to find a means to eradicate them at the root? This is something that should be considered. There are indeed means to reduce them. I will say more about this later.
The basis for entertainment in today’s world is Kabuki. No one now regards Noh, uncostumed Noh dance, Noh music, poetry, linked verse, tea ceremony, and so forth as entertainment. To people, entertainment means koto, samisen, nagauta long songs, jōruri story chants, danced drama, and so forth. Kabuki is at the root of these entertainments.
Kabuki is said to have originated during the Bunroku era when all the generals were encamped at Nagoya in Hizen province for Lord Hideyoshi’s campaign against Korea. There, a couple called Nagoya Sanjūrō and Izumo no Okuni performed in the manner of a nenbutsu dance, wearing priestly robes with prayer beads around their necks and Buddhist-style decorations around their hips. While chanting a story, they danced an enactment of the love between husband and wife. Story chants themselves began when Ono no Otsū conceived the idea of making a song about Lady Jōruri. There were no risqué words in her song at all. It completely followed Buddhist teachings and was similar to the chanting of Buddhist monks. There was no samisen at that time, just flutes, hand drums, and the striking of gongs. The term for play, shibai, arose because the dances took place on turf (shiba) and everyone sat (i) on the turf to watch the spectacle.14
During the Keian era, the nenbutsu dances performed by that couple became popular in the region around Kyoto. Taking advantage of that, two outcasts who called themselves Nagoya Sanzaburō and Izumo no Osono imitated Sanjūrō and Okuni and danced in their manner. The original Nagoya Sanzaburō was a page of Gamō Ujisato’s, and he was said to be the most beautiful man in Japan of his time. He was killed when he went out to face the enemy. Perhaps those outcasts borrowed his name because he had been known as the most beautiful man in Japan, or else they wanted to create a resemblance to Okuni’s husband, Nagoya Sanjūrō.15 This outcast couple danced like Sanjūrō and Okuni, but one degree more crudely. Because they included risqué interludes between man and woman, people found this even more entertaining and many flocked to see them. It is said that other outcasts learned this dance one after the other. Because they were all outcasts who lived on the riverbank at Shijō in Kyoto, they were called “people of the riverbank.”16 They must have been like those street performers who do mime or juggling at road crossings today. Before that, there had been nothing interesting to watch because the world was in disorder. People found these new spectacles intriguing, and performances became increasingly popular. Displaying imitations of men’s and women’s risqué behavior in this fashion appeared for the first time since the world’s creation. It went on to become the foundation for disorder in the Way of men and women.
To summarize: Kabuki first originated in nenbutsu dances; to this was added risqué mingling between men and women; thereafter praiseworthy elements such as nenbutsu dancing were lost, and Kabuki took on the character of being only about relations between men and women. This became the basis for fostering debauchery in our world, and, perhaps around the Kan’ei era, it was prohibited twice. Nevertheless, as the world under the shogun’s rule became more splendid, there was no stopping the spread of entertainments. Kabuki repeatedly made a comeback, so the shogunate forbade men and women to dance together while allowing dances performed by children called “youths.” The youths’ dances became more and more elaborate until their appearance was like nothing seen before.17 Today’s Kabuki actors are not youths, nor are they outcasts, and even though the name “people of the riverbank” remains, they do not live on riverbanks but in houses just like ordinary people. What distinguishes them is their attitude of superiority to ordinary people and the great amount of money they make.
The Extravagance of Actors and the Theater World
Actors are ranked according to their artistic skill. The less skillful get a salary of about 200 ryō a year; the more skilled make over 1,000 ryō a year. In addition they receive vast amounts of money, clothing, curtains, banners, and piles of decorated items known as “heaped presents” from leagues of fan clubs and people referred to as patrons. Nowadays an actor making 1,000 ryō has the income of an official of the 3,000-koku stipend level and boasts that he earns the same amount as the magistrate who administers all the townspeople’s blocks in Edo.18 The stage props are splendid, and although it is said that the theaters’ facade, railings, gates, and tower are built to resemble the battle camps of old, those battle camps could not possibly have been built as solidly as today’s theaters. The decorations for the stages and the boxes for the spectators are splendid and can hardly be compared with the dances performed on turf in former times, or with the way people sat on the ground to view them.
The beauty of the costumes is beyond description. When performing the roles of emperor, shogun, or princess, the actors wear clothing of brocade embossed with gold, brocade, silk twill, or velvet, sometimes thickly stitched with gold and silver. It is said that the clothing for a man playing a woman’s role in a dance play costs as much as 100 ryō. Even a real princess would not be able to wear such expensive goods. I have heard that around the Genroku era, the government prohibited even humble cotton costumes on which thin gold and silver foil had been pasted to look like gold-embossed or patterned brocade.
As for long and short swords, it is said that in the past the joint at the end of the hilt, the sword guard, and the scabbard were all fake, and the blade was bamboo or whalebone covered in foil. Today’s decorations on these swords are the real thing, with high-quality materials of gold and silver and colored images used for the joint at the end of the hilt, sword guard, fastener covers, knife, and pin, and with grainy patterned shark or whale skin used for the hilt. These decorations are not inferior even to a daimyo’s swords. Ever since the Kansei reforms, there have been so-called clothing inspections, with officials occasionally coming to make an examination. On that single day the actors deliberately wear old and plain clothing to pass the inspection. Because the actors have to wear ugly rags when the officials come to inspect their clothing and the officials get in the way of the performance, the latter just peer in for a little while and leave almost immediately. When they come to see the spectacle for their private enjoyment, they bring along their wives and concubines or entertainers and see it through to the end. What was supposed to be an inspection by the public authorities ends up being nothing of the kind, and the actors are left free to indulge in their usual splendor. Things have really gone too far.
The actors’ residences too are magnificent; their wives, concubines, and even their children have male and female servants; they live in exceptional splendor, toy with rare Japanese and Chinese objects, and satiate themselves on exotic foods from mountain and sea; their extravagance in everything is beyond compare. Once I went on an excursion to the villa near Fukagawa of a chief actor making five hundred ryō a year. First of all, the rock on which I stepped to remove my shoes was granite of the highest quality, five shaku in width and over three ken long. The main sitting room looked like the study in a daimyo’s palace with its double sliding cedar doors and paper sliding doors covered with gold leaf, all decorated with famous paintings and pictures of popular places done by renowned artists. The small sitting room off to one side was made with exotic wood and spread with wool rugs, its ceiling covered with batik. The alcove, the decorative shelves, the hangings of famous pictures, the items on display, the collection of rare utensils and rocks—all carried a pedigree of who had given the item or where it was from. The tobacco box too was of exotic wood, inlaid with finely wrought coral. The garden contained countless species of trees and flowers. Here and there were unusual rocks, stone lanterns, hand-washing basins, silver tubs, and silver pitchers. From the accoutrements of the sitting room to the enclosure for exotic foreign birds, nothing was commonplace. Whether from past or present, everything was a rarity.
When I praised the house as marvelous, a wonder to behold, I was told that it was supposed to have been the private residence of a certain daimyo but that it did not suit his taste. It had been unused until this actor inquired about it and fixed it up, even though it was out of keeping with his status. Although he spoke with fake modesty, saying that he had not deliberately sought such splendor, in his heart he was proud to have a dwelling equal to a daimyo’s. Detestable words! There is a rumor that a villa belonging to one of his colleagues is of the same style and even more splendid.
Had anyone put on such an appearance in the past, he would have been censured. Nothing like that happens today. Even if the government tries to take measures, people find some way or other to get around them. When in fact there is an inspection, someone stealthily brings a warning beforehand. On that occasion, the stones will be buried in sand or wrapped in rough straw mats; as a temporary expedient paper will be hung in the sitting room to cover the wood; and the officials will do nothing. In contrast, a poor, honest, and long-suffering person is immediately arrested, tied up, and ends his life in jail for having committed some slight wrong. The gap between those who are in tune with the times and receive favorable treatment and those who do not is as great as that between Heaven and Earth.
Owing to this sort of treatment, actors have become exceedingly arrogant in disposition. On the surface they have not yet been able to lose the label “people of the riverbank,” so when out and about they fawn and flatter, but in their hearts they feel like daimyo. Even though they receive money for displaying their art, they are just as arrogant as a daimyo, and they are not in the least bit thankful. They take what they receive as no more than their due. They do not make the slightest gesture of gratitude, nor do they feel in the least bit thankful. Worse, they take on an air of despising money while receiving so much of it that they throw it around heedlessly.
A few years ago, an actor playing female roles named Segawa Kikunojō Rokō was invited by a province-holding daimyo to dance the piece called “Dōjōji.”19 As a reward he was sent a bundle containing 100 ryō in gold. The official in charge of this transaction was a samurai from that distant province who had come to Edo on alternate attendance, and he was extremely surprised when told to hand over such a large sum to such a person. Yet Kikunojō did not show much appreciation at all. The official expected that perhaps he did not know it was 100 ryō and had mistaken it for just a small sum, and so he said to Kikunojō, “You have received as much as 100 ryō for work that did not take even an hour, so how happy you must be.” “I am indeed delighted,” Kikunojō replied, “but I myself have given more to others.” The country samurai’s face turned red with embarrassment, and he was humbled by the temperament of a chief performer who could really be called a 1,000 ryō actor.
After that, Kikunojō took the bundle back to his house and gathered together the musicians who had accompanied him, his regular staff, and others who had assisted. “Because all of you worked so diligently today I could perform even better than usual, and I am all the more delighted and satisfied. I am giving you this as a token of my appreciation.” He took out the 100 ryō, added another 100 ryō to it, and divided the total of 200 ryō among them. He did this because he could not be satisfied with simply having humiliated that country samurai and felt that he had to match words with deeds. From this one can understand the arrogant disposition of the “people of the riverbank” and the derisive way they treat money. Having become ever more prideful and arrogant, actors visit the three cities and other urban centers. Wherever they go they attract fans and idolizers; they receive mountains of money; they suffer not the slightest setbacks but wander around floating on splendor.
When the actor Ichikawa Danjūrō traveled from Sunpu to Nagoya and then on to the Kyoto region recently, he made a pilgrimage to the Ise Shrines where he gave over 100 gold ryō for a performance of daidai kagura.20 In addition he made donations to shrines and temples in Kyoto and Osaka, erected a large stone stele at Mount Kōya in Kii province just as great daimyo had done in the past, and presented a big stone lantern at the Konpira shrine-temple complex in Sanuki. On his way home he visited Zenkōji in Shinano, where he procured a piece of land and built a perpetual rest house for pilgrims. After he returned to Edo, he built a large votive tablet hall at the temple for Fudō at Narita in Shimōsa. While he was in Kyoto and Osaka he also took a number of famous courtesans as his concubines. From this one can infer how he travels the three cities and other urban centers, takes in lots of money by performing his art, receives mountains of gold and silver and clothing from his fans, spends money like water, and lives in entirely too much magnificence.
In today’s world, glory’s good fortune has shown up at entirely unexpected places.21 This Danjūrō is said to be the chief performer in Edo and collects over 1,000 ryō a year in salary. All the other actors ranked below him follow his example: they spend mountains of money, indulge in dissipation to their heart’s content, pay not the slightest heed to people suffering hardships or people who have become impoverished, but take magnificence to be the normal state of affairs. With the world like this, you should know that somehow the magnificence associated with persons of high rank and status has gone into decline, and instead splendor accumulates around these beings who lack all human qualities.
The Theater’s Influence on Women
Generally speaking, townspeople and idlers really like these Kabuki actors, though this is less true of warrior households. In particular, their wives and daughters are deeply infatuated and besotted, and they all try to ingratiate themselves with the actors. Pulled along by their wives’ and daughters’ infatuation, men too become fans. Women of the floating world who are entertainers and dancers see Kabuki as the basis of their art, and they attach themselves to the actors, respecting them as masters and teachers. The actors then make these women their underlings and lose themselves in sexual pursuits to their heart’s delight. Sometimes they select a beautiful woman to become their wife or concubine. They have wives and concubines as it suits them in the three cities and everywhere else, and with debauchery as their usual state, they indulge in extravagance beyond all compare. Pleasure for women and girls in today’s cities begins and ends with Kabuki; Kabuki actors are the only people who appeal to them, and they think about nothing else. Consequently it is no longer the case today that plays imitate life; rather, plays come first and life imitates plays.
In popular parlance, encountering something really splendid, like a prostitute all decked out in her finery, is said to be comparable to “watching a play.” The way to praise the figure of a man of high rank and status is to say it is like seeing such and such actor. Even the shogun’s awesome authority or the imposing dignity of a magistrate’s office or other offices and government officials are likened to what is seen in dramas; such has become a common mode of speech. The way things are dyed for the stage and stage styles of clothing become popular fashions; Rokō brown, Baikō khaki, the three-stacked-measuring-box pattern, the double-petal peony pattern, and the Yamatoya lattice pattern are all known widely in the world.22 Likewise, actors’ argot becomes common speech. Women and girls relish all this. It is often said that there are no men who hate girls and no women who hate plays, and indeed a woman who has once seen a play becomes so besotted that she would exchange eating three meals a day for seeing it again. When young women go to the theater, they are completely swept away. They forget their parents and husbands, they imitate the actors in their hairstyles and the way they present themselves in face and form, and [the theater] becomes their standard point of reference.
Nothing can be compared to the allure and liveliness of these dance dramas. Embellished by all sorts of amusing things, enlivened by the accompaniment of story chants, samisen, flute, kokyū, hand drum, shakuhachi flute, big drum, and so forth, everything becomes lascivious. Actors use every possible mode of lascivious pleasure to capture women’s hearts and sweep them away. Many plays involve amorous encounters or people going mad with longing in their relations with the other sex; in others men and women break the bonds of loyalty, abandon filial piety, drown in pleasure, and throw away their lives in crimes of sexual passion; or else there is jealousy between wives and concubines, two sisters competing for the love of one man, or a fierce contest over one beautiful woman, and so forth, all artfully designed to melt women’s hearts. Among the actors, father and son, older and younger brothers perform their risqué arts together. In some cases the father becomes the husband and the son his wife or concubine. Sometimes they are divided by playing the roles of enemies, or they perform roles in which parent and child or elder and younger brother strike or even kill each other. From this we can know how different such performances are from the earlier dances in which people chanted the name of Amida and preached Buddhist doctrine!
Women are of shallow understanding and fickle, so they in particular are easily swayed by self-indulgence and cruelty. When women see a play depicting someone falling in love with a man, they imitate it. Even though they should be directing their love to the master or husband on whom they depend, instead they adore the actor before their eyes who plays the male role, and they hate the actor who plays the female role. For that reason actors playing female roles have few fans among women and girls. One way or another, women are easily moved by what they see. Even when they say they believe in Buddha, they do not practice the Buddhist precepts but are simply infatuated with the Buddha. Worse, at some point their adoration of the Buddha is such that they deviate from the essence of Buddhism and wander into side paths. It is said that even Sakyamuni experienced difficulty in leading women to enlightenment. Since women who say they are praying to the Buddha in fact tend to become infatuated with the preacher, how much more likely are they to have their heart snatched when they fall in love with an actor in a theatrical performance.
When her love becomes intense, a woman will summon the actor to a theater teahouse, a restaurant, or some other place and busy herself entertaining him at a banquet. She may bring him along on an excursion, or even summon him for a visit to her residence and give him huge amounts of presents. She might even run away to the actor’s lodging and give herself over to becoming his wife or concubine. Recently this fashion has spread even to women in warrior houses, and, as is suggested by the saying “Women’s quarters fill with chatter about the stage as soon as everyone gets up in the morning,” they are fixated on gossip about the theater. They put their favorite actor’s crest on their clothing, combs, hairpins, and other accessories; they are obsessed about him as though he were their master or husband; and they secretly send him gifts. A wife may know nothing about the name of her husband’s superiors or the pedigree of his house, but she is well versed in the Kabuki actors’ dwelling places, house names, whose children they are, and how old they are.
It is of course true that among men, too, there are decadent sorts who indulge themselves with courtesans and geisha. Men who enjoy taking pleasure with women tend to like plays as well. They take their favorite women along to see the spectacle; share delicious food such as sake, savory tidbits, sweets, and rice cakes with them; squeeze five or six men and women into a small theater box measuring just six shaku square, in intimate proximity; and spend an extravagant amount worth five, ten, or even twenty bales of rice inside that tiny space in just one day. It is said that in former times people who went to see spectacles carried about a hundred to two hundred coppers worth of money, or about two to three shō of rice.23 Today, even if you are so stingy and behave in such an unsightly manner that people point fingers behind your back, you cannot watch the spectacle from a box for anything less than one and a half ryō. This is equivalent to more than three bales of rice. In anything to do with women, [men] do not stint on money or bargain about the price but throw money around, so the circumstances are such that prices simply go up at will.
Seeing sumo is cheap because no women are involved, food and drink are not so extravagant, and expenses are few. Furthermore, tournaments are held only twice a year in spring and fall on ten days of fine weather, and with only a total of twenty days in the course of a year, spectators are few. This too is something that flourished in the past, but business has slackened off over the years. Sumo itself has gradually declined, and there are no wrestlers like those of former times. Plays, in contrast, are performed throughout the year at a number of places, and every day spectators flock to see them. Above all, sumo is a sport in which victory and defeat are immediately apparent, making the sight exhilarating. Plays are decadent and cruel, so that they contaminate those who see them. Right now, no one likes clarity; in one way or another people prefer something sexy.
From this you can tell that people’s dispositions have changed from what they were in the past. This invites Heaven’s displeasure. Already heavenly disasters have occasionally befallen places that flourish by catering to self-indulgence and cruelty. Blocks with theaters and teahouses or with prostitution suffer fires two or three times within each decade. But because they are popular places, they soon return to business as usual and suffer no lasting ill effects. Each time they are burned out, they are immediately rebuilt even better than before. One should be very careful of places that prosper by catering to the evil ways of the times. It does not do to be negligent.
Since the theater holds sway in this way, plays based on those of the three cities are popular in provincial castle towns and cities as well. It is said that theaters are permitted only in the three cities and strictly forbidden everywhere else. These laws have broken down, and nowadays the youth groups in villages and rural towns imitate plays under the name of “festival dramas.” Even youths so poor that their parents have had to seek work in other provinces are lured into participating, and the sons of the wealthy too are swept along and squander an immense amount. The festivals that in former times took place at sites for kagura dances have disappeared, and the classical rural ways of the people of the soil, such as the Bon dance and the harvest dance, are no longer performed. Everything follows the trend of theatrical performances, luxury, and debauchery just like in urban areas.24 Everything the gods hate goes into festivals.
Performances Driven by Lust
Prostitution has become popular in the three cities and also in the provinces, and it captures men’s hearts. Likewise, theatrical performances have become popular in the provinces and outlying areas and capture women’s hearts. With the appearance of these tools to lure men’s and women’s hearts and lead them astray, disorder has arisen. All the songs that at present are sung with samisen originated in these theatrical performances, and they take lust as their essence. They lure men and women into debauchery.
The songs sung with the samisen are all called story chants and they come in many varieties. Let me summarize. There are the following styles: Ozatsuma, Kosatsuma, Geki, Tosa, Hizen, Handayū, Eikan, Kadayū, Katō, Gidayū, Itchū, Sanchū, Kunidayū, Bun’ya, Shinnai, Inoue, Bungo, Ryūtatsu, Dōnen, Kiriyama, Sekkyō, long songs, short songs, and a great many other styles. It is said that the samisen appeared in the Bunroku years when Ishimura Kengyō brought a so-called jabisen back from the Ryukyu Islands.25 During the Kan’ei years, in Osaka a blind performer called Yanagawa Kaganoichi first made today’s samisen, and a man called Yatsuhashi Jōhide manufactured the plectrum. After that, melody and rhythm were added to story chants, so that they could be sung.
The story chants appeared even earlier. As I said before, they started during the Keichō years when Ono no Otsū created a story about Lady Jōruri. It is said that she fashioned it in a mode that resembled chants for disseminating Buddhist teachings. Thereafter, men such as Tanba Shichirōemon and Hashimoto Chikugo produced one variety [of story chants] after the other. Later, men who referred to themselves as such and such tayū established their own traditions, and the number of authors grew to several dozen.26
The story created by Ono no Otsū and the story chants by Tanba, Hashimoto, and others were based strictly on sincerity. They avoided a bloodthirsty atmosphere and promoted piety. But then, in accordance with the world’s conditions, effete elements got mixed in and the stories grew longer. When we get to the style called Gidayū, composed in the Genroku era by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Takeda Omi,27 and others, pieces went on for twelve acts and became so elaborate that performances lasted the entire day. Despite this the authors did not lose sight of sincerity. They included tales about the gods and teachings of the Buddha as well as the evanescence of love; they placed particular emphasis on loyalty and filial piety; and they based their works on teachings that promote good and chastise evil. Even if they touched on love, they brought it in only briefly so as to soften people’s spirits. Conditions declined thereafter, until we arrive at today’s creations. Promoting good and chastising evil has disappeared, and with plots that rashly lead people into debauchery, the stories are filled with licentiousness and lust, especially when we get to the Shinnai and Bungo styles.28
As a consequence, the earlier Gidayū style is seen as too didactic and few people like it, saying it is hard to listen to. Formerly, theatrical performances used nothing but the Gidayū style and put weight on the art of presenting sincerity, whereas today’s audiences dislike dramas with too much emphasis on sincerity, finding them to be boring. Thus the Gidayū style has been pushed aside as more up-to-date elements are mixed in; or else it has been completely transformed so as to suit today’s sentiments. The story chants, samisen pieces, and theatrical performances put on today are all new styles that have appeared in the past two hundred years. During that interval, customs have gradually changed, and performances that once put weight on loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, and righteousness now center on lascivious songs and music and lust. People and their dealings have both become full of these things.
Popular dramas today are such that parents and children cannot sit side by side to watch them. Up to seventy or eighty years ago, plays might show dalliances between men and women, but according to what I hear, the characters would do no more than nestle their cheeks together, and if the man took the woman’s hand, she would just hide her face in her sleeve. Even with that, I have heard that the old people of that age would get angry and call such behavior outrageous. Women too were circumspect and would blush when watching the scene from Treasury of Loyal Retainers when Yuranosuke holds Okaru to lift her down off the ladder.29 Nowadays men and women are shown in outright copulation. Women in the audience take it in their stride without the slightest blush. Things have really fallen into disarray.
This style has become fashionable today, and if things do not resemble theatrical performances in one way or another, they will not find favor with people. Consequently there are many people who get through the world by imitating the deportment of Kabuki actors and mimicking their voices. They lead dissolute lives as the favorites of pleasure-seekers and receive lots of presents, or they deceive a woman who loves the stage. Here and there in the blocks of the city are so-called vaudeville stages where interpreters of military tales, imitators of Kabuki, shadow plays, impersonators, magicians, tellers of comic stories, and so forth incorporate the style of the theater and mimic actors’ voices. Female artists as well as singers of story chants collect an audience and take their coppers. If the destitute or the poor living in the back alleys have a daughter, they hope she will work as a concubine or a kept woman, or as an entertainer or dancer, and they encourage her to learn the entertainment arts seen in theatrical performances.
Consequently actors are worshipped as though they were the main object of veneration at a temple. Parents look to them as teachers of the arts who will enable their daughter to rise in the world, and if the daughter does succeed, this will enable the parents to get through life in comfort. Since they depend on the actors as their source of strength, they believe theatrical performances to be the best thing in the world, and they are truly grateful to the actors. Out of an excess of affection, wealthy townspeople have their daughters learn dance dramas, decorate their daughters’ clothing with the same sort of gold-embossed and other brocade as theater actors, put on plays at home, and sometimes invite actors and lavish food and drink on them. They employ a troupe of musicians for their daughters and take them all along for flower viewing, sightseeing, or to a villa to put on dance dramas for others to watch. The daughter performs in dances that show risqué behavior between men and women, that set aside loyalty, filial piety, and social obligations, and that depict lovers drowning in lust or men and women copulating and throwing their lives away out of sexual desire. When a daughter becomes skilled at performing such dances, her parents, grandparents, and other relatives all gather in delight to watch her and praise her to the skies.
Restraint in sexual desire is absolutely the most important thing in the relations between parents and children and between siblings, and desire should not show on one’s face at all. Restraint is the norm for human beings; sexual desire should be kept secret from the world. For family members to see a girl perform in these dances and to take delight in this and praise her for it is therefore another example of the truly deplorable disposition characteristic of today’s world. This type of behavior has become more and more prevalent among warriors as well, and there are many who have their daughters learn Kabuki dance. They even perform the dances themselves. They have their wives and concubines take up the samisen, hand drum, or big drum to accompany the singing, they make special friends with people of lowly origins, and they lead a dissipated life.
It is said that long ago the daimyo Imagawa Ujizane loved dance, and the young samurai in his household gave their all to have beautiful dance costumes. Poor warriors sold their military equipment to procure the necessary robes. It pained the people of the [Tokugawa] house to hear of this, and they took it as a sign that in the Imagawa house, the military Way was in decline.30 What was known as dance at that time was the Bon dance, performed to the accompaniment of a large drum with no other instruments. Costumes were not fancy, and there was no risqué behavior between men and women. Even so, for a military establishment this was enough to make the Tokugawa give up on them.
Today, daimyo large and small employ scores of young and beautiful girls as dancers, musicians, and the like to put on their own theatrical performances as a debauched diversion. These warriors are clumsy at drawing their large sword, but they are highly skilled and knowledgeable regarding gestures in dance and modes of performance in artistic circles, and they are particularly well versed in the ways to pluck a samisen and sing. The samurai below them let their daughters dance while father, mother, and sisters sing and play music. Such aspirations have filled even the military houses; the townspeople and idlers carry on all the more shamelessly. These practices have spread through the provinces out to the countryside and have fostered extravagance and debauchery.
There is no limit to the sorts of spectacles that imitate the theater, such as puppet theater, acrobatics, mechanical dolls, and peep shows, and they have all come to use splendid costumes. In particular, various spectacles have appeared in recent years that are lavish operations with huge costs, as much as one thousand to two thousand ryō. They take in money by startling the eye and seizing one’s attention. All of these are designed to intoxicate people, and they are tools for destroying the Way of loyalty and filial piety. It is the complete opposite of the artistic forms of the past, which offered encouragement to promote good and chastise evil. Beginning with theatrical performances, entertainment arts and spectacles have gradually increased, and today who knows how many tens of thousands of people make their living in this fashion. They all become the idlers of the realm, not paying taxes and not working at corvée labor. Instead, they indulge in luxury and pride to their heart’s content and waste resources. What is more, they disrupt the customs of high and low, and at their worst they promote lust. Above all, they become a tremendous hindrance to the state in years of famine or upheaval. This is likely to become more prevalent by the day. They must be stopped.
The Mutual Effect of Prostitution and the Theater
Prostitution and theatrical performances have become popular together.31 Both are permitted in the three cities and forbidden elsewhere, but now they are fashionable in the provinces and countryside, and they are steadily spreading. As I have said above, prostitutes captivate men and plays captivate women. Based on luxury, the entertainment arts of singing story chants, playing the samisen, and so forth flourish apace, and they frequently invite lasciviousness. Originally, the Way of men and women was the first step of morality. As the secret Way of husband and wife it was essential for governing the self, the house, and the state, and it was one of the most important things in the world. In our world today, however, relations between men and women have become disordered, and this important Way has become disrupted. This has arisen from the popularity of prostitution and theatrical performances. People have become extraordinarily rash and careless, and as townspeople, idlers, and farmers alike are carried away by luxury and crimes of passion, they disrupt the Way of the state.
In all things customs should imitate those above, but in today’s world, customs prevalent below have moved upward. This is because conditions below are novel, entertaining, and interesting. These base customs have gradually moved up to the warriors. Because of the blessings of the present age of peace, samurai do not need to be prepared to forfeit their lives and can get by with being cowardly. In fact, to be weak-kneed has become the most prudent course of behavior. As a matter of course the samurai hate the martial arts and prefer the entertainment arts of story chants, samisen, and so on. They make friends with the baseborn and take decadent wastrels as their companions. Even those with a considerable stipend have their hearts stolen by entertainment arts and fleeting pastimes. Fed up with their circumstances, they take advantage of the least obstacle they may encounter to voluntarily withdraw from the official duties they dislike. They retire early from worldly affairs to enjoy the entertainment arts, or they aspire to live in unremitting debauchery. The common tendency among people today is to become more and more effete and debauched as they grow older; there are many of this sort.
Generally speaking, everyone who becomes debauched in our world, including warriors, likes the performing arts, and people who like the performing arts are all extremely debauched. Consequently, the performing arts become dominant together with the prevalence of prostitution. In towns and rural markets huge numbers of male and female geisha have appeared along with prostitutes. If he has a daughter, even a man who lives from hand to mouth will have her practice an entertainment art to the extent he can afford. In addition, all who make a business of accompanying pleasure-seekers—teachers of haikai, eccentric kyōka poems, tea ceremony, miniature gardens, and flower arranging as well as interpreters of military tales, magicians, and tellers of comic stories—appear in large numbers. In former days they were people of modest and humble appearance who excelled in elegant and refined accomplishments, but now they are all flashy. Despite being baseborn they flaunt their position; they become the playmates of the superior and wealthy and the great and are even employed as attendants to men of distinguished lineages. They receive too much money, so that luxury in clothing and other things becomes their habitual practice. They win even good people over to debauchery, enliven sightseeing and pleasure trips without resort to their own money, and enjoy life without manners or self-restraint by amusing others.
People today are put off by rōnin who teach martial arts and by Confucian scholars. These are unable to depend on the patronage of the great, and the amount of money they receive is not even one-tenth of what playmates enjoy. Consequently, in today’s world Confucian scholars and doctors have changed in character. Their devotion to the Way of compassion is in form only, and their behavior no longer suits the Way. In their hearts they are just like entertainers or jesters, and they fawn upon the wealthy. In like fashion calligraphers, painters, and woodblock artists have become the partners of the debauched and effete so as to receive their support. They assemble all sorts of entertainers at places of amusement and restaurants for calligraphy and painting meetings, or to celebrate the debut of a disciple. They invite pleasure-seekers, or they summon the wives, sons, and daughters of the wealthy who have become their disciples or pupils to a banquet with delicious food and drink served by beautiful girls and women, and for this they collect money from each guest, calling it a “celebratory gift.”
A man in olden days said, “Rather than become a gentleman, better to be a beautiful woman who receives a lord’s favor; rather than become a great Confucian, better to be an actor who receives the crowd’s sympathy.” That really hits the mark. However, I doubt that the general conditions when that man made this statement were like they are now; they must have been different. The proof is that in the olden days, many men behaved like gentlemen and great Confucians, whereas actors were few, and there were certainly not the many performing arts that exist today. In the past, even the slightest sign of frivolity invited the scorn of the world, so people refrained from such behavior and hoped to always remain upright. The above saying is an admonishment to that effect.
In today’s world, no one likes a gentleman’s conduct, and no one becomes a great Confucian. Everyone who is supposed to adhere to the virtues of a Confucian, a doctor, or a monk has lost all that virtue. Oblivious of the current bad state of affairs, such people instead believe the world to be a pleasant place. All like to be dissolute in one form or another, or they become the playmates of dissolute people, and, enjoying dissolution together, they do nothing but spread dissipation throughout the world. In this fashion, people who should be practicing the Way of sincerity have become faithless and encourage dissipation while receiving alms.
Recently a great many writers of light fiction have appeared,32 and they too lead people’s hearts astray. They twist and bend the true accounts and correct explanations of the past, mix in all sorts of false reports, and change the story to suit the taste of today’s people. Their chief device is to put relations between men and women at the center. They mix in what is popular in the theater districts and pleasure quarters, patch in ghosts and other apparitions, and turn old-time customs and plots that once promoted the principles of loyalty and filial piety into a joke. This is a device that misleads people and promotes debauchery. These books of light fiction have become widely popular, and few people buy the true Confucian classics that have come down from ancient times or other regular books, even if these are available at a discount. Even though the volumes of light fiction are more expensive than the Confucian classics, many people buy them; new printings appear every year, and they circulate throughout the provinces. They are all intended to please women.
And then there are the erotic prints and amusing illustrations that depict men and women copulating, which appear in various editions with new printings every year. These too are elaborately colored with gold and silver leaf. Sometimes they are displayed at the front of townspeople’s shops. They even become playthings enjoyed together by parents, children, and siblings with no sign of distaste. When women collect these pictures, they say they are magical devices that make clothes multiply; they place them between their clothes in trunks and sets of drawers and hand them down from mother to daughter. The popularity of such prints promotes lasciviousness throughout this world. Occasionally the government issues directives banning them, but this does not put a stop to them; instead, they spread further. Of course, the authorities do nothing about theatrical performances that depict actual copulation when portraying risqué relations between men and women, and even though the number of prostitutes has grown ever larger, the authorities show no concern. Compared with these, pictures and the like are trifles. The main evil in all of this is ignored by the authorities, so one can hardly expect them to take action against this lesser evil.
Restaurants and the Entertainment Business
Today’s fashions and customs have led to debauched people and entertainers growing ever more numerous and sinking ever deeper into debauchery. As a consequence, places of entertainment and restaurants have appeared everywhere, and they all flourish. Because the government previously did not allow extravagance at restaurants, these establishments outwardly call themselves by plain names such as tavern or sake shop, whereas inside one may find an extraordinary appearance, totally out of line with such appellations.33 The construction, furnishings, carvings, sliding doors with decorative paper designs, tea pavilions, bathhouses, large stone lanterns, planted trees, and other curious objects are all of the most lavish style, no different from the residence of someone of high rank and status. Sometimes a concubine’s dwelling, called a villa or retirement house, is set up in an attractive setting to which customers are invited. There high-quality objects are used, and the rare and delicious dishes served are all superior to a banquet put on by persons of high rank.
Now the prosperity of these restaurants is such that should ten or twenty friends go to one of them in a group without advance warning and want expensive dishes costing five to ten ryō, they have no problem at all preparing them at once. Ten ryō today is the price of over thirty bales of rice. The restaurants lay in stock every day and make preparations sufficient to deal with large groups of customers without the least hitch, no matter how many may come. Places like this can be found throughout Edo. Restaurants also run catering services that will provide servings to order anywhere, for no matter how many hundreds of people, as soon as someone comes with the order. From this one can gauge the prosperity of these businesses, and the great number of people who live in luxury. When they have created such a splendid establishment preparing food day after day, restaurants then employ attractive women. They keep any number of beautiful girls, whom they call “adopted daughters,” and have them serve at banquets, making them into playthings freely available for selfish desire. No one among the general populace seems to find this distasteful!
The wealthy and debauched in city and countryside go about accompanied by favored jesters and summon entertainers and dancers, creating an appearance almost as if they were today’s daimyo. They pile on beautiful clothes, lavishly decorate their short sword with gold and silver, carry a gorgeous pocketbook, and hang accoutrements decorated with gold, silver, or coral from their belt. They eat tasty dishes from land and sea, feast on beauty, and indulge in the lascivious tones of story chants and samisen. They also sing and dance along, abandoning themselves to a state of rapture. The way they indulge in secret meetings and play and flirt with women who suit their fancy is far beyond what someone of high status can do.
The warriors too envy them, and there have been men with a status of just five hundred to a thousand koku who imitate the wealthy townsmen, live beyond their means for a moment, and bequeath debt to their children and grandchildren. When men with small stipends go to these entertainment places, they can lose their year’s allocation on just one outing, and so the consequences affect the entire family. The sons of the poor become so envious they cannot stand it, and for a moment’s glory they ruin their parents and themselves. And then there are the troublemakers who are determined to create the memory of a lifetime by enjoying such luxury even for a day, no matter if they are punished for it tomorrow, and who go on to indulge in ever more evil deeds and disruptive, extravagant behavior. The entertainment business prepares the way for the debauched and the criminal, day by day and night by night.
People who go to such places are of course the wealthy, but even people whose pocketbooks are light put on a big show and pretend they have more than enough money. People who are usually stingy and pay not the slightest attention even to their relatives’ hardships throw their money away as soon as they become caught up in the current, and they never ask if the price is high or low but pay as much as it takes. For this reason profits in the entertainment business are enormous. By not selling on credit, this business never suffers losses, and it succeeds by pleasing people.
In addition, customers distribute money called “gifts” to members of the household and tips to geisha and dancers. Generally speaking, one customer will throw around 100, 200, or 300 hiki [of gold] without even thinking about it. Geisha and dancers receive the equivalent of 3 to 5 bales of rice for one appearance at a party on one day. For one bale of rice, a samurai performs services that may cost him his life, and a farmer too must shed much sweat. The wheel of fortune stops at surprising places in our world. Martial arts specialists and Confucian scholars strive to their utmost capacity and sweat to provide instruction and to elucidate their teachings, but in one year they receive at most a stipend of 200 hiki. The work performed by a geisha or a dancer in one day is held to be of the same value as that done by a martial arts expert or a Confucian scholar in a year. Worse, instructors in koto, samisen, and other performing arts get extraordinarily large amounts of money from their pupils, while martial arts experts and Confucian scholars do not receive even one-tenth of that. Goods that the farmer cannot obtain through an entire year’s hard labor even when his parents, his children, and all his relatives work together can be acquired by an entertainer while eating delicious food sitting at ease on a tatami mat, wearing the clothes of a man of leisure.
Because restaurants and entertainers succeed by pleasing the world at large and enjoy good fortune, they suffer no constraints on their livelihood or other worries. From dawn to dusk they entertain cheerfully both the highborn and the base. Showing no deference to those of high status, they consider samurai customers with light pocketbooks to be a particular nuisance and treat them roughly, while they respect even a baseborn man as an important guest if he has lots of money. Far removed from a normal disposition and free from any sense of duty, they get through the world by cajoling and softening people up. To be sure, just as customers are divided into three grades of top, middle, and low, restaurants too are of high, middle, or low quality. They have appeared everywhere in the city blocks, and even low-quality restaurants flourish thanks to today’s taste for luxury in food. Large numbers of eel shops, dessert shops, sweets shops, taverns, and others have appeared, and countless food businesses prosper at every corner. Delicious tastes from land and sea are collected at such decadent and outrageous places, and more than enough idlers eat as much as they please. This should be seen as a most untoward development.
There are also places called pleasure-boat inns on the riverbanks; these operate large, small, or two-person roofed pleasure boats that transport extravagant people to enjoy entertainment spots on the cool of the river. They employ numbers of boat captains. These captains are not the ones who do the work of rowing the boat; rather, they wear the clothes of a man of leisure and keep the guests company. When they reach the place of entertainment, the captain bargains for everything just like a jester and receives payment in return. Sometimes, the master of the pleasure-boat inn builds a two-story building just like a restaurant, a structure that does not conform to what the lodging for a boat master should look like, with an alcove and elaborate shelves hung with hanging scrolls painted by Chinese-style poets and artists popular in today’s world. Some make a sunken fireplace in the floor, put in a stand for boiling water, and serve tea in the “thin” tea ceremony style.34 When courtesans and entertainers come along to accompany customers to their destination or welcome them back, the boathouse master provides a banquet; for a fee, he will even arrange rooms for secret assignations.
Just as nowadays many people have come to ride in palanquins, so too has it become quite ordinary for baseborn people and even lowly employees such as clerks from merchant houses to ride in boats. They too bring courtesans and entertainers along with them and hold banquets or enjoy other amusements on the boats. Tea stands have also appeared throughout the city, and they have taken on a splendid appearance. Customers who sit down just to enjoy a cup of tea are deemed the lowest-class customers, so tea stands prefer to employ girls and beautiful women as waitresses and to provide space for banquets. In this fashion, the restaurants, boathouses, and tea stands have come to resemble brothels. Some of them engage in secret prostitution, and places where men and women can meet are nothing out of the ordinary.
Kept Women and Concubines
As I have said above, kept women have become widely popular in recent years, and they have appeared in great numbers throughout the city’s blocks and back alleys. From wealthy townsmen to farmers, priests, and other idlers, and even down to clerks and samurai servants, somehow they all keep a woman. A lot of warriors do so as well, but because samurai have limited assets, they cannot keep a woman for long. For the most part, this is something done by townsmen, idlers, and priests. I know an extremely wealthy townsman who has nine kept women. All of them are of a beauty rarely seen in this world. I have heard that there are many men who keep two or three.
Consequently, the lowest-ranking townsmen train their daughters in the performing arts if they have any, and if they do not have a daughter, they adopt one, hoping to make her into an attractive young woman. Even a poverty-stricken man will have his daughter take lessons in singing story chants, samisen, Kabuki-style dance, hand drum, large drum, or kokyū. Unable to wait all the years it takes for her to grow up, he rushes to make her an entertainer or else a kept woman while she is still immature. The daughter, too, has long been prepared for this and prays that she will catch someone’s favor and live in ease and comfort. She chooses a good man to whom to entrust herself, and calls it taking a master. What she means by a “good man” is not someone of high status or good looks. It makes no difference to her whether he is baseborn, ugly, or old, and she does not look into the man’s background to see if he is a monk, temple priest, pariah, or outcast; she reveres any man with lots of money as a good man. In some cases, kept women get pregnant and collect huge sums for the birth, but at other times, if they receive only a small allocation, they will act like inhuman monsters and abort the fetus.
In former times people even regarded it as shameful to send a daughter as a concubine to a daimyo or other warrior house. People criticized them, and their relatives thought it to be abhorrent, sometimes to the extent of cutting off relations with them. Even today, these old ways remain in a few warrior houses, and when it becomes known that the daughter of a retainer has gone to work as a concubine, the family will be dispossessed of retainer status or receive some other form of censure. In most cases, however, no action of this sort is taken. Consequently the daughters of retainers may put on a front of going out on regular service, but secretly they are going as a concubine. When worse comes to worst, retainers rely on a friendly townsman and send their daughters out to become unauthorized prostitutes, entertainers, or a townsman’s kept woman.
Previously, everyone down to the lowest of the baseborn despised living on love, but now it has become a usual thing. Now that it has gotten to the point that even samurai secretly get by thanks to a daughter, and thanks to the townspeople—how much more is it so for the hordes of baseborn. All regard it as a great accomplishment to get such work. Daughters too consider it something of which to boast, outsiders are envious, and parents brag about their attractive daughters, proud of the good impression it makes on others. It even happens that people willingly lend clothing and money to parents with such a daughter. For that reason everyone hates boys and likes girls, and a daughter with a pleasing face becomes the treasure of the entire family, relatives and all.
Emperor Xuanzong of Tang China was so lascivious that he had three thousand palace women, but he had a particularly deep affection for Yang Guifei. Because all the men in Yang’s family, including her older brother, rose to high office, the people envied them, and it is said that the mothers and fathers in the realm hated boys and preferred girls. This was because they thought that girls could win them the favor of the king of the land.35 People mock such ambitions; rather, people today envy parents with girls because they would like to have a daughter whom they can turn into a diversion for baseborn townsmen, farmers, and men of even lower standing. In today’s world, concubines of daimyo large and small do not get a good allowance. Therefore, such concubines often reckon that it would be better for their parents’ sake if they became an entertainer or a kept woman. Even when they are so lucky as to be favored by the lord himself, they take their leave without good reason and choose to enter into that kind of business. From this one can tell how much this world has declined, and how debased people’s dispositions have become. For a girl to become someone’s plaything, right before her mother’s and father’s eyes—is this not behavior far removed from proper human relations?
Among kept women there are gradations, from superior to inferior. There are pretty girls, beautiful women, and mature women. There are also couples who collude to hide the husband so the woman can appear to be a widow and draw in a man, and women who have two or three men. Indeed, payment is based on the woman’s grade. Even though monthly allotments and the like vary depending on the individual, all these women get sufficient income to live a life of pleasure day and night. Right now, nothing can compare to such comfort. For the baseborn nothing could be better than this.
Let me describe the circumstances for a superior kept woman. First, she is installed in a splendid dwelling with male and female servants. In the morning she gets up as late as she pleases and takes a bath, scrubbing herself from her face to her toenails. A hairdresser comes to fix her hair, and she makes herself up with red and white powder. She always eats delicious food three times a day, as well as snacking on various dishes in between. Waiting for her master constitutes her entire day’s work; she has no other. When the man comes, they sit face-to-face while she plays the samisen and sings songs. She satiates herself on banquets and amusements. Her mother, father, and sisters are at her side, preparing sake and food, changing her clothes, and assisting in the bedchamber. Whenever she goes to plays or spectacles, makes a pilgrimage, goes sightseeing, or takes a boat to enjoy the river’s coolness, her hair ornaments and clothing are gorgeous. Sometimes she will bring along a performer who has struck her fancy, at other times she has her mother come along as though her mother were her attendant, and she makes her way through the world by trading in the risqué games played by men and women.
Through her own capacity the daughter takes care of mother, father, and siblings, and because she has unlimited access to delicious food and clothing for them, as a matter of course she becomes proud and willful. Because her parents no longer have to live through endless hardships but enjoy a life of comfort thanks to their daughter’s fortune, over time they come to see her as their master, and in the end the distinction between parent and child disappears. The loss of proper circumspection for each other is worse than in the case of prostitutes, for a prostitute does not ply her trade with her parents next to her. By contrast, these parents do not just look on from the side as the kept woman, their daughter, goes mad for a man, and tightly wraps herself around him as a vine twines itself around a tree so as to melt his heart and wheedle him into giving her clothing, hair accessories, and money. No, they even assist in the bedroom by placing the pillows next to each other. When the man comes or goes, they deferentially arrange his sandals for him, and they do everything to humor him. Since long ago, prostitutes have been said to be animals. Today, some engage in an enterprise even more despicable than that of those beasts called prostitutes.
In today’s world, both men and women have acquired the disposition of such beasts. They are not ashamed of their greed and lust. Even old men with white hair keep women and toy with girls the same age as their grandchildren, while women care nothing for character or age but fawn only on men with money. Both in Edo and in other areas where numerous people live in close proximity to one another and struggle to earn a livelihood, there are inequalities between poverty and wealth. Some people pursue greed and become rich, indulge in luxury and lust to their heart’s content, and commit inhuman acts. Others who are poor but who have a single daughter not only can live comfortably, by depending on their daughter they can obtain plenty of hair accessories, clothing, and the like; therefore everyone follows their suit and ends up committing acts beyond the boundaries of proper human behavior. This arises from being unable to bear poverty and withstand the temptations of wealth; what is to be resented is this trend of the times.
Speaking of ornaments for the hair, there are combs, long hairpins, and double-pronged hairpins made from tortoiseshell that cost from 30 to 50 ryō to as much as 100 or 200 ryō, and a woman has to have any number of these so that she can alternate them. Even the wife of a daimyo is no equal to one of these kept women. As a result, in today’s world tortoiseshell, coral, and like goods have become expensive—tortoiseshell to the extent that an item weighing 1 monme costs 60 monme in silver.36 An item of good quality can cost as much as 100 monme in silver. Gold weighing 1 monme can be exchanged for 22 to 23 monme in silver. Thus the price of tortoiseshell is three to five times the price of gold, the greatest treasure in the world. And if we compare this to the price of rice, one hairpin costs as much as 50 to 100 bales. It has come to the point that the baseborn possess lots of these splendid objects. It is said that in the Kyōhō years, Lord Ōoka Tadasuke sentenced the daughter of an extremely wealthy merchant called Shirakoya something-or-other in Abura-chō to prison for wearing an extravagant tortoiseshell hairpin worth 20 gold ryō.37 Thereafter, a law was issued that limited the price of combs and long hairpins to no more than 100 silver monme. Now this law has disintegrated, and people use objects costing double that. Clothing and other things have followed suit, and people collect items of the highest quality. The best objects are hoarded.
The usual yearly wage for a servant woman is between 2 and 3 ryō a year. Thus even if she works for a lifetime and saves several decades’ worth of wages, it would be difficult for her to get even one such expensive object. To be sure, today’s servant women are adorned with luxurious items. When the wife of a small-scale warrior goes out, the servant women who accompany her have exactly the same appearance [as she has]. The tortoiseshell pins on their heads, the silk crepe of their clothing, the sandals with thongs in velvet or felted wool are all the same, to the extent that mistress and servant are indistinguishable. Since none of this can be accomplished on a servant’s measly wage, it has to be supplemented by her parents. In former times, girls sent their parents part of their wages to help them get through life, but now the parents send their daughter a portion of what they can scrabble together through toil and hardship so that she can outfit herself properly.38 When a woman works as an ordinary maid in this fashion, her parents undergo hardships and the daughter does so too, but to no avail. Even though wages for servant women have doubled from what they used to be, they still do not suffice, and few women work as servants. Only girls whose parents are extraordinarily honest, rigid, and old-fashioned, or who are so ungainly that they are useless for love do this kind of work. If a girl’s nose is even a little bit shapely, her parents polish her up and send her out to be a performer or a kept woman, or to work in a restaurant or tea stand.
If she should meet with this good fortune, she does not have to work at weaving, sewing, or cooking, and she can ride in a palanquin or on a boat to see spectacles or go sightseeing. In recent years many hairdressers for women have appeared, and she can have them do her hair; she can lie at ease and have a massage, and it is truly as though she were living in a dream. Furthermore, many men want to marry women who have experience in this kind of love work. Since these women can marry easily, many get their husbands to put out money to support their parents, to provide their trousseau, or even to supply a lifelong allowance for their parents. In any case, such women get along the best from beginning to end. For baseborn people to sell their love so as to live at ease, or for them to get caught up in the greed that is part of the practice of love, is an evil custom that was rare until recently. Such customs have arisen because all things have come to be based on prostitution and the theater.
Up to the Kanbun era prostitution could be found only in the Yoshiwara, but now it has appeared in a number of places and engages hundreds of people. Entertainers in the city blocks did not number much over one hundred up to the An’ei era, but now there are several thousand. In recent years, kept women have appeared in countless numbers. These kept women have become popular in the past fourteen or fifteen years. To be sure, a few did exist before then, but both parties cared about what others thought and concealed their relationship. I hear that keeping women began in Kyoto and Osaka in the Tenmei era. Up to fourteen or fifteen years ago people in Edo said contemptuously that there are such frivolous customs in Kyoto and Osaka. The custom that they then criticized has now appeared in Edo and probably involves tens of thousands of people. Moreover, such people are not ashamed of what others think nor do they conceal their relationship. Quite the contrary, they see it as a great deed and make it out to be the height of fortune.
This should show you how in just fourteen or fifteen years customs have changed for the worse, and the world has gone downhill. These evil customs will surely spread gradually throughout the provinces and even to rural market towns. The expansion of luxury in dress and hair ornamentation that goes along with them is also a recent phenomenon. Extravagance in all things is enormous compared with fifty years ago, and it is enough to startle an old man. No wonder! The amount of goods from the provinces that in today’s world has been spent on and by these prostitutes, performers, and kept women is beyond calculation. Is this not an outrageous waste?
Lust as a Threat to the State
The Way of men and women is crucial to humanity, and it should be based on careful discretion and simplicity. It ought not in the least be predicated on luxury. For it to get caught up in greed is an abominable development. In the end, this is the foundation for disorder. It is said that orderly rule begins with succoring people with no one to depend on, and that disorder arises from the ruler’s bedchamber. These are golden words, because for a ruler, the path to disorder starts with lust, the pursuit of luxury, and abrogation of the law. In today’s world, it is the baseborn, even more than the rulers of high rank, who have been led astray by lust and luxury and undermine the laws of state. Indulgence in luxury and lust by the baseborn gradually infects the rulers and corrupts customs. However, there is one way to stop baseborn people from engaging in such disruptive behavior as they please. Rulers should incline their ears and listen carefully.
Originally, the custom of our country was to uphold the Way of lord and retainer, and particularly in the Tenshō and Keichō eras, when that Way was correct, rewards and punishments were strictly regulated. When the lord rewarded a retainer, he did so in accordance with propriety, and the retainer served his lord with respect, committing his total person. After the Divine Lord unified the realm, retainers put great weight on loyalty, bravery, and fidelity; when the ruler was not right, or was arbitrary, cruel, or shameful, his retainers invariably risked their lives to restrain him. As a consequence, although the daimyo and major bannermen might indulge in the splendor of that age of peaceful rule, their house’s chief retainers remained immovably trustworthy, and because they sat at the lord’s side, no lord was able to act extravagantly or sink into lust. At occasions when this could not be prevented, a retainer would risk his life to protect his house, pray that lord and followers would both live in security, and pursue eternal loyalty to the utmost. Such adherence to the Way of retainers was unknown both in the age of court rule and even in the earlier days in the age of military houses. It arose for the first time in the age of the present Tokugawa house. Without house elders having to say anything, retainers understood how they should behave. Even in the present age some of these standards remain, and men who are rulers cannot act arbitrarily.
Recently that behavior too has broken down. For both lords and followers fidelity has become bent and weak, and few retainers admonish a ruler’s immorality. They get used to the good times, and in the end nothing stops immorality or misconduct. Even when there is a rare admonishment, the domain elders simply refer to the old standards and say they must be upheld. Generally speaking, the elders are not so fervent in their loyalty, and they have no ability. Even if they admonish the lord out of pride in the power of their position, the lord keeps them at a distance and hears little of what they say to him, or he does not adopt their advice because it does not fit the situation at the time. In their hearts both lord and retainers are swept along by the customs of the baseborn, and their disposition is to like luxury and lust. As a result, they have become estranged from each other. However, because the old standards continue to have a faint breath of life, both are forced to maintain the appearance of discretion. They cannot sink as deep into disorder as do the baseborn, nor cause as great a disorder. This shows just how valuable are the standards handed down from the past. The baseborn have nothing to restrain them. They all indulge in luxury and lust as they please and create the conditions for disorder. Just as in the saying that disorder arises from the ruler’s bedroom, all troubles arise from women.
Generally speaking, a woman’s nature is to be chaste, her natural disposition is to follow her husband, and whether she is good or bad depends on the man she is with. She can become either frugal or extravagant, either undemanding or greedy. She can be someone who manages her household well, or become the basis for its destruction. When she meets with injustice and ends up a prostitute confined like a bird in a cage, or is used like a cow or a horse, she endures such treatment. When she meets with favor, she becomes extremely haughty and selfish. Then she becomes more and more extravagant and lustful, to the point that she sways not only her house but even the state. Because nowadays so many wealthy and debauched men indulge their favorites as much as they can, no woman preserves her chastity. They all pursue luxury and lust and become arrogant in disposition. Not only are they extravagant and lascivious, they have become so greedy and avaricious that almost all of them have become a threat to the state. The wives and concubines of brothel keepers as well as the wives and concubines of troublemakers are not simply greedy, they also engage in acts as evil as those of muggers and murderers. It is bad enough when extravagance gets mixed up in the relations between men and women. For it to go to this extreme of evil threats to the state is absolutely outrageous. This is the foundation for disorder in the state.
The Way of men and women should be rooted in frugality and sincerity, and aside from the trust between parents, children, and siblings, it is first in the Way of human feeling. Among parents, children, and siblings, it should be treated with all the more discretion, and not expressed even in a single word. Even infants are naturally equipped with enough sense to be discrete about it, and they blush when they catch the slightest glimpse of it. All will come to naught if one strays from discretion in the Way of men and women, even if one devotes oneself to loyalty, trustworthiness, filial piety, and obedience, secretly stands in awe of Heaven’s response or fears retribution by gods and buddhas, and is diligent and discreet in all matters. With just this one flaw, one loses human virtue. The most important thing in the world is to uphold this Way.
In today’s world, however, there is no sense of discretion. Luxury and lust grow worse, avarice overflows, and the Way of men and women has become a matter of buying and selling, and sometimes even stealing. Sometimes husband and wife conspire together, and sometimes parents and daughter agree among the three of them to sell sex appeal for the sake of greed. When it gets to this point, human feelings are abandoned and it becomes a world of human faces and beasts’ hearts. This is the first time since the world’s creation that such evil customs have arisen. Today villains are destroying the people, they are destroying the law, and they steadily lead the state toward destruction. These customs are gradually spreading through the provinces and the countryside, where they likewise will become a source of disorder.
Illicit sex arises from prostitution and the theater. With disorder in sexual desire between men and women …39 The Way of men and women is in accordance with the harmony between Heaven and Earth; it is pivotal for governing the state, the house, and the individual; and the married couple is the foundation for proper human relations. It is not at all a private matter. Consequently the Way of proper human relations and the proper practice of the realm is to use a go-between to arrange a contract, and then perform the engagement and marriage ceremony in accordance with etiquette. But now these procedures are not followed. The daughters of the baseborn have absolutely no sense of discretion, and it is not unusual for them to engage in illicit relations. They have no scruples with regard to their parents, and they pay no heed to what others may see or hear. Some of them sneak out and run away from their parents, or they refuse the marriage connection urged by their parents. There are many couples who live together without benefit of a go-between, and it has become normal to take a husband [of one’s own choice] and break ties with one’s parents. It has also become a regular practice for wives and concubines to commit adultery. Both partners betray and rob each other.
Swept away by passion, men are tricked, women are tricked, or couples collude together to extort money. Not only do they commit adultery but also a man may force another man to give up his wife or abduct her, just to show what a man he is. A woman sometimes takes her husband’s property, sends it to her paramour, and runs off with him, ruining her husband. Even when the husband and wife get along well together and have a child, the wife may sometimes be tricked into having a relationship with another man, who then takes her off, leaving her husband no choice but to divorce her. The daughter that parents look to depend on is snatched away from them, and the husband loses the wife who ought to protect his house. Children lose their parents, and they too are led astray.
At present the baseborn commit many such immoral and evil acts. What is more, outrageous people emerge victorious, while upright people are not only shamed but suffer losses. People who understand even just a little about duty and dishonor end up suffering all alone. In the provinces and the countryside, illicit sex is prevalent wherever lots of people throng together, and also at places frequented by outsiders. Today, the relations between parents, children, and siblings are put aside, regardless of how important it is for husband and wife to be faithful, and evil customs that lead wives and concubines astray have become rampant. In a situation in which husbands and wives mutually harbor doubts and cannot depend on each other, there is truly nothing to restrain the inclinations of baseborn people. Even upright people inevitably become unfaithful, and evil people grow steadily more numerous. Among people who are baseborn, the wife manages all the property. As the saying has it, she is “the cornerstone of the household.” To spoil the heart of a wife who is so important in protecting the household is just like extracting the linchpin from a cart; such behavior is more atrocious than that of a robber who breaks a lock. For that reason, in former days the punishment for illicit sex was extremely severe.
Since this sort of illicit sex is a villainous crime that leads the state into lawlessness, it would not do for it not to be severely punished. It is most appropriate that in former days, wise and good generals set up strict laws against this. Today there are types who sell their wives and concubines into prostitution, or push them to have illicit relations with another man. For a husband to disrupt the Way of wives and concubines by handing his wife over to someone else is abominable. Adultery is such a serious crime that wives or concubines who commit it are sentenced to death. Even the baseborn are allowed to slay a man who has cuckolded them, and the wife as well. Since the punishment for adultery is as severe as execution, and since it is even allowed for a wronged husband to kill the adulterous pair himself, surely the government should punish a man who contravenes the great Way of the proper relations between men and women by putting his wife into prostitution for his own benefit, or who makes her engage in adulterous relations.
Although illicit sex occasionally occurred in the past, no laws prohibited a man’s putting his wife into prostitution or making her engage in adulterous relations because such evil practices did not exist. As a consequence, however, the evil business of turning a wife or concubine into an object for sale has become more and more popular, and yet this sort of illicit sex is never punished today. Have things become so disorderly because there is no punishment, or is there no punishment because cases of illicit sex are so numerous? It is not possible to know which came first, but in any case the one reinforces the other, and disorder steadily spreads.
Occasionally a husband may bring a case to court, but when he does, both he and the adulterer are simply mocked, and no decision is taken that distinguishes between black and white. For that reason, a husband rarely brings a case to court even if it involves loss of property. Someone once said, “The secret of good government is not to punish those who fish in the shogun’s preserve or to make a judgment that brings adultery to light.” Probably the former secret is based on the fact that the Divine Lord did not want to trouble people for the sake of mere fish and birds. This is clearly seen in the case in which Suzuki Kyūsaburō stole and ate a carp that the Divine Lord had placed in the pond at Hamamatsu Castle for his enjoyment.40 The origin of the latter secret, of not judging adultery, is not yet known. People say that it shows the height of the ruler’s benevolence because there is no point in punishing each and every such incident. But such is not the case. Such things simply never happened at the beginning of Tokugawa rule. Whenever such things did occur against all odds, surely they were severely punished.
The punishment by daimyo was of the same order. Noteworthy is that the lord of Bizen, Ikeda Mitsumasa, executed men and women just for illicit contact.41 To be sure this did not happen often. Once the age of shogunal peace and order was established, [severe punishment] fell more and more out of favor, so that by the Kyōhō era [cases of illicit sex] happened frequently. For this reason Lord Ōoka Tadasuke is said to have devised an arrangement whereby a man who had committed adultery with another’s wife would have to pay a fine of 1 gold piece. One large gold coin was worth 7 ryō 2 bu. One such gold coin then would be worth over 30 ryō today. It is said, however, that when such fines were introduced [in place of more severe punishments], adultery increased all the more, and shortly thereafter, this arrangement ceased. I am told that after that the government took a still more lenient approach.
In my humble opinion, the reason for this more lenient approach was not that there were so many cases that there was no point in trying to punish them. The conjugal couple is the foundation for proper human relations and the pivot for governing the state, the house, and the individual. When couples fall into disorder, it is echoed by disorder in this world, and keeping order in this relationship preserves peace and order. Since this relationship is so important that it bears on whether there is order or disorder, perhaps the government wanted to avoid the easy breaking of conjugal ties even if people brought a suit seeking such. To be sure, it may not be such a major matter so far as the baseborn are concerned, but for the state, it is of great importance as something that determines whether there is order or disorder. Perhaps the shogun who governed the state understood this so well that he gave secret instructions not to take up cases of adultery, so as to avoid having rulers sanction the easy breaking of conjugal ties. Was not the compilation of imperial poetry collections stopped for the same reason?42 It is said that when compilations were made, the world was disordered. Is this because poetry loosens the relationship between men and women and in the end disrupts the Way? In any case, the government placed the highest importance on the Way of men and women.
However, today’s world does not take it all that seriously. Given that there are many cases of illicit sex and that they are treated according to the weak-kneed notion that there is no point in bothering to clarify them, the actual husband and the adulterer are simply turned into figures of ridicule. In the end, the husband ends up a fool completely covered in shame, while the adulterer is seen as a clever rascal, has no sense of having committed any fault, and even takes pride in what he has done. This is because of bad administration on the part of magistrates, officials, and also domain and fief holders. What I want to see is for them to take such matters seriously and not to think of them as idle dalliances or something trivial. They should be concerned about them as a matter of importance to the state and consider that even for a lowly person, it is a serious business that bears on a household’s welfare. Even if they cannot reach a clear judgment, they should make sure that the husband is vindicated and that his heart is set at ease. The adulterer, on the other hand, should be imprisoned and well chastised and thereby shown to be an evil man, so that he will be unable to mingle with other people.
Women usually entrust themselves to men, and even if a woman tries to sneak past the barriers [erected to control travel], only the man who guides her is punished, whereas the woman is not. For other evil deeds as well, whenever a man is involved, the punishment falls entirely on him and the woman escapes. Even when a husband and wife jointly commit evil deeds such as theft, the husband alone is punished and the wife is not. All this happens because it is a woman’s Way to follow her husband, whether for good or bad. Since a woman is forgiven even such grave crimes because it is her Way to follow her husband, the husband should not be forgiven in the least when he violates the Way. What a woman must guard is just this one thing: chastity. One who causes her to violate chastity is the greatest criminal in the entire realm. Even if he is not punished for that crime itself, some severe punishment should be inflicted on him.
As we have seen above, prostitutes, courtesans, kept women, and illicit sex have proliferated, and the Way of women has become greatly disordered …43 In some cases, it has become the usual custom for women to make light of and deceive their parents, or else neglect their husbands and act selfishly and willfully. If we look at today’s lowly people who live in rented rooms on back alleys or who perform day labor, we see that while the parents barely get through life, the daughters adorn their hair and make up their faces, wear good clothes, practice the performing arts, or chase after men.
While husbands get up before dawn and go out to pursue their household occupation as a peddler or the like, wearing straw sandals and shouldering their goods, wives delight in their husbands’ absence. They get together with the other wives in the neighborhood or on the same row to talk about how useless their husbands are and discuss fleeting pastimes. Or they may gamble at different sorts of card games, or invite young men to go drinking with them or accompany them to the theater or spectacles, or go sightseeing or on a pilgrimage. They go to Zōshigaya, Horinouchi, Meguro, Kameido, Ōji, Fukagawa, the Sumida River, Umewaka[-zuka], and other places, and because lots of restaurants and tea stands have recently appeared along the approaches to these sites, they stop there, sometimes even going up to the second floor and wasting money while taking their ease.44 When evening falls and the husbands return home, these wives pay no attention to the labors their men have performed all day but instead send them off to draw the water and cook the food. Thinking it a great deed to use their husbands by deceiving and cajoling them, wives act like masters, and husbands become like servants. In the unexpected eventuality that a wife does not take a lover, she keeps reminding her husband of his indebtedness to her for her chastity and lords it over him. This too can only be seen as willfulness and selfishness. Beginning with the consorts of daimyo great and small, women have reached the epitome of willfulness and selfishness, while among the baseborn, the lower one gets, the more disordered is the Way of husband and wife and the Way of women.
These customs have also extended their sway to the provinces and countryside, where men treat their parents roughly and their wives carefully; they distance themselves from their own relatives and treat their wives’ relatives cordially. In this way the world loses trustworthiness and righteousness and lust grows rampant. I have heard that in ancient times, during the age of court rule, lust flourished and people’s behavior became so disordered that in the end the court lost the state. The simple and sturdy customs carefully constructed at the beginning of Tokugawa rule have crumbled one after the other over the years, and now, at this point, is not reform essential?
This sort of luxury and lust have now become ordinary customs, and in the eyes of today’s people they probably do not appear all that outrageous, but if we were able to show them to people of former times, they would be enraged. Such customs should not be ignored even for a moment. The Divine Lord could never have imagined that this would happen. What a shame it is! The Divine Lord brought peace and order after centuries of war and established a firm basis for the realm in simplicity and frugality. Simplicity, frugality, and virtuous customs are fundamental for a well-governed and peaceful realm. On the individual level, they are the basis for good health and a long and fortunate life. It is said that the glory of the nine generations of Hōjō regents owed to the simplicity and frugality practiced first by Tokimasa and Yoshitoki and then by Yasutoki, Tokiyori, and the others.45 Today’s people are distracted by desire for what is in front of their eyes, they destroy their bodies, shorten their lives, and bring disorder to the realm and the state. If reforms are put off, will not heavenly disasters befall us and tumult occur on earth?
