great works ii – 2850 jta 12:25-2:05: love letters from the world

Michelle:

“I was very young when I learned about love. I was still a flower in bud, you could say. And after that I had so many experiences that the pure water of my mind turned completely the color of sensuous love, like the water in the Uji River….. I just followed my desires wherever they went- and I ruined myself.” The sensuous woman of the story, by Saikaku, explains that she learned “how to love” at a very young age.

In the tale of the “Mistress of a Domain Lord”, the daimyo Lord was spending the year in Edo near the castle of the shogun. Throughout that same year, his wife died leaving the Lord worried about the continuous rule of his clan over the domain. With this, the old retainer went on a search to look for the most beautiful woman for the Lord to bear a baby boy for him. Out of all the women in Kyoto and Edo, the ‘sensuous woman’ was the chosen one. Through her relationship with the Lord, she became an official domain mistress explaining her lavish living with him saying “Everything was so luxurious, well, in the day I couldn’t believe my eyes….” Although she was enjoying her time as an official domain mistress, her relationship with the Lord soon came to an end. “I’ve always been an only lucky woman, but with the Lord I was fortunate. He was tender to me and we enjoyed our lovemaking but things didn’t work out…. The Lord kept losing weight and finally he became so weak and haggard he was just awful to look at.” Within the tale, the sensuous was blamed for why the Lord became physically weak wearing titling her as the woman who liked fancy sex. In this relationship, the sensuous was more ‘sexually empowered’ compared to the daimyo Lord led to his ‘sickness’.

Rebecca:

As Michelle mentioned, the narrator had been previously used to short relationships with men in which she was more in control. However, in “A Monk’s wife in a Worldly Temple” as the head priest’s secret wife, she became less in control and even more objectified. She was hidden underground, alone all day, every day. As would be expected, this caused her to become depressed. “I began to lose interest in living.” However, strangely enough, she begins to love the priest and her lifestyle. “Later I got used to the situation, and I even came to enjoy it.” This is the narrator behaving in manners that show she had Stockholm Syndrome, a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity. Hostages like the narrator develop feelings for the captors possibly as a coping mechanism, but not always. Later on, the narrator ends up making her big escape, which is impressive as this is not usually the next action when someone suffers from this. It is often hard to get out of the situation, but the narrator had a lot of courage and determination, and a stark wake up call.