
In reading Saikaku’s stories I’ve come to realize his selection of stories in “Life of a Sensuous Woman” contains symbolism for love, lust, and temptation. In “An Old Woman’s Hermitage”, the hermit begins to tell her story to these two young men and recalls “all the loves in her own life.” When she saw women and men lying together, she’d feel excited, and when she heard them in the dark, her heart would pound. She says “Naturally I began to want to make love myself.” And she began to feel love was the most important thing in her life from thereon. She claims that during her days “young women know a lot more about lovemaking.” She concludes saying “I just followed my desires wherever they went– and I ruined myself.” In the “Mistress of a Domain Lord”, there’s a quote that says “women, you know, are very basic creatures. They just can’t forget about physical love. . . they’ll feel a rush and go dizzy with desire. . . They want to make love with a flesh- and- blood man all the more.” In the reading “A Monk’s Wife in a Worldly Temple”, there is an old woman who has eavesdropped on the priest and the temple page “saying little things to each other in bed. . . even at my age I just can’t forget sex.” Even at an extremely old age, the old lady has sex resided in her memory and engraved in her head. In the selected piece called “A Teacher of Calligraphy and Manners”, the teacher of calligraphy loved a man which was one of her customers very much. “Whenever I met him I forgot I was performing and opened my heart completely to him. I trusted him and told him everything. During one of the man’s visits, I was unable to continue writing. I sat there holding my brush and thinking only about him.” She “made love with the man day and night. When he lost his desire, she would strengthen him with food and continued. Gradually, he ran dry and grew weak. In the “Five Hundred Disciples of the Buddha- I’d Known Them All” story, the woman in the story recalls a lot of the deceased disciples she’s been with. One of them she shared a pillow with when she was younger, another they exchanged deep vows and the guy even tattooed her name on his wrist, in another she worked for him as a parlor maid and he loved her in so many ways that even after all those years she couldn’t forget him. There was another man where she lived with him and they loved each other dearly and when she was working in Edo, there was a man she met with secretly six nights a month. There was also a priest where by the time she met him they were “used to every kind of sex” and they went at it day and night. Each story of Saikaku’s have elements of symbolism for love, lust, and temptation.
Based on Saikaku’s stories, it would be safe to assume a woman’s place in society is dependent upon the location of the woman. The beautiful and cultured women resided in Kyoto. In the old hermit’s story, the hermit didn’t come from a low-class family; her mother was commoner, but her father was from the middle-ranking aristocratic class. Her life went downhill, but she “happened to be born with a beautiful face, so she went to Kyoto to serve a court lady of the highest rank, and learned most of the elegant, refined ways of aristocrats.” “Mistress of a Domain Lord” says the retainers of the domain lord didn’t bother to look for women among the commoners in Edo. Those women were “ordinary” women raised in the eastern provinces. They wanted to look in Kyoto where they heard attractive women were at. “Kyoto women have a beautiful way of speaking.” Some of the social standards imposed on women mentioned in the story revolves around a certain way a woman should move and how she should wear her clothes-“She should move and wear her clothes gracefully, and her figure should show dignity and refinement. She was to have a gentle personality, be skilled at all the arts that women learn, and know something about everything.” In a similar example in the story of the teacher of calligraphy, ordinary women in Kyoto had the privilege to learn calligraphy and sell their skills transcribing letters. Under the requirements of serving an aristocrat, these women “make a decent living” in society and serve as role models for young girls to follow the footsteps of women calligraphy teachers and study under them.
The author places an idealistic social standard that women placed/born into poverty should sell their bodies and society would accept that and be okay with it. The idea that Japanese women can sell their bodies for money symbolizes prostitution. In the same way the woman who slept with more than ten thousand men in the story of the five hundred disciples, it symbolizes prostitution. Saikaku provides us readers a side story where the merchant tricks poor innocent women into selling their bodies for just a little bit of money:
“The merchant pays a jester with a shaved head to pretend to be a wealthy visitor from the western provinces and has him ask women from all over Kyoto to come interview to be his mistress. The merchant attends the interview, and if a woman catches his eye, he asks her to stay and secretly negotiates with the owner of the house for a secluded room. Then he asks the woman to sleep with him for just that one time. The surprised woman is terribly angry and disappointed, but when she tries to leave, he says all sorts of things to persuade her. Finally he mentions money, and since the woman has paid so much for the interview, she gives in. For selling herself, she gets two small gold pieces. There’s nothing else she can do. But women who aren’t from poor families don’t do that.”
In the “Mistress of a Domain Lord”, the author mentions that “The love a lord feels for a page is deeper than anything he feels for a woman. His wife is definitely in second place. In my opinion, this is because a lord’s wife isn’t allowed to show her jealousy the way commoner women do.” Society sets a social standard for commoner women to display jealousy whenever they please, whereas women of the upper-class are restricted from showing their bitter, envious feelings. Another examples of this is within the story called “A Stylish Woman Who Brought Disaster”, where the wife of the lord feels like she is also placed in second place. She feels the lord treats her as if she hardly existed and that the mistress is on the lord’s mind day and night. This is connected to the idea that the wife’s lord isn’t allowed to express her jealous feelings the same way commoner women of her times can.
Women who lived during the Edo time period in Japan have had social standards imposed on them by society, thus defining their place in society, and also holding a symbolic meaning within Japanese society.