In reading “An Old Woman’s Hermitage” From Life of a Sensuous Woman, Saikaku starts off saying “A beautiful woman, many ages have agreed, is an ax that cuts down a man’s life. . .how foolish are the men who die young of overindulgence in the way of sensuous love.” He places women as intermediaries of superstition, in which case he believes beautiful women are the culprits to the deaths of young men due to overdose of sensuous love. I disagree and I believe that men have just as much control as women in maintaining a proper balance when it comes to sensuous love. In “Mistress of a Domain Lord”, I discovered the same thing where Saikaku blames the woman for wearing out the lord and making him physically weak; “I was amazed to discover that the councilors thought it was my fault. They said I was a woman from the capital who liked fancy sex and had worn out their lord.” The councilors agreed to the superstition and made the decision to send her back to her parents. There is a social injustice in that all the councilors were men and their thoughts were probably similar to Saikaku’s assertion that women are the leaders of sensuous love, thus men’s bodies are weakened and/or die. In the selection “Five Hundred Disciples of the Buddha- I’d Known Them All”, Saikaku names a similar example where the woman in the story recalls one of her disciples: “He just folded up. He grew weaker and weaker, like a flame in a lantern, and then he was gone. He was only twenty-four.” She was associated with five hundred disciples- her encounter with him surely could not be the sole reason for him passing away.

After reading “A Stylish Woman Who Brought Disaster”, I pinpointed a section where the wife of the domain lord shows resentment towards the lord’s mistress. She says “The lord treats me now as if I hardly existed. He’s had his beautiful mistress from the domain brought all the way here to Edo, and he doesn’t think about anyone but her day and night . . . But I did have this doll made to look like her. At least I can cause pain to it.” The wife is envious of the attention the mistress gets from the lord and she acts as an intermediary of superstition, in believing she’s causing pain to the mistress through the doll that she claims looks like her. Indeed, the lord is worried and also believes in this superstition saying “I have no doubt at all that very soon my mistress won’t be safe from my wife’s avenging soul. Her life is in danger here . . . have her return to the domain.”

In the piece “A Monk’s Wife in Worldly Temple”, a woman dressed up as a temple page- sexual partners for the monks, encounters the head priest who falls in love with her. She “agreed to become his temporary wife for three years in exchange for twenty-five pounds of silver. I became what people call an “oven god”, which is a woman living and cooking in a temple; it was a custom that was widespread but officially forbidden.” The woman temple page disguised as a boy in this story acts as an intermediary of class, and wealth. She increased her social standing by living with the head priest and gains access to the monk’s wealth of twenty-five pounds of silver and in exchange she just cooks. In a similar example the woman in “Five Hundred Disciples of the Buddha- I’d Known Them All” acts as an intermediary of wealth and fortune by sleeping with men. She recalls the painful years of being forced to work getting money from men. “women who sold themselves, I was sure, were the most fearful of all women, and I began to grow frightened of myself. With this single body of mine I’d slept with more than ten thousand men.”

Japanese women during the Edo period have played a submissive yet power role within society as intermediaries of class, wealth, fortune, and superstition.