17th Century Edo Period Japan
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.
17th Century Edo Period Women
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.
In your first post, it seems several of your stories have taken a similar yet different approach on how society see’s women. For one, in “Tartuffe” we see an exaggerated sense of self importance when Belinda dresses herself ritualistically. This in a sense shows that society deemed that display was a necessary quality women must display. In Japan, it seems they are similar in a sense that both societies took beauty has a standard women should pursue. However, Japan seems to have taken a more artistic approach to women compared to Europe. While “Tartuffe” focuses more on high society, Japan has attributed an artistic approach to women’s beauty, and knowledge to the middle and upper class.
Your second post shows elements of superstition in society regarding relationships. It is interesting on the way they justify or rather explain certain situations through the use of superstition. The use of the doll to inflict pain is rather profound and well-known throughout the world. I was unaware that Japan did the same thing. For 17th century Europe, belief systems were largely centered around Christianity which is shown in Tartuffe. Furthermore, Saikaku shows that women during 17th century Japan played an indirect role in garnering wealth. Much like Europe, women were restricted and had to receive wealth through marriage.