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| Short Story Titles from This Scheming World |
I recently read a
book. I should have been working but someone once said great writers are
proficient readers. If I don’t make rent this month I blame the scoundrel who said that.
Now finished with the
book, I’m still not finished with my work but I’m going to write about the
book.
Thank you for reading. You are justifying my not working.
I Had No Idea Who
Saikaku Ihara Was. I Just Liked the Title.
Three words – This
Scheming World – describe perfectly the stories Ihara has to tell. Savvy marketing too, for a guy from the 17th Century. The connotations certainly compelled me to pick up the book. (Let's ignore the possible psychological machinations involved.)
Ihara has been called “the first spokesman for the Japanese
masses.” Murasaki Shikibu wrote the Tale of Genji, the
world’s oldest novel, in the late 10th Century. It was, in the words of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata,
“the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature.” From then on down through Japan’s Warring
States Period, when the lords and samurai ruled the land, the printed word was limited
to the realm of the country’s nobility.
This changed at the beginning of the 17th Century, with the
onset of the relative peace of the Edo Era. No longer were the nobility lords
over all; not in the sense they were before, because the economy was becoming heavily
reliant on the merchant class. You wanted something, you had to buy it, no one
cared who your father once was. How this translated into a sudden wave of
interest in literature among the commoners I don’t know, but it did.
The emergence of
Saikaku Ihara is hence put forth in the introduction to This Scheming World:
“What is of particular
significance…was that there arose a new mass of readers chiefly composed of
townspeople. Their view of life was coarser and, let it be said, even vulgar,
but more positive and livelier than that of the upper class. To meet their expectations
a new type of literature must needs be created, which would be produced by none
but a spokesman of their own. This spokesman they found in Saikaku.”
Haiku & Human
Vice
He was born Togo
Hirayama, in 1642 in Osaka, historical cradle of business-minded Japanese
society. For a time he wrote haiku under the pen name Saikaku Ihara while tending
to his money-making. He was thirty-three when his wife died suddenly, sending
him into a writing spree borne of mourning and desperate expression, driving
him to write hundreds if not thousands of poems in a single day. Two years after
his wife’s death he settled his accounts, closed up shop and took off,
traveling and feeding his literary habits through the things he saw.
Turning to
story-telling, Ihara displayed a distaste for the highfalutin style of the
elite classes, inclined instead to relate the virtues and vices of those who
inhabited the world around him. “Man is lusty,” he is quoted as saying. “All
right. I will picture him as such. Man is greedy. Very well. I will depict him
as such. Above all else I will picture the world of men and women as it
actually is.”
That world was
comprised of a class of people whose power, they understood, lie in money. With
it they were everything, despite any semblance of lineage or nobility. Without
it they were beggars regardless of their family’s former standing in the
community.
So avaricious were
they when it came to money that, as it was explained, they would be “reluctant
to walk fast, even on an emergency call to express sympathy after a fire: he
feared he would work up an appetite and have to eat too much, which would mean
a waste of money.”
The introduction to Scheming World goes on to complete the sordid picture:
“Despite all these frantic efforts, however, not everybody could become rich.
On the contrary, nine persons out of ten were destined to be failures.” On top
of this, it was those with money already that the system favored. “It is the
man of common ability with capital, rather than the man of rare ability with no
capital, who gains profit.”
For my friends in
America this may be rich fodder for political fomentation.
One Day, Countless
Schemes
Ihara wrote several
books of stories illustrating, with complete anonymity though they must have
existed, the underhanded and dirty ways common men and women sought to gain
another coin or two. This Scheming World brings together a rich
collection of characters around the curious Japanese custom of settling debts
on the last day of the year – a tradition pitting debtors against bill
collectors in a humorously pathetic display of cunning and deceit.
It is far beyond the
scope of this impetuous piece to draw out even one of Ihara’s stories. Suffice
to say, though his characters lived long ago, in a place likely quite far,
geographically or conceptually or both, from the reader, many of the
fundamental ideas driving the actions of his characters can be just as
accurately attributed to present society. Only the details differ.
On spending lavishly on dress, in those times kimono, Ihara writes: “…money is squandered on
what does not really attract attention. The obi (the ornate sash of a Japanese
kimono) must be of genuine imported satin, twelve feet long and two feet wide.
Why not try wearing a girdle of two pieces of silver around the waist? The hair
comb may cost two ryo of gold, but wouldn’t a woman balancing three koku
(half a ton) of rice on top of her head attract more attention?”
Lady Gaga and Marilyn
Manson evidently understood this idea.
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| Yawn. Such stupidity. I'd be much more impressed... |
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| ...if they balanced a thousand pounds of rice on their heads. |
On how one poor woman was able to collect alms by wearing the
black robe of a religious person: “Even a sardine’s head will shine if believed
in.”
Same for a liar’s
orange head. (Foment, fellow Americans!)
On those who enjoy the last day of the year: “To hum a
popular song to the accompaniment of a woman’s shamisen at the year end,
without regard to the convenience of neighbors, is a form of amusement only
permitted in the licensed quarters. In accord with the line of the song that
runs so appropriately. “Leading a life of lamenting,” most people of this
world, with a load of care on their minds, come to the very last day of the
year, only to discover that it is much too long. Ordinarily people regret the
all too swift passage of the days, but this particular day is an exception.”
In other words,
subsumed with the business of life – and a life consumed by business – people
nevertheless find themselves on the last day of the year worried sick about how
they will pay their debts; indeed if they will be able to pay them all, and if
not what they will do to fend off those who come to their door to collect. On the other hand, it is only those who live carelessly who, at the end of the day (i.e. the end of the year) will have no cares.
To the Hell of Debt
and Back
I too have suffered
through a time of heavy debt. Consuming debt. Debt that would not leave my head
even when I slept. Today I owe not a penny to anyone. Yes, I pay my taxes each
year and my rent every month. I have credit, but I clear each account as soon
as it comes calling so as to not carry it over with interest (not to mention
more insomnia). I am far from rich, and I must, as all do, spend time on
bringing home the bacon. This too can bring its occasional concerns, but going
for a walk in the woods is a luxury I can not only afford but enjoy, my
thoughts free of the world I am leaving temporarily behind.
On being resigned to a life of debt: “Nobody has ever had
his head cut off for failing to pay a debt. Not that I won’t pay so long as I
am able. But you can’t get blood out of a turnip. How I wish I had a money
tree! But sad to say there’s none at hand for I never sowed the seed.”
This sentiment hits
hard. My family and I are safely housed and well-fed. Still, I am guilty as
well of never planting that money tree. Not one that ever grew.
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| Ichiyo Higuchi, also a writer of short stories, appears on this Japanese currency note. She is said to have been influenced greatly by Ihara's work, writing much on Japan's seedier side. |
Making Money is
What You Make of It
Ihara acknowledges the
varying habits of a society built on money. Those habits can very well be
applied to today, to society at large and to individuals everywhere. Your
mileage, of course, may vary.
The author also puts
forth an interesting proverb while expounding on the entitled denizens of Kyoto.
Being far from the ocean, they nevertheless dine on succulent bonito while the
fishermen all along the coast spend their days eating smaller fish: “It is
darkest at the foot of the lighthouse,” he writes.
Sounds a lot like
parenthood.
On working hard to make one’s living: “Poverty is a stranger
to diligence.”
Check that. It’s not
about working hard. It’s all about working smart – for those who are able to
realize the difference.
On keeping money hidden safely forever under the proverbial
mattress: “This money reminds me of a girl who was made a nun at birth; it has
never been caressed by a man nor enjoyed a good time; furthermore, it’s
destined to go to the temple in the end.”
The story from which
these words were taken involves people with old money whose sole concern is
making sure none of it goes anywhere. To be honest I don’t know how old money
works. Neither, I suspect, will my children.
On focus: “’Shoemaker, stick to your last,’ for after all,
one’s regular business is best for him.”
Here Ihara is putting
forth the idea that one should stick to what business he knows, advising against
reaching for additional success in unfamiliar places. When I read this I
thought of a proverb ascribed to Confucius: “The man who chases two rabbits
catches none.” The character Ihara is referencing, however, already has one
rabbit in hand. He is simply trying to hold onto it while reaching for
something else. In this idea I see one of my eternal flaws: I have never
focused solely on one thing for the long-term. I have been driven long-term
toward more than one thing, but I’ve never secured one rabbit before reaching
for another.
Yet here I am feeding
my creative appetite instead of tackling the stuff that feeds the family.
On judiciousness of spending: “At every meal with drink
poverty flourishes.”
Hell if I’m not going
to have a beer with dinner every now and then. But this illustrates Ihara’s
point about the overarching mindset of the people of his time, in the place he
was born.
To them, money was
everything. Money dictated one’s every move.
This remains true
today, although not for everyone even if at times it may seem so. I dare say
money is everything to two specific types of people: those who don’t have
enough, and those who believe they can never have enough.
I am not, by developed
world standards, swimming in money. But neither am I worried, in literal or
metaphorical terms, of working up too costly an appetite.
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