This Scheming World. Ihara Saikaku
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they reached the nethermost rung. It is then that people become so busily occupied that not a sound can be heard not a tune-not even a hum. In the poorer quarters particularly they find it necessary to quarrel, to wash, and to repair the foundations of the walls all at the same time. The result is that they lack time to prepare for the New Year. Not one piece of rice cake, nor even a dried sardine, do they have. Poor and miserable indeed is their life when compared with that of the rich. How in the world do they manage to tide over the year end, these people who are crowded into half a dozen or more narrow sections of a single tenement-house?
Because each of them has something or other to pawn, they show no signs of anxiety. With the one exception of rent, which is paid at the end of each month, they are accustomed every day of their lives to buy for cash whatever necessities of life they may need, such as rice, bean paste, firewood, vinegar, soy sauce, salt, oil, and the like; for nobody will sell them anything on credit. So when the end of the month comes, no creditor will slip up on them unannounced with his account book open, nor is there anyone for them to be afraid of, or anyone to whom they must apologize for unpaid bills. In their case, the saying of the old sage indeed holds true: “Pleasure lies in poverty.”
People who refuse to pay their debts are no better than daylight burglars in disguise. In brief, because they make only a very rough estimate for the year, not figuring their income and outgo month by month, most people find their income insufficient to make both ends meet. But in the case of people who live from hand to mouth things are different. Can they improve their lot by taking pains to enter their expenditures in an account book? Why, even on the very eve of the New Year their daily life is not a bit different from what it is the other days of the .year. How is it possible in such circumstances for them to celebrate the New Year? Their only expectation, poor chaps, lies in their pawning whatever they may happen to have at hand.
For example, one of them will pawn an old umbrella, a cotton gin and a teakettle, which enables him to have one momme of silver with which to tide over the season. As for the chap who lives next door to him, the pawnable articles he finds are his wife’s everyday obi (she will make paper string do), his cotton hood, a set of picnic lunch boxes with the top lid missing, a weaving frame 300 threads wide, a five-go and a one-go measure, five porcelain dishes manufactured in Minato, and a hanging Buddhist altar with assorted service attachments-a grand total of twenty-three items in all, for which he receives the magnificent sum of one momme and six in silver to get through the year end.
The neighbor living to the east of him is a dancing beggar, who during the New Year season is accustomed to switch to the Daikoku dance. Since an appropriate mask costing five mon and a papier-mache mallet will suffice for the season, unnecessary are his headgear, his dancing kimono, and his hakama. So these he will pawn for two momme and seven, and thus pass the year end in tranquillity.
Next door to him lives .a trouble-making ronin who wears only paper clothes, for he has long since sold off his weapons and harness to buy food. Hitherto he has managed to scrape out a bare living by making toy fishing tackle, using the hairs from horses’ tails. But as these are now passe, he is quite reduced to want and is at a complete loss as to how to tide over the year end. Finally, in desperation he sends his wife to the pawnbroker’s with their old halberd sheath. No sooner has the pawnbroker picked it up, however, than he throws it back at the woman, remarking that it is worthless. In an instant her countenance changes and in a fit of rage she screams, ‘’Why do you throw my precious possession about? If you won’t take it in pledge, just say so! ‘Worthless,’ you say? Such abusive words cannot be ignored. This is the sheath of the very halberd my dead father used when he so valiantly distinguished himself at the time of Ishida’s revolt. Having no son, he gave it to me, and when in better days I was married, it sheathed the very halberd in my wedding procession. To disparage it is to abuse the memory of my brave father who is now in heaven. I’m only a woman, I know, but I’m ready this very instant to die if need be. Now I’ll fight!, So saying she grabs the pawnbroker around the waist with all her might, at the same time bursting into tears. Overwhelmed with embarrassment, the pawnbroker apologizes as profusely as possible, but the angry woman is not to be so easily appeased.
Meantime the neighbors have come thronging into the shop, and one of them whispers into the pawnbroker’s ear that he’d better settle the matter before word reaches the ears of her husband, for he is a notorious blackmailer. So after much ado, he manages to settle the trouble by offering her three hundred mon in copper, plus three sho of rice. Alas, to what depths has she sunk. This raging woman was once the heloved daughter of a warrior whose annual stipend was twelve hundred koku of rice:Accustomed to living at ease in her better days, it is only her present poverty that has driven her into such unconscionable blackmailing. Recollecting her illustrious past, she must have been filled with a sense of shame. From a single example such as this one, it is apparent that it just won’t do for anyone to die poor!
Well, anyway, the matter now being settled, she receives the three hundred copper mon and the three sho of rice. But unhulled rice, she complains, will be useless on the morrow. “Oh, fortunately, Ma’am,” replies the pawnbroker, “ I happen to have a mortar right here. You are welcome to use it to hull the rice.” Could this incident be cited as a good illustration of the saying, ‘’A touch will cost you three hundred mon”?
Next door to the ronin lives a woman of thirty-seven or thirty-eight years, all alone, for she has no relatives, not even a son to depend on. Her husband, she says, died several years ago; so she had her hair cut short and has worn plain clothes ever since. Yet she still cares for her personal appearance as much as ever, and she retains a definite though unostentatious air of elegance about her. She usually spends her days spinning hempen thread,just to pass the time away. Already by early December she has completed her preparations for the New Year: her stock of firewood will last until February or March ; on the fish hanger hang a medium-sized yellowtail, five small porgies, and two codfish; and everything-from lacquered chopsticks and Kii lacquerware down to the very lids of the pots-all is brand new. She makes a year-end present of a salt mackerel to her landlord, a pair of silk strapped geta to his daughter, and a pair of tabi to his wife; while to each of her fellow tenants she presents a rice cake and a bundle of burdock. Thus she passes the year end by discharging every social obligation. How she makes a living is her own well-guarded secret.
Next door to her live a couple of women, the younger one of whom has ears, eyes, and a nose that are not in the least bit different from those of other girls. Yet to her great sorrow she is yet unmarried. Whenever she views herself in her mirror, however, she is compelled to realize anew why no one ever takes a second look at her. The other woman, who is older, once served as a maid in an inn on the Tokaido highway, near the town of Seki. While working there she mistreated the young men making secret pilgrimages to the shrine at Ise, and would pilfer their scanty supply of rice. Divine retribution overtook her while yet in this world, however, and she is now a poor mendicant nun. Pretending to be pious, she chants sutras devoid of devotion. A nun in form, she is but an ogre in spirit, a veritable wolf in sheep’s clothing. So impious is she that it never even occurs to her that she oughto abstain from eating meat. Yet for the past fourteen or fifteen years she has, by the mercy of the Buddha, managed to eke out a living, only because of her black clerical robe made of hemp. For as the saying goes, “Even a sardine’s head will shine if believed in.” Each morning as she walks about the streets begging rice she receives alms from an average of two houses per street, which means that to gather even a single go of rice she must visit as many as twenty houses. She cannot hope to garner five go of rice until she has walked through at least fifty streets. It surely takes a healthy person to be a mendicant nun!
Unfortunately, during the previous summer, she suffered a sunstroke, which necessitated her pawning the clerical robe for one momme and eight. Since then, as she has been unable to redeem the robe by any means, she has lost her means of livelihood. Of course we should not jump to the conclusion that people have become any less generous in almsgiving for the sake of their soul<in the afterlife. Yet now that she is without the clerical robe, she cannot expect to collect even two go of rice a day; whereas formerly when wearing it she usually received five go. ‘’December priest and priestess” runs .the wellknown saying. Yes, especially in December when people are so busy that they forget even the services in memory of their departed parents, it is no wonder that they do not care