Everyday Life in Traditional Japan. Charles Dunn
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the dog-favoring edicts to an end. The Shogun Yoshimune (1716-45) was an energetic instigator of reforms, and also endeavored to bring the samurai back to their early simplicity by encouraging them to take physical exercise. In particular he favored hunting, and in the list of nicknames of Shoguns he is called the “falcon” Shogun. On his hawking expeditions he was accompanied by a large retinue, and the victims were cranes and other wild birds. He also revived the deer and boar hunts that had been favorite sports of some of his predecessors: these were decidedly unsporting affairs in which the game was driven towards the “hunters,” who dispatched them with arrows or gunshot from the safety of horseback.
An anecdote preserved in the diary (1692) of a samurai in Nagoya reveals the standard of values at the time.
The lord of Iyo (in Shikoku) lost a favorite hawk, and sought for it throughout his domain. One day a certain farmer went out to tend his fields, while his wife stayed at home with her weaving. A hawk flew in and perched on her loom. The wife took her shuttle and struck the bird, which straightway died. The farmer returned home and was told by his wife how a beautifully marked bird had settled on her loom, how she had struck at it without intending to kill it, but how the bird had unfortunately died. Her husband looked at it and saw it was a hawk. He was greatly alarmed, for he knew that the lord was searching for such a bird. With much trepidation he told the village headman about what had happened, and the occurrence was reported to the bailiff. The latter, in great anger, had the husband and wife bound, and taken before his lord for trial. The lord, too, was enraged, and had the wife crucified, but pardoned the husband because he was not at home at the time in question.
The story goes on to relate that when the husband went to pray for his wife, he found that she was still alive, and the lord, hearing this, had her taken down. She claimed to have been saved by a protective deity. The samurai who noted all this did not seem to find the treatment of the woman surprising; it was her return to life that astonished him.
However, the hunting Yoshimune was exceptional, as the Shogun did not normally participate in active sports. Their amusements were usually much less energetic, and they would be spectators rather than participants. For example, they and the daimyō supported sumō, a form of wrestling, which already had a long history of popularity in Japan, as well as the patronage of the Imperial court. Another source of entertainment was the drama. Samurai were discouraged from going to the theatres where the merchants formed the audiences, but this did not prevent daimyō and others from summoning companies or individual performers to their residences. The Shogun would have nō plays given in the Castle, and would allow the townsfolk to see one of the performances. Surviving records show that the lords of Tottori were great patrons of the nō when they were doing their obligatory attendance upon the Shogun. The daimyō himself played the chief role in many of the plays, which were put on to entertain his guests, often other daimyō, at parties, in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Actors and musicians were paid with money or clothing, and, if asked to travel, were given special allowances and an escort. Kabuki and the puppet-plays were also to be seen in the residence, but less often than the nō, the puppets being specially for the diversion of the lower ranks of the household.
Another, and much more personal, record is a diary left by a lord known as Matsudaira, Governor of Yamato (a province he had nothing to do with, his title being a purely nominal one granted by the Imperial court), who died in Edo in his fifty-fourth year, in 1695. He was interested in artistic pursuits and entertainments of all sorts, including calligraphy, perfume-discrimination, nō plays and their comic interludes (kyōgen), puppet and kabuki plays, painting, poetry of all kinds, dancing, wrestling, and hunting. He was in almost daily touch with events in the theatre district, often sending men there to see performances and report on them, or interrogating those who had passed by the theatres about what new signs were up and what the gossip was. His circle of acquaintances was apparently composed of admirers of the puppet-plays in particular, for he often mentions going to parties at other mansions and being entertained by famous performers, besides putting on similar performances for his own guests (22).
(22) Puppet-show in a daimyō’s residence.
It might be a little cynical to suggest that the rarest entertainment for the Shogun’s court was the annual visit from the head (or Captain) of the Dutch factory (trading post) in Nagasaki. This was seen partly as a favor to allow him to escape for a few weeks from his narrow quarters, and partly, of course, as an opportunity to acquire some curious foreign gifts. In 1691 a German doctor, Engelbert Kaempfer, was physician to the Dutch, and went with them to Edo. He has left a vivid description of his journey, and of his audiences with the Shogun. The first of these was formal, but, says, Kaempfer, for their second audience they were
conducted through several dark galleries. Along all these several galleries there was one continual row of lifeguard men, and nearer to the Imperial apartments followed, in the same row, some great officers of the Crown, who lined the front of the hall of the audience, clad in their garments of ceremony, bowing their heads, and sitting on their heels. The hall of audience was just as I represented it in the Figure hereunto annexed (23). It consisted of several rooms, looking towards a middle place, some of which were laid open towards the same, others covered by screens and lattices. Some were of 15 mats, others of 18, and they were a mat higher or lower, according to the quality of the persons seated in the same. The middle place had no mats at all, they having been taken away, and was consequently the lowest, on whose floor, covered with neat varnished boards, we were commanded to sit down. The Emperor [i.e. the Shogun] and his Imperial Consort sat behind the lattices on our right....By Lattices, I mean hangings made of reed, split exceeding thin and fine and covered on the back with a fine transparent silk, with openings about a span broad, for the person behind to look through. For ornament’s sake, and the better to hide the persons standing behind, they are painted in divers figures, though otherwise it would be impossible to see them at a distance, chiefly when the light is taken off behind. The Emperor himself was in such an obscure place, that we should scarce have known him to be present, had not his voice discovered him, which was yet so low, as if he purposely intended to be there incognito. Just before us, behind other lattices, were the Princes of the blood, and the Ladies of the Empress. I took notice, that pieces of paper were put between the reeds in some parts of the Lattices, to make the openings wide, in order to have a better and easier sight. I counted about thirty such papers, which made me conclude, that there was about that number of persons sitting behind....We were commanded to sit down, having first made our obeisances after the Japanese manner, creeping and bowing our heads to the ground, towards that part of the Lattices, behind which the Emperor was. The chief Interpreter sat himself a little forward, to hear more distinctly, and we took our places on his left hand all in a row.
(23) Kaempfer at the Shogun’s court.
In the ensuing conversation the Shogun’s words were directed to the President of the Council of State, who repeated them to the interpreter, for transmission to the visitors. Kaempfer remarks:
I fancy that the words, as they flow out of the Emperor’s mouth are esteemed too precious and sacred for an immediate transit into the mouth of persons of low rank.
After interrogation about the outside world and on medical matters, the foreigners were ordered by the Shogun to
take off our Cappa, or Cloak, being our garment of ceremony, then to stand upright, that he might have a full view of us; again to walk, to stand still, to compliment each other, to dance, to jump, to play the drunkard, to speak broken Japanese, to read Dutch, to paint, to sing, to put our cloaks on and off. Mean while we obeyed the Emperor’s commands in the best manner we could, I joined to my dance a love-song in High German. In this manner, and with innumerable such other apish tricks, we must suffer ourselves to contribute to the Emperor’s and the Court’s diversion....Having been thus exercised for a matter of two hours, though