Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Masao Yutaka

Scattered Trades of the Flesh

Song of the Unlicensed Quarters

Until the fires of war reached us, we lived in Ōtsuka’s hanamachi (pleasure quarters). It must have been right next to the home of Sanyūtei Kashō, who had recently died in a traffic accident.

At that time, my wife was teaching new-style dance to students who were mostly young geishas, when one day one of them came and,

“Teacher, please teach me the ‘Kimi Sarin’ dance.”

“Kimi Sarin? I’ve never heard of any dance that sounds like a cold medicine.”

As she said this and pondered over it, she finally realized what it meant and burst out laughing.

That dance was based on a popular song—namely, 'Farewell, My Love'.

Around that same time, when Mr. Furukawa Roppa staged my work *Flower Lottery*, we held a pre-performance celebration at a local teahouse—it being early 1942, when alcohol was growing scarce and air raid sirens had begun wailing intermittently. On that hazy Shōwa 17 night, with Mr. Roppa, scriptwriter Saitō Toyokichi, rakugo masters Katsura Bunraku and Hayashiya Shōzō (then performing as Baraku), my wife and I in attendance, over a dozen young geisha students of my wife lined up before us—and would you believe the bill came to over seventy yen? It all feels like a dream now.

Now that I think of it, Yanagiya Gontarō—who had long been bedridden—once prided himself on his gidayū skills as a disciple of the renowned Koshi Tayu at the Bunraku-za theater. One night, after coming to Ōtsuka with a customer and growing pleasantly drunk, when he began expounding on gidayū, the attending geisha proved remarkably adept at accompanying him on the shamisen.

Then when he began performing rōkyoku ballads, the elderly geisha once again demonstrated her considerable skill by vigorously matching his delivery.

Somewhat embarrassed, he looked into the old geisha’s background, only to discover—who could have guessed?—that she was the widow of Naniwaken Shimetomo, hailed as rōkyoku’s prodigious talent in his day, and herself a veteran female gidayū performer.

Well then, it was only natural she excelled at both rōkyoku and gidayū—Master Gontarō was left speechless.

Shimetomo’s Widow was a plump, ruddy-faced woman of small stature—I wonder if she’s still alive postwar.

I hear Ōtsuka hanamachi had expanded along the JNR embankment since those days, but whenever I think of that widow, I’m reminded of how masterfully Bono Juzanshi crafts his senryū.

The plumpness characteristic of a gidayū geisha

Perhaps I should present a few more of Juzanshi’s hanamachi verses while we’re at it.
The verses on hanamachi's postwar decadence were rendered with such vivid clarity.

In a ceiling-less teahouse: two hundred yen

Shanghai-style prices for geisha time

Every hanamachi pitiable—when did these grassy waves take root?

Three hundred yen at the eatery before you go

The miban's bare bones sprout redroot weeds

The reek of night soil—this is Yanagibashi

Treat me tonight—tomorrow brings ration tickets

Coffee shop front, tiny rooms in back

The shamisen now echoes in suburbs

Fearful of return—three flee to Mukojima

The water god stirs—by train, country hearts

At pillow's edge, play rates track rice prices

Two customers like ice deliverymen

The kasutori liquor stank like blue rat snakes (regrettably I drank it too), blackouts dragged on, and those hanamachi of '46-'47—trembling over rice rations at history's turning point—stood revealed in brutal clarity.

How precious—even this is now but a dream.

In Ichikawa where I now reside, I don't take the local geishas as students, but the most beautiful among them is said to be Chiyogiku—a tall, slender woman with delicate features. There is also a certain someone who moved from Asakusa—a delicate-featured, slender-faced woman of grace.

Among hōkan entertainers, Higashikawa Kikuhatsu has been honed to perfection, his signature act being the Edo-style lion dance. The Ichikawa Ondo dance song, with lyrics by him as well, would see geishas dancing under the seven-colored lights of Edogawa fireworks every summer night.

It was from his own mouth that I recently learned this Kikuhatsu’s younger brother is Nakamura Baika of Tokizō’s school.

*Tokyo Palace Chronicle*

*I*

On a chilly dusk in early spring of Shōwa 26 [1951], Miyao Shigeo, the painter; poet Mr. S; Mr. A from the Hot Spring Association; and I—the four of us set out to visit Tokyo Palace in Koishiro Nimaibashi.

This opportunity arose through Mr. Hara Motojirō—manager of the Palace and an enthusiast of kōdan and rakugo—who had become a devoted patron of performers like Momokawa Jyoen, Katsura Mimosuke, and the fifth-generation Kosan, naturally leading me, as someone involved in that world, to seek his acquaintance.

Indeed, through such connections, I had already been invited to and attended the Fifth Anniversary Dancers' Grand Athletic Meet on October 21 of last year—though on that occasion, I departed after only the athletic meet without experiencing the alluring nighttime atmosphere.

When it comes to postwar red-light districts of this sort, I had only briefly glimpsed the courtesan procession in Yoshiwara during last year’s late spring—I neither knew the amorous streets of Dove Quarter nor ever yearned for the lights of Tateishi or Kameari.
Therefore, for me now, merely hearing the phrase “tours of special entertainment zones” makes me feel something akin to a faint wanderlust’s melancholy—so deeply does it resonate.

This is why I titled it *Tokyo Palace Chronicle*. However, that athletic meet was actually quite enjoyable for me. First came the Edogawa Ward mayor’s congratulatory address, which startled me, followed by the house band’s jinta-style rendition of *Kimigayo*—at which point I could not help but be utterly astonished. In Saitō Ryokuu’s essays there exists an account of absurdity from former times—during some celebration at Yoshiwara pleasure quarters, they created a mannequin of the Japanese Army advancing and erected a post beside it boldly inscribed “Great Japan Pleasure Quarter.” Yet even this paled against the atmosphere of this day’s events with its mayoral address and *Kimigayo* anthem, which differed too profoundly from my imagined red-light district social gatherings.

The day’s athletic events numbered twenty-five types—including the literally named “Loach Grab” where participants ran while clutching live loaches; the “Couple’s Race” with pairs sprinting under shared umbrellas; the “Tsubosaka Race” that involved blindfolding men cast as Sawamura and leading them by hand; the “Daruma Relay” where teams donned large red-and-white papier-mâché Daruma heads; and the “Shopping Race” where contestants scooped up daikon radishes and carrots from the roadside into baskets before dashing off—all proving particularly amusing.

The men who participated in the Couple's Race and Tsubosaka Race were all Tokyo Palace officials like Mr. Hara, and the cheerful flow of Kasagi Shizuko’s "Kaimono Boogie"—with its “Ossan, ossan, kore nanbo—” refrain—from the venue’s record player during the Shopping Race added its own temporal amusement.

In a corner of the athletic field on a cloudy, wind-swept day, beneath the canopy of the invited guests’ seats, we gulped beer and drank whiskey, sending up cheers as we forgot the cold.

However, among the 140 dancers said to be there, those who participated in the events were generally unattractive, while most beautiful dancers either limited themselves to participating in a single game at most or remained spectators throughout.

Among them, the oval-faced dancer who participated in the Couple’s Race only once left a beautiful impression on me. Her complexion wasn’t particularly fair, but the gentle, refined, dreamlike color of her eyes reminded me of the actress Mitsuko Miura, who had gone to America.

Ah, the long night—her beauty lingers still in my eyes.

The day after the event, I sent Mr. Hara a thank-you letter with this clumsy verse praising her appended at the end, but it seemed Mr. Hara had absolutely no idea which woman it referred to.

...Eventually we were guided to the dance hall where people danced under dim lights—some in kimono, others in Western dress—but here too remained no figure to linger in my eyes.
The band performing on the raised stage at the front was likely the same ensemble that had astonished me by playing "Kimigayo" at the athletic meet.

On the walls of the hall in several places,

“Rhythm Cheek Jitterbug

"The above [dances] are strictly prohibited."

with notices stating [the above] having been posted.
Mr. Hara explained that since these were all vulgar apuregeru dances, here in this hall of the pleasure quarters, they wanted patrons to at least dance in an elegant manner as a matter of etiquette.
Mr. Hara further added that the hall strictly closes at 8 PM every night because operating beyond that hour would inconvenience patrons not there for dancing.

After several songs ended, the hall suddenly brightened, and the dancers scattered like falling petals.
The closing time of 8 PM had arrived.
"Haven't you found the woman you like, Sensei?"

The baby-faced Mr. A asked at that moment.

"I haven't found her."

I said.

"Well then, she must've already been taken away."

With his baby face breaking into a smile, Mr. A laughed heartily.
Mr. S also laughed along.
I also laughed.

Amidst that laughter, Miyao Shigeo, the painter, alone was diligently moving his pencil across his sketchbook.

*II*

The five buildings of Tokyo Palace—originally dormitories of Seikosha—could hardly be called anything but dreary even by night, let alone by day. Yet no sooner had one stepped inside than rows of neat little tea rooms lined both upper and lower floors along one side.

Typically three dancers occupied each establishment, while beyond the curtain at the front of the tea rooms lay another marvel—three neat four-and-a-half-tatami rooms arranged in succession. How ingeniously, how admirably compact this design had been conceived!

Moreover, unlike the partitions between neighboring rooms in the unofficial pleasure quarters of old that were hardly shabby, there was pale peach lighting, black-and-white walls adorned with discreetly arranged portrait cards of foreign film actresses, and equally eye-catching gaudy dresses hanging on those walls—a fantastical space where even a single blue parrot in a vermilion-lacquered cage would not feel out of place.

“Ah, this is so Nagai Kafū-esque.”

The moment he saw it, Mr. A let out a cry of admiration.

“Before Mr. Nagai Kafū began frequenting Asakusa, he would often come here during the day with a shopping basket in hand.”

Mr. Hara said.

I was reminded by this room's exotic brilliance of the scenery from the rakugo story *Tōchaya*, where Japanese castaways visited Chinese pleasure quarters.

The way tea rooms lined up inside the building, with tastefully arranged bedrooms beyond them, reminded me of the scenery from the third-generation Kosan’s signature piece *Nikai Zomeki*—a resemblance that made me smile to myself.
The rakugo masterpiece *Nikai Zomeki*—set in the pleasure quarters—depicts a son who cannot sleep unless he parades through Yoshiwara nightly. He has a brothel set constructed on his house’s second floor, where he cheerfully strolls about singing nagarebushi songs.

That said, what truly overwhelmed me was how the area adjoining the buildings downstairs became illuminated with successive red lanterns marking sushi stalls, Chinese restaurants, sweet red bean soup vendors, yakitori stands, yakisoba counters, roasted sweet potato carts—not to mention shooting galleries, cosmetic shops, rickshaw stations, bicycle parking lots, beauty parlors, and even a barbershop operating into the small hours. Someone as scatterbrained as myself might carelessly wander into this Hachiman’s bamboo thicket of commerce and find themselves utterly disoriented, unable to discern exit from entrance.

Speaking of Mr. Nagai Kafū, he often referred to prewar Tamanoi by the name “labyrinth,” and indeed that district too was an area both difficult to navigate and hard to commit to memory.
One day, I encountered a woman—nearly thirty, modestly beautiful, Tokyo-born, who had left her household—possessing some literacy and an air reminiscent of a lonely wildflower in desolate fields. Unable to forget her, I revisited what I believed to be the same alleyway, yet despite turning down the lane that surely seemed to be there, I never reached her house, and in the end, I lost all trace of her.
Being early February before the Incident—likely because we welcomed the arrival of spring at a Hakone hot spring where we dallied the following day—the memory of that person who vanished after but a single encounter carries the rich scent of early spring, akin to white plum blossoms.

The detailed map of Tamanoi—one that even noted the women’s beauty and plainness—was, according to Mr. Nagai Kafū, created by the late Kamiyo Taneaki. But might it not soon be necessary for our Tokyo Palace to publish a yearbook with photographs listing all its dancers, akin to the old Yoshiwara saiken guides? If that were done, the whereabouts of what I call “the one who lingers in my eyes” would surely become clear immediately. He chuckled.

Mr. Hara described Tokyo Palace to us as the fourth-ranked pleasure quarter following Yoshiwara, Shinjuku, and Hatomachi, further elaborating that while Yoshiwara and Shinjuku still retained faint traces of feudalism from their old licensed quarter lineage, Hatomachi (formerly Tamanoi) and the Palace (formerly Kameido) carried a liberality associated with unlicensed prostitution areas—and though this assessment could indeed be said to hold true, what struck me was how unlike Tamanoi or Kameido it felt: devoid of their stench of muddy ditches, and above all, with its organization so vast that one vaguely sensed a kind of spaciousness befitting a "grand lattice."

The women too lacked anything grim or somber.

The women of Tamanoi and Kameido were mostly cheerful, but no matter how bright-faced they might be, if the backdrop remained dark and pitiful—

Here, a band played music, bright tea rooms and beautiful bedrooms existed, and with the backdrop itself already bright, their lives were moreover largely free.

As for how free—that I will discuss in the next chapter.

*III*

In a passage from *Kakkyo no Kamahori*, the comic dance that swept through Meiji-era rakugo circles,

*Yoshiwara courtesans may pen letters but never step beyond the bar.*

there existed such lyrics—though one need not delve so far into antiquity.
Even the theme song from *Caged Bird*, that modern film which gained popularity after the Taishō Earthquake,

*Your beckoning voice I'll ne'er forget,*
*Yet remain I must—this caged bird beset.*

so they sang.
The sight of courtesans venturing out under the watchful eyes of aunties—those seasoned handlers—had been commonplace in towns before the war escalated.

Mr. Hara explained that the women of today’s Palace were conducting themselves in precisely the opposite manner.

First, since there existed no employer-employee relationship, everything was permitted—whenever they wished to go out, whenever they wanted to go out with clients, whenever they visited their parents’ home, whenever they took time off—hence there were no official days off.
In other words, they could behave as freely as if official days off were unnecessary.

Since their daytime hours were entirely unencumbered, it was said there were even those who treated their Palace lifestyle as a part-time job—women who had graduated from women’s colleges or certain music schools.

Even if a customer gave them two thousand yen but they claimed it was one thousand, then paid one thousand yen in taxes and room fees (an amount close to half) from that sum, the Palace side had to accept everything through stipends from the women and comply without protest.

Among them were apparently some who boldly declared, "Since I'll earn plenty tomorrow night after arranging for a lover to stay over, let me have fun for free tonight."

"It's precisely those girls who have real skill and truly work hard,"

“It’s precisely those girls who have considerable skill and truly work hard,” said Mrs. Hara.

“When we refer to ‘the Palace side’ as a single entity, it actually consists of fifty businesses, each independently hosting their own dancers.”

Mr. Hara went on to explain that most dancers hailed from Tokyo and neighboring prefectures, with eight out of ten having graduated from girls’ schools and few possessing only elementary-level education.

The average age was twenty-one or twenty-two, with the oldest being thirty.

“Those without income naturally leave, but the Palace side bases its various facilities on the standards of the lowest earners—though their outfits are indeed their own.”

Even if admitted to the affiliated hospital, all expenses except injection fees were free; meals were prepared communally, and the dancers would carry the finished meals to their own rooms to eat.

In principle, the managers also partook of the same dishes for breakfast (at noon) after the guests had left, gathering together in one place to finish their meal.

Among the dancers, there were those without ration coupons; the daily food cost was sixty-five yen, with breakfast consisting of miso soup, tsukudani, and pickles. Lunch (three o'clock) was toast bread or udon. Dinner (7 p.m.) would be fish fry or curry rice—of course, this being somewhat subsidized by the Palace side—but with their refined palates, the dancers naturally bought and ate other dishes beyond these offerings, and not a few would take meals right before bed (what they called "midnight snacks"). Since everything could be managed within the premises, external vendors were primarily fishmongers—there was a tennis club, a performing arts division (featuring nagauta and dance), and more. All in all, with this arrangement, one could call it a free and straightforward life—utterly untouched by dark shadows.

We also saw a well-equipped infirmary.
We were also guided to a medicinal-smelling, lukewarm washroom.

Fifty businesses each maintained their own trade names within the Palace, Mr. Hara’s being Miyakogawa.
The others too bore predominantly Japanese-style names like Chitose, Chigusa, and Harunoya, though there were rare exceptions such as Gin Salon.

Setting aside Mr. Nagai Kafū—who frequented the establishment as a patron—the writers who engaged with Tokyo Palace were, following Mr. Sakaguchi Ango (who composed an essay based on his investigations here) and Mr. Tamagawa Ichirō (who presided over the dancers’ roundtable discussion), myself—or so they say.

First there was Mr. Nagai Kafū’s minor Tamanoi piece titled *Tera-jima no Ki*, followed by his masterwork *Bokutō Kidan*—but could I, with this clumsy essay as a preliminary exercise, ever produce a masterpiece like *Tokyo Palace*? When I thought about it, I felt uncertain.

Having completed his sketching responsibilities, Master Painter Miyao Shigeo suddenly regained vigor and began delivering his customary witticisms while walking with Mr. N and Mr. S along the dark muddy path, utterly unfazed by their surroundings.

“It feels like night school lights.”

Mr. S or Mr. N looked back at the Palace's blazing lights and remarked.

Tonight too, with no karmic thread to follow, I found myself chasing through unsatisfying memories the visage of that gentle, dreamy-eyed one whom I ultimately never met.

Keiyōki Erotic Tales

*Elegant Edo Pillow*

Won't do.
Can't do.
Won't fall.

Such expressions never existed in the homes of us old Tokyo shitamachi dwellers—true Edokko.

Mustn't do.
Can't do.
Doesn’t fall.

We had been pronouncing them correctly in this manner.

If we take it a step further to fiery pronunciations, there's "ikenee" (Ain't happenin'),
"Dekinee" (Can't do),
"Ochineē" (Won't fall) and "ikan" (Won't do).
"Can't do."
Terms like "ochin" were likely used by provincial officials or country bumpkin scholars—even in our childish hearts, we despised them as such.

Yet as constellations wheeled and seasons turned—forty springs and autumns having passed—when I suddenly looked back, even we pure shitamachi folk had unwittingly come to casually lace our daily speech with these clipped “ikan,” “dekin,” and “ochin.” Astonishing.

This related to Mr. Ōtsuji Shirō—who had recently met an accidental death aboard the Mokusei-maru—

"I absolutely cannot do this, I tell you."

The success of that gentleman's signature expressions—phrases like this—might have further spurred the spread of such terminology, but it was exactly as the late Master Okamoto Kidō had written in his preface to *Self-Mockery*:

An Edokko eating tonkatsu being called bonito—

At which I couldn't help but smile wryly to myself.

Now then, the story goes that we Edokko as a whole had always maintained the correct and beautiful pronunciations of "mustn't do," "can't do," and "doesn't fall." Of course, this was from the peaceful era before the Meiji Restoration—when bows stayed in their bags and long swords in their scabbards, when pine winds did not rustle the branches.

To the west of Kyōbashi Teppōzu stood the upper residence of Matsudaira Tōtōmi-no-kami, and one day, a maidservant there said.

“Um... This ohaguro keeps coming off—it’s simply unmanageable.”
“Could you please have someone buy me powder that won’t let the tooth-blackening stain fade?”

Ohaguro refers to tooth-blackening dye. In the past, blackening one’s teeth with ohaguro was considered an essential part of a woman’s grooming. “For whom do I rouge my teeth with crimson ohaguro? All to show my devotion to my lord—” as found in the nagauta *Dōjōji*.

“What sort of errand? Very well—I shall indeed take it upon myself!”

Then, the one who immediately accepted was an inner official who had unfortunately only recently been transferred from Amagasaki in his home province to Edo. Namely, “ikan” (won’t do). “Can’t do.” “The ‘won’t fall’ types were crisply rigid.” However, perhaps thinking it would be disastrous to incur the glares of those ill-natured, spinster maidservants—given his position—he immediately summoned an errand runner and, with exaggerated provincial solemnity,

“Now listen here! Go buy some ohaguro powder that won’t come off—and make it quick!”

he commanded.

“Understood.”

The errand runner immediately dashed out.
But from that moment on, no matter how much time passed, he never returned.

(What in blazes is he doing out there?)

As the inner official’s provincial dialect thickened under his growing anxiety, eventually at dusk’s approach came the errand runner, wiping sweat as he returned,

“Finally… finally found the golden one.”

And what he thrust forward was a gigantic, gold-glittering papier-mâché phallus!

In those days, it was customary in the hanamachi world to decorate household altars with papier-mâché phalluses for auspicious occasions when inviting guests; what the errand runner had now brought was precisely that—an extra-large genuine article.

“Wh-what in blazes is this?!”

When the inner official glared and bellowed, the man answered at once with dead seriousness.

“But sir, you did say ‘the golden phallus’ earlier!”

This too was part of that Great Edo culture flourishing resplendently—the sunrise over Fish Market Wharf, Yoshiwara’s cherry blossoms, the pale moonlight after theater outings, temple bells ringing from Ueno or Asakusa—all elements of an era when the people of Edo’s eight hundred and eight neighborhoods still dwelled in the Tokugawa clan’s three-century-long dream of joyous nostalgia, not yet shattered by the Black Ships’ first cannon report.

Nowadays, since the emergence of my friend Furukawa Roppa, it has come to be called "vocal mimicry," but in the past, it was primarily known as *kowairo*.

In even older times, it was also revered as *Ōmugaiwa*, and even books bearing such titles were published.

Consequently, kowairo performers of that era employed entirely different staging techniques compared to today—whenever performing imitations of the celebrated actors of the time, they would invariably hide their faces with folding fans and perform from behind those fans. However, they must have astutely reasoned that performing while revealing their scrunched-up faces would diminish the dramatic impact and fail to evoke the visages of those handsome leading actors they sought to channel.

In such an era as that, on a certain midday in early summer.

A roofed boat carrying many drunken connoisseurs was being rowed out onto the Sumida River, where amidst ten thousand verdant leaves bloomed a single crimson flower—an alluring Yanagibashi courtesan.

Drink! Sing!
In those days, the Sumida River remained a separate world straight from a Hiroshige print, where carp, eels, and whitebait could still be caught,

Even the Tsukuda-raised whitebait—lured by blossoms to the Sumida River—as the song went, and so the party indulged in merriment without restraint.

Then—that beautiful courtesan (to speak indelicately) suddenly felt the urge to urinate.
Whether she was a beautiful courtesan or a renowned one, this was simply unavoidable.

But being a Yanagibashi-trained professional accustomed to such situations, she smoothly squatted by the boat's edge, quietly lifted her hem, concealed herself with a small beautiful white fan, and began relieving herself.

Just then came a brilliant quip from a passenger on a boat that had swiftly passed by.

“Hey, can’t see a thing! Yoni (vulva) putting on a voice act, I tell ya!”

Surely he didn’t actually say ‘yoni’—

Yose and Bawdy Humor

The Shoe Clerk Says

Mikamesō: Shit Though He Be, Sensei—

There existed a senryū by Mr. Bono Juzanshi that went:

Setting aside personal opinions about Yanagiya Mikamesō's "artistry," on that winter night, the alluring figure of a beautiful fair-skinned geisha—tall and firmly embraced within a man's overcoat—undeniably revived from his voluptuous "tongue." I had heard that among Mikamesō's unreleased records lay that notorious "Bridal Chamber Chapter" from A Newlywed Night in Hakone, but could it truly exist? Even if it did, being a sound-emitting record rather than some clandestine text, it would scarcely be played and heard in decent company.

In Osaka rakugo there exists a series of short comic tales about cats, where naturally the third installment culminates in an erotic punchline.
The first installment goes like this: A cat munched away one of the tentacles of an octopus lying on the beach, so the indignant octopus pretended to sleep while waiting to drag its opponent into the sea the moment it tried to take another bite—but the cat never showed up.
As the saying goes: "Not falling for that trick."
In the second installment, the cat got its paw stuck in a clam all day and, troubled by this predicament, climbed the ladder stairs while still clamped, making a clattering noise. Then the hard-of-hearing old woman on the second floor said, "Who's there wearing geta up to the second floor?"
Now for the problematic third installment: This cat, kept at a mistress's residence shortly after the clam incident, slipped from the arms of the freshly bathed mistress who had been cradling it. The moment it tumbled down and gazed up at her crotch, the damn cat bared its teeth—"Hmmph!"
I found it somewhat contrived, yet I must admit it's an undeniably clever punchline.
Now Osaka rakugo—characterized by its liberal use of musical instruments throughout narratives—would typically follow even a short tale's punchline without missing a beat, showering it with a flourish of hayashi music. But when the late Tachibanaya Kasetsu recorded these three "Cat" installments, after delivering his spiel up through the "Hmmph!" moment where the cat gazed upward at the crotch, he then quipped in that signature unhurried tone of his, "Now what exactly did this cat see here, I wonder?"—prompting another round of hayashi music. I couldn't help bursting out laughing.
A rakugo performer who would so elaborately embellish eroticism with flamboyant musical accompaniment—such a one would exist nowhere in this world but Tachibanaya Kasetsu.

While Osaka rakugo is indeed replete with eroticism and crude gags, there was an incident involving the long-faced elder performer Katsura Shijaku—who passed away in the early Shōwa era—when he once made an obscene remark during a performance and was hauled off to the nearby police station for a severe reprimand. At that moment, he protested with utmost earnestness: “But I was taught exactly this way by my deceased master! If I perform it just as he instructed me, does that make it unacceptable?” Even the police chief found himself at a loss.
Indeed, Shijaku was the last rakugo artist who had profoundly embodied that street performer ethos.
Precisely because of this, even when urged to perform in Tokyo—“Scared o’ trains, ain’t goin’!” he’d say—he ultimately never made the trip. Moreover, after retiring, when the Bunka House he moved into near Mt. Ikoma made visitors contemplative about how the times had finally compelled even Elder Shijaku to reside in such Western-style architecture, the man himself—at that very moment—had properly climbed up onto the grand table in the Western room with his wife at high noon and sat eating lunch, so it’s told.

The previous Katsura Shundōji's regular stage performances were full of delightfully bawdy antics, and the current Shundōji had inherited that storytelling style wholesale—which was precisely why he occasionally got reprimanded by the authorities. This was a story I heard from Mr. Katsura Bunraku: A few years prior, when he and Mr. Shundōji were invited to a gathering of Nagoya notables, Shundōji no sooner took his seat than he stood up, removed his haori, and personally hung it inside out on a borrowed eboshi bamboo rack—revealing the entire inner lining to be covered in exquisitely detailed spring palace secret play illustrations! This transformed what had until then been an overly formal gathering into one brimming with harmonious warmth throughout the room, becoming what could only be described as an incomparably splendid evening affair. Perhaps this too was part of the parlor etiquette inherited from his predecessor—but isn't this precisely the sort of story drenched in Shundōji's signature hues?

Speaking of spring palace secret play illustrations—this concerns Tokyo—there was an old man named Harukaze-tei Ryūmaru active until the pre-Shōwa war era, with his shaved head and endearingly stubby face, whose repertoire consisted entirely of comic arts from bygone eras: Hyaku Manako, solo farces, and in his Fool’s Sutra Recitations, imitations of dogs and cats. After performing the cat’s meow, he quipped, “Let me have little meow-meow take a sip,” lightly picking up the teacup on the stage to moisten his throat—a gesture he took particular delight in. I believe Painter Kimura Shōhaku once praised this man’s Meiji-era sensibility in one of his essays. Harukaze-tei Ryūmaru had an eccentric hobby of drawing crude laughable pictures and freely distributing them to his colleagues, but when one of these ended up in police hands, it caused such an uproar that all the rakugo artists who had received his drawings were summoned as witnesses. This elderly performer harbored yet another bizarre proclivity—he habitually engaged in masturbation to such an extent that it led to his divorce from his wife. One night, finding himself alone in a yose theater greenroom before any others had arrived, a tantalizing urge welled up within him. The moment he dashed into the restroom, the previous performer concluded his act and descended from the stage. However, since there was nothing they could do until Ryūmaru had finished his business, they reluctantly lowered the curtain and filled the interval with lively hayashi music, or so the story goes. Unaware that the curtain had been lowered and the music played uproariously for such a reason, when I imagine the faces of that evening’s patrons who must have been listening vacantly to the cheerful hayashi melodies, it strikes me as truly comical.

There's another one.
At Shōfukutei, a rakugo theater that once stood at the edge of Kyoto's Shinkyōgoku district, there was my old friend Mr. K.
While relieving himself in the restroom, he was suddenly seized by artistic inspiration. Pulling a knife from his pocket, he began carving a life-sized erotic scene—a subject he had long mastered—into the wooden door before him.
As he carved, he grew so absorbed that rakugo ceased to matter entirely, ultimately taking until just before the performance ended to complete his work.
Mr. K remains a veteran of the poetry world whose name would be recognized instantly if mentioned, still in good health today, but Shōfukutei itself was indeed lost during the wartime forced evacuations.
The door engraved with secret erotic art likely vanished from this world for eternity at that time.

Yūki Magosaburō, the recently deceased puppeteer who also performed under the name Ryōsen-tei Sen'yū, was a master of fūryū utsushie shadow artistry. In the summer nights of early Meiji, they would float boats by Ryōgoku Bridge and present vividly colored shadow pictures of amorous encounters through indigo curtains to guests aboard elegant roofed boats.

...the night wind flowed like water, river waves lapped against the hull, a young master—his cheeks flushed like an actor's—pressed close while gazing rapt at the shadow play's intimate scene, Yanagibashi's celebrated young beauty beside him—and in that moment, a single star trailing azure light must have streaked across the sky toward Katagawa.

In today's striptease acts, when a belle dances it may form a "picture," but the crucial background "era" contains neither poetry nor dreams.

If only the past could be made present.

Odeko no Shappo

The other day, when Baigaku—now known as the eighth-generation Hayashiya Shōzō—held his debut performance at Asakusa’s Denbō-in Temple, thoroughly drunk as I was, I ended up discussing various matters with Ichiryūsai Teijō, who was also in remarkably high spirits by then, and the late E-shi of literary kōdan. Yet whenever I drink with my mentor Yoshii Isamu, stories about this E-shi inevitably come up without fail.

He performed works ranging from Izumi Kyōka’s "The Holy Man of Mount Koya" and "The Order Book," Kōda Rohan’s "The Five-Storied Pagoda," Oguri Fūyō’s "Flowing Love," Kikuchi Yūhō’s "Poisonous Grass" and "One’s Own Sin," and Ozaki Kōyō’s "The Golden Demon" to, in his later years, even Ueda Akinari’s "Tales of Moonlight and Rain."

“That was truly something that blazed the trail for Tokugawa Musei, wasn’t it?”

And every time, Yoshii-sensei would murmur with deep emotion.

My storytelling skills were first taught to me by my master, the previous Enma, and then it was E-shi who opened my eyes to their true potential.
E-shi had transitioned from being an English teacher at K Middle School—my alma mater—to a kōdan performer, but by the time I enrolled, he was already striking the lectern in dimly lit matinee performances, delighting young kōdan enthusiasts, so I was not granted enlightenment in English.

I must apologize for this overly long preamble.

This E-shi was nicknamed "Ogatakei Jurō" by his peers.
Ogatakei Jurō refers to that old man from the rakugo "Nozarashi"—the one who goes fishing in Mukōjima, performs Buddhist rites for roadside bones, and is later tormented when said bone transforms into a ravishing beauty that night, chattering endlessly just a thin wall away from his neighbor Hachi-san. Our E-shi earned this nickname because, while he daily spouted lofty moralizing, he was in truth nothing of the sort—being rather an expert practitioner of those very matters he outwardly condemned.

Even so, E-shi's amorousness remained quintessentially his own—even in the midst of sharing her bed, even at the peak of their embrace, he would attach some damnably earnest logic to the act itself each and every time, making it all the more absurd.

Among these, the story of when his mistress—known by the nickname Odeko no Shappo (nicknames did come up frequently)—came into the picture vividly encapsulates E-shi's quintessential character.
Odeko no Shappo referred to a face where the forehead looked as though it were wearing a hat (shappo) while walking around.
It must be said—she wasn't much of an upstanding woman.

Yet this Odeko no Shappo was an incorrigible philanderer—having been either the daughter or wife of a Shiba futon shop proprietor, though perhaps precisely because she was a futon shop wife, she slept with anyone—but among her conquests were the recently deceased Hakutsuru, the previous Koencho, the current Kingoro, and countless other famous and obscure figures connected to the kōdan and rakugo world from late Taisho through Showa.

E-shi resolutely became this amorous Odeko no Shappo's patron, yet even in assuming that role he formulated a proper rationale.

“Because that woman is so pitiable, I continue our relationship.”
“If she would but accept the compassionate tears of a principled man like myself, her very character would surely transform.”

“As if that’d change anything!”

What made it so comical was that he delivered this in utterly earnest tones, his already ponderous Echigo dialect growing even weightier. Proof trumps argument: as evidence that Odeko no Shappo remained unchanged even after E-shi became her established patron, she continued to have affairs now and then. And then it was discovered.

One day, when the last thread of his patience finally snapped, E-shi took her to an elegant inn near Ryusenji (Ah! In those days, Taito Ward's Ryusenji still had beautiful lotus ponds where reed warblers sang—an idyllic waterside retreat perfect for couples!). Then, using a razor borrowed from the inn to shave all hair from a certain part of her body, he declared in his characteristically somber tone:

"Henceforth, whenever you behold that hairless expanse, let it serve as perpetual reminder to repent this act of infidelity."

After delivering this grand lecture, E-shi calmly departed for his afternoon performance.
The abandoned Odeko no Shappo promptly summoned Apprentice F, with whom she had prior dealings, and—

“Right now, that E bastard went and took care of all mine.”

“Whoa, just how much did he get you there, sis?”

“Look here—like this!”

The moment she unceremoniously spread her legs, Apprentice F—seizing the arrival of this golden opportunity—promptly reaped the spoils, or so the tale goes.

That E-shi spent his remaining years at Tamagawa Monastery, went blind, and passed away postwar.
The lotus ponds at Ryusenji can no longer be seen, and Odeko no Shappo’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Or perhaps she had already followed E-shi beyond.

Apprentice F, now still active and thriving and even appearing in this very text, asks: “Who might I be?”

What—it’s the author himself? J-Joke! Wh-Who would?!

Yose Grotesque

Long ago in the Taisho era, at rundown naniwabushi vaudeville theaters, Matsudaira Noriyoshi—the true culprit of the infamous Ochanomizu Incident from the Meiji 30s that shocked the nation—would make appearances and frequently perform his confessional monologues.
I can still vividly recall how even during my middle school years in mid-Taisho, single-sheet posters would flutter at street corners around Nezu—their white backgrounds solemnly printed in gold with the Mitsuba Aoi family crest.

On autumn nights around Showa 4 or 5 (1929–1930), at San Ichiba in Kanda Misakichō—another regular naniwabushi venue—the signboard for the mysterious thief Goshikugi Torakichi hung forlornly, and I would often stand there with my now-deceased poet friend Miyajima Teijō, gazing up in quiet awe at this Meiji-era bandit’s name boldly inscribed in large characters.

But in the end, I never did hear either Matsudaira Noriyoshi’s performance or Goshikugi Torakichi’s performance.
In the former case, as I was visiting my classmate who lived in Miyanaga-cho at the time—Mr. Kazuto Ichinohe, a scholar of Chinese literature whom I still visit today—there had been no chance to hear it from the start; while in the latter case, I myself was terribly drunk and, though Torakichi would have been fine, I thought it better to use that time to go drink elsewhere instead, and so I promptly left—a scholarly failing worthy of ten thousand deaths.

Matsudaira Noriyoshi was arrested for yet another incident shortly after I saw the poster and died a lonely death in prison, but as for Goshikugi Torakichi—though several years later Mr. Iwasaki Sakae introduced an autobiographical-style piece featuring his photograph in Hinode magazine—he likely grew old and died before the war, making it no longer possible to encounter his living voice in this world. Now more than ever, I deeply regret not having experienced their performances.

When was it that Hanai Oume of the Hama-cho Kawagishi Hakuchō murder appeared at yose theaters? During my childhood (late Meiji era), she appeared in Yoshizawa Shōkai’s moving pictures (what we now call feature films, of course). According to the memoirs of a certain old rakugo artist, Oume apparently mainly performed hand dances at yose theaters, but like a grand old cherry tree in its final decline, her once-skillful dancing had lost all vitality and become merely pitiable. After just one round of touring the yose circuit without garnering enough acclaim for encores, she ended up displaying her nameplates even at rural provincial theaters. If that were the case, then was her entry into films something that came after this failure in her yose theater appearances?

In mid-Meiji when Hanai Oume killed Hachikichi, our nation's judicial system had already progressed considerably, so Ōoka Ikuzō and Tsunoda Shinpei (Takehiro) defended her—thus she was spared execution, served hard labor, and eventually regained her freedom. But had early Meiji courts permitted appeals without immediate conviction, even those women Takahashi Oden and Yoruarashi Okinu might have avoided needless decapitation by Kubikiri Asaemon, instead gracing yose theater stages with the lingering fragrance of late-blooming chrysanthemums.
Moreover, Okinu—who initially performed as Suzukawa Koharu—had indeed been constantly showcasing her skills at various venues in the final Edo years as a leading light of Japanese magic, presenting water arts reminiscent of the White Threads of the Waterfall among other feats.
Had motion pictures been invented and introduced to our country just ten years earlier than they were, both Oden and Okinu—still radiating their fading charms upon release from prison—could have manifested their bewitching forms on screen, instantly captivating the entire capital's populace.
In other words, they were each born into this world a decade too soon.
Indeed, such misfortunes of timing remain all too common in human affairs.

Debagame.
Ikeda Kametarō's rape-murder case shook all of Tokyo in the late Meiji era—Kametarō had raped and strangled a woman returning from the baths at a nursery in Ōkubo—but because this Kametarō had buckteeth, people nicknamed him Debagame.
However, the name “Debagame” became a long-standing synonym for molester in society until just before the war, so one can imagine how sensational the incident must have been.

When this Debagame was released from prison, the astute Ueno Suzumototei promptly negotiated with the man himself and commissioned him to deliver confessional monologues in the style of Matsudaira Noriyoshi and Goshikugi Torakichi.
Admittedly, Oko's murder was undoubtedly a sensational crime of passion for the ages, but ultimately it amounted to nothing more than her killing her own lover.
By contrast, Ikeda Kametarō’s case involved a complete stranger—moreover, it was a rape-murder.
On the day when the resplendent "Ikeda Kametarō Appears" signboard was erected before Suzumoto-tei, no sooner had it gone up than curious city dwellers—off they went!—swarmed in so quickly that from the very moment of opening, it became an unprecedented overflow crowd.
"Just look at this crowd—this is precisely why I can’t quit the vaudeville business!" the theater owner was exclaiming in rapturous delight when, all at once, Shitaya Police Station issued a strict order: Debagame’s performance would not be permitted.
Even such grand success had, alas, ended as nothing more than a fleeting dream.
But I believe that even in today’s postwar freedom, this would still be banned from performance—what say you, gentlemen?

Additionally, around Showa 5 or 6 (1930–1931), old thieves going by names like the Fake Bureaucrat Apprentice and Bat Boy would appear at small-time vaudeville theaters. After delivering their confession tales, they sold anti-theft pamphlets from the stage.
In other words, these detailed in a dozen or so articles such matters as what types of homes burglars most frequently target and therefore how one ought to secure one’s doors—down to minute particulars.
As for Bat Boy, he naively presented the Fukushima-ya segment from Mokuanmi’s "Shimachidori" as his own story verbatim, but the Fake Bureaucrat Apprentice was a masterful orator whose tales proved thoroughly entertaining.
Around that time, when my wife performed at the Nichigeki Meijinkai, she happened to share the dressing room night after night with Mr. Minatoya Karyūmaru. Having recalled that he had indeed once performed as one of the two headliners alongside the Fake Bureaucrat Apprentice, I pressed him on various details about this phantom thief of yore’s true identity—but this seasoned rōkyoku performer merely smirked and refused to divulge any specifics.
There were also cases where Kaizoku Bōjirō and Mamushi no Omasa each dramatized their autobiographies and appeared as themselves—the protagonists of their own plays—but since these were theater productions rather than yose performances, I will omit them here.

In any case, Hanai Oume’s appearances at yose theaters followed precisely the same logic as Abe Sada of today touring with her self-performed play.
Goshikugi Torakichi’s appearances were no different from how Tsunematsu Kichikyō—the lecture-delivering robber—goes around giving talks everywhere today.
Thus history repeats itself—were Kobayashi Yoshio by some chance to avoid execution and be released, he would appear at yose theaters like Debagame and similarly face performance bans.

As for victims appearing at yose theaters, there was the ill-fated geisha Tsumakichi, who had both arms severed in the late Meiji-era Osaka Horie Six Murder Case.
Before the war, this tragedy was adapted into a film with Mori Shizuko portraying Tsumakichi. After making a full recovery, Tsumakichi began performing at Nigyōtei—a yose theater in Horie, the birthplace of the incident—and subsequently expanded into Tokyo's yose circuit, where she garnered tremendous acclaim.
She would hold a brush in her mouth to paint pictures on stage and perform dodoitsu ballads to shamisen accompaniment from below the stage, singing sentiments like “Falling for me—with no hands—is safest, since there’s no room for scheming or trickery”—a display that must have greatly stirred public sympathy.

The extent of Tsumakichi’s popularity and considerable income could be understood from a passage in *Chinchin Mango*—a collection of urban vignettes by Seto Hanminō (Mr. Seto Eiichi, also known as Gampu), which I had acquired during a recent trip to Utsunomiya—specifically in its section titled “Such Parent and Child,” which recounted the struggles between an Osaka-based performer and her mother.

“Look at Tsumakichi of Horie—Manjirō had both her arms cut off, but even after taking to the yose theaters, she’s this popular, supporting her parents with ease! On top of that, they came all the way from Tokyo to book her, and when she went to Tokyo herself, she made a killing—netting a thousand yen! If you’ve got any backbone, why don’t you try following her example? Not that you could! If I had three daughters like her, I could build seven or eight rental houses and live out my days as a proper landlady—ahh, how utterly dreary!”

One could well understand this from such accounts.

Examining the Meiji 34 (1901) revised edition of the program register titled *Tōkyō Rakugo Kagami*, one finds Bakantora's name listed alongside Japanese conjuror Yanagawa Isshōsai and spinning-top virtuoso Matsui Gensui.

Bakantora.
Though written in katakana, he was no foreigner like Black or Jean Paul, but unmistakably Japanese.
Bakantora was likely none other than Bakan Tora from Shimonoseki.
This Bakantora did not perform magic or musical acts; night after night he would ascend the stage with hanafuda cards and dice to expose gambling tricks—a cautionary lesson for those who meddled in Yuan Yandao’s realm.
In this regard, he somewhat resembled the aforementioned Fake Bureaucrat Apprentice and Bat Boy who sold anti-theft pamphlets, though his predecessors too must have been wandering vagrants of Shimonoseki’s rootless sort.
Nowadays, when densuke gambling brazenly flourishes along main streets in broad daylight, might we not wish for Bakantora II to reign dashingly over Tokyo’s vaudeville stages once more, revealing the secrets of rigged dice?

When it came to Nihon Tarō—that sturdy eccentric who performed tightrope walks and solo reenactments of pistol robberies while proclaiming himself an ex-Liberal Party ruffian and escaped convict—he had already become such a defining character of Taishō-era yose theater lore that even I retain exceptionally vivid memories of him. By some karmic twist, Tarō had always loved snakes, habitually carrying squirming live ones backstage. One night at a certain theater, when these serpents slithered into the audience, women and children immediately erupted in panicked shrieks. Though truth be told, had snakes suddenly appeared crawling through yose theaters in the very heart of Edo's entertainment districts, even those beyond women and children would likely have screamed aloud.

I found Nihon Tarō's grotesque charm so profoundly nostalgic that when I later wrote a reminiscence about him and included it in the limited-edition essay collection *Yose Bayashi*, I promptly received a letter from Mr. Hasegawa Shin informing me that Nihon Tarō's tightrope act had been an imitation of Enkichi Saru's.

However, dull-witted as I was, I knew nothing of Enkichi Saru at that time.
To my shame, even his name was completely unfamiliar to me.

Then, some time later, when I happened to open the June 1903 issue of the magazine *Engei Sekai*, there was an essay by Mr. Koide Ryokusui titled "The Advertisement of a Great Villain," its entire text filled with details about Eiji.

First, in the opening section:

"The flyers that Yokohama Hagoromo-za had distributed everywhere, announcing their opening at 9:00 AM on June 14th, contained terrifying descriptions and—being such a rare spectacle—they had decided to present it for public viewing."

It was recorded here that Enkichi Saru had also staged his own confession play at Hagoromo-za.
This meant Mr. Hasegawa—being Yokohama-raised—must have attended a performance around that time.

Moreover, the advertisement’s title read:

“Charity for the Education of Impoverished Children

Performance Commencement Announcement”

A Troupe of the Theatrical Association

Former Great Villain

無期徒刑囚特赦減刑人
Life-term prisoner granted special pardon and commutation

猿猴小僧事
The Account of Monkey Boy

明治噂白浪三羽烏一人
Meiji Era Legendary Outlaw Trio: One Member

本名 市村栄次郎
Real name: Ichimura Eijirō

旧福井県士族当四十七年
Former samurai of Fukui Prefecture, aged forty-seven

It was written as such: (Would the other members of the Meiji Era Legendary Outlaw Trio include figures like Weasel Boy or Thunder Boy?) followed by detailed accounts of his crimes in an extremely sensationalistic prose—how in Meiji 16 (1883) he stole a two-leaf mirror from a certain Kyoto aristocratic residence and was apprehended; how in the following year, Meiji 17, he committed arson and escaped Kyoto Prison; and how even after being transported to Hokkaidō Jōji Prison, he fled by traversing over 320 ken of electric line spanning the Ishikari River, among other exploits.

From the stage to the box seats.
Tarō’s extraordinary prison-breaking feat—nimbly traversing tightly strung wires—was undoubtedly modeled after this Enkichi Saru.

Around the same time, Mr. Hasegawa’s correspondence contained yet another anecdote so quintessentially characteristic of Nihon Tarō that it might as well have been scripted for him.

That day, Tarō—clad in his usual judo uniform and wielding a Western-style cane with a thick grip adorned with cherry blossoms—marched boldly into the entertainment department of what is now the Tokyo Shimbun but was then the Miyako Shimbun, declaring he had a matter to negotiate.

When Mr. Suda Ei came out to receive him, he suddenly pulled out a dagger from his pocket and placed it on the table with a thud.

Even Mr. Suda must have been somewhat startled inwardly, but without haste or commotion, with perfect composure, Nihon Tarō soon began using that dagger to meticulously trim each of his own grotesquely overgrown fingernails, one by one.

His entire countenance came vividly to life.

In one anecdote I’ve heard, at a rope-curtained establishment in Honjo, a young punk kept picking fights and drunkenly ranting.

Tarō, who happened to be present, intervened in this quarrel—likely with the same dagger that had chilled Mr. Suda—and drew it from its sheath with a glint before the young man.

“Hey, you there! Ain’t you scared of this thing?”

he rushed out theatrically and glared,

“Y-you’re joking!”

Even for a punk, being at least some low-ranking yakuza member,

“If I was scared of that thing, I’d be able to walk right past the old man selling higo no kami knives at the festival fair.”

As if to say, “That’s all you’ve got?” he wasn’t having any of it.

“You motherfucker!”

For a moment, he faltered slightly, but retreating now was out of the question. “Fine—if the first arrow misses, I’ll loose the second without delay,” Tarō resolved inwardly, confident that he still had plenty of secret maneuvers up his sleeve.

“Brat. So, ain’t you scared of the dagger?”

“Hey!”

“Hmm, you’ve got some nerve.”

He grinned slyly,

“Then try this one!”

No sooner had he suddenly thrust his hand into his pocket than he pulled out his cherished red-banded snake with a squirming motion and dumped it slithering onto the table.

“U-uwahh!”

Evidently harboring an intense dislike of snakes, the young punk—his earlier bravado vanishing in an instant—stiffened as if struck by a powerful electric current, turned deathly pale from head to toe, and fled out the front in frantic scrambling retreat without so much as a backward glance.

“Take that, you greenhorn!”

Having raised his victory cry, Nihon Tarō now fancied himself some combination of Shimizu Jirocho and Kunisada Chuji. Swollen with pride at expecting to receive a million thanks from the proprietor whose dire crisis he had just averted, he was instead met with the proprietor bursting out from the kitchen in an exceedingly foul mood. And then, the proprietor said.

“If you’re going to bring that snake in here, sir, you really shouldn’t go causing unnecessary trouble.”
“We still haven’t received payment from those youngsters over there.”
“You there—make sure to pay for that person’s share while you’re at it.”

……

This Nihon Tarō—according to an essay in *Yosebayashi*, had found a good husband for a daughter born to a former prostitute and was said to have spent his final years in great contentment. Yet when later accounts from Mr. Furukawa Roppa and others are pieced together, it seems this was erroneous—his twilight years likely proved wretched after all.
From my heart’s core I pray this version rings false, yet regardless—how many years now have passed since his death?

History repeats itself.
Though I have written this phrase twice already in this brief essay, a presence akin to our Nihon Tarō has never again been born into yose theater history from that time until today.
Such fine entertainers will likely never be reborn again for all eternity hereafter.