[Book Review] Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard (2014)

Lust, Commerce, and Corruption

An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai

Translated by Mark Teeuwen, Kate Wildman Nakai, Miyazaki Fumiko, Anne Walthall, and John Breen. Edited and introduced by Mark Teeuwen and Kate Wildman Nakai

Published by Columbia University Press in February 2014

The core content of the book Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard (2014), translated by Mark Teeuwen et al., is a translation of an extensive critique of all manners of social decadence of the late Edo period entitled Seiji kenbunroku (Matters of the World: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard). The critique was written by an anonymous samurai author under the pseudonym of Buyō Inshi and was published in 1816. According to Buyō, the country’s unprecedented political stability under the reign of Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early seventeenth century brought order, ease and comfort to the people. However, too much ease and abundance gradually led to excessive luxury as well as corruption and decadence of the society. Upset by the evil changes and depraved deeds of the people of his time, Buyō observes the deteriorating attitudes and behaviours of the four classes – warriors, framers, artisans and merchants – and criticizes their obsession with extravagance and greed during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Buyō begins with a comprehensive and lengthy description of the social problems and moral conditions in the realm (chapter one to chapter six of the book), outlining the position and moral issues of different social groups – such as warriors, framers, temple and shrine priests, townspeople, courtesans, and kabuki actors – within the larger society. Although Buyō brings up a lot of different social phenomena such as the extravagant lifestyle of wealthy framers and artisans, the popularization of arts learning (poetry, calligraphy, and paintings), the arrogance and pride of rich people, ruined mountains and rivers, the idolatry of the Buddhist concepts of karmaand nirvana, the unbalance of wealth in the cities and provinces, and the loss of benevolent governance (exploitation of framers), they can all be grouped as one single central problem – the collapse of Confucianism.

A casual observation on Buyō’s narrative and criticism of the social phenomena of his time, one can see that he is a well-educated samurai who has read most of the Confucian classics. As stated in the twelfth chapter of The Analects, “There is government, when the ruler being a ruler, and the minister being a minister; when the father being a father, and the son being a son.” Confucius believes that social harmony can only be possible when the people of the land understand their rank and carry out the according behaviours and duties within the social hierarchy. In Seiji kenbunroku, Buyō criticizes that the wealthy framers visit pleasure quarters and “practice martial arts unsuitable to their status” (P. 194). He continues to criticize that artisans and merchants also enjoy fame as poets in Chinese or Japanese, calligrapher and painters which is “not appropriate” to their occupation. By criticizing the luxurious lifestyle of wealthy framers and the popularization of arts among people of the lower classes, Buyō reveals himself as a strict Confucianist who suggests that hierarchy and dutifulness are keys to social order and harmony.

On the other hand, Buyō’s criticism on people’s obsessions with extravagance, greed and pride during the late Edo period reflects the Confucian virtue of austerity. As recorded in the seventh chapter of The Analects, Confucius said, “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow; I have joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honours acquired by unrighteousness, are to me as a floating cloud.” Confucianism suggests that one should consume without damaging justice. Moreover, Buyō also assaults against the anthropocentric act of the greedy people who ruin the Mother Nature for their own “human comfort or trade profits” (P. 703), believing that such great harm will destroy the “character of the land” and “damages the order governing water” (P. 703). Buyō’s view of nature corresponds with the Confucian cosmology of “organic holism” in which human is considered as a humble being integrated with the great mighty universe, and thus human must not regard themselves as superior to nature. As noted by Buyō, human’s evil deeds do bring about numerous natural disasters and enormous deaths. Furthermore, Buyō points out that Buddhism is a serious impediment to the well-being and morality of the society, reflecting Confucian religious skepticism and agnosticism. As Confucius says in chapter six of The Analects, “To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.”

Indeed, though a significant amount of factual information and statistics is provided throughout the book, Seiji kenbunrokushould not be read as a neutral historical account of the real life, culture and fashion of the late Edo period. In despising the lifestyles, evil deeds, “shows of luxury” and “shameful spectacles” of the wealthy pleasure-seekers (such as idlers, townspeople and kabuki actors), fake cultured elites and unbenevolent governors, Buyō writes with strong prejudices in a contemptuous and elitist manner.

Yet, if we look at the text from another perspective, it actually reflects Buyō’s strong nostalgia for the past. As written by himself:

“It is said… people responded directly to what they saw, and now even heavenly calamities or earthly disasters could upset them. This is called the Japanese spirit, yamato-damashii. I am told that even the Chinese praised Japan as the “land of divine men” or as the “land of gentlemen.” (P. 713)

Buyō is nostalgic for the “land of gentlemen” – the Confucian ideal – that no longer exists (It actually never truly exists). He also says that he has heard that “in ancient time the feelings of [Japanese] people were clear and bright, without duplicity and never obscured by a single cloud or wisp of mist” (P. 706). Throughout the text, he often makes references to and even “reminisce” the good old times which he has heard about. Given the fact that the book was published in 1816, it can be assumed that Buyō was born in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Therefore, he is reminiscing a past that he has never experienced. As Svetlana Boym noted, “The fantasies of the past, determined by the needs of the present, have a direct impact on the realities of the future. The consideration of the future makes us take responsibility for our nostalgia tales.”(1) Buyō writes his social critique with a contemptuous and elitist tone, but he is nonetheless a philanthropic and benevolent samurai who yearns for a possible strategy for survival, a way to restore the Confucian past for the already-decadent-but-still-rescuable (because “murder” has not occurred) country during his time. Yet, Buyō does not fall into the abyss of nostalgic phantasmagorias. While longing for the better past in his fantasy world, he at the same time manages to remain sober in reality and thinks of solution for the future of the country, that is, the execution of the Military Way. He believes that, with the assistance of the legalistic and relatively more violent Military Way to first restore the “basic social order and moral standard” of the country, a peaceful and righteous society governed by a Confucian government consisted of benevolent and virtuous gentlemen – thus the “land of gentlemen” – can then be revitalized. Yet, it is regrettable to learn that this revitalization of the ideal Confucian land does not come before the arrival of Matthew Perry and his black ships.

Despite Buyō’s elitist attitude and nostalgic sentiment, the historical facts and figures as well as the unique opinions and insights of the author are certainly invaluable. His prejudices do not eliminate the scholarly value of the text. Buyō provides his readers with a scathing and entertaining read through an extraordinarily vivid depiction of the social phenomena during the late Edo period. Seiji kenbunroku is undoubtedly a remarkable historical account of the Edo society, not only serving as a crucial academic apparatus for those who are interested in Japanese history and culture but also bearing a timeless quality that allows it to continue to reverberate in the twenty-first-century world.

If you would like to learn more about this book, please visit the Columbia University Press website:

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/lust-commerce-and-corruption%5D/9780231166447

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Reference:
(1) Svetlana Boym, “Nostalgia and Its Discontents,” The Hedgehog Review Vol. 9 No. 2 (2007), 8.

Frailty, Melancholy and the Death of Yūgao: The Japanese Aesthetics of Wabi-sabi in The Tale of Genji (源氏物語)

徳川美術館蔵、源氏物語絵巻(国宝)、夕顔の断裁は未発見だそうです。

(photo taken from: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/yunitake2000/45490645.html)

The aesthetic conception of wabi-sabi (please see: The Definition of Wabi-sabi)is manifested profoundly in the fourth chapter of the well-known Japanese Heian literature The Tale of Genji – Yūgao: The Twilight Beauty. The chapter begins with Genji’s visit to his old nurse who lives in Gojō. Genji examines the neighbourhood and notices a lovely crowd of white flowers clustering among a bright green vine against the deserted wall of a small house (where the female protagonist of the chapter, Yūgao, dwells in). Stunned by the flowers’ delicate beauty of tenderness and feebleness, Genji murmurs absent-mindedly, “A word I would have with you, O you from afar.”(1) These white flowers are called yūgao (夕顔), which literally means “twilight beauty,” grow and flourish only in a cramped and shabby environment. “Poor flowers!” Genji exclaims. He then orders his man to go and pick him some of these pitiful flowers. Genji is not only sympathetic but also drawn to the shabbiness and frailty of the pale blossom. Leaning miserably in every direction in such a wretched neighbourhood, yūgao is humble and simple yet melancholy and pitiful.

Unlike bright red rose, which symbolizes royalty, devotion and sophistication, or Chinese orchid, which symbolizes literati culture, elegance and refinement, the pale yūgao is endearing in its own aesthetic quality and principles – wabi and sabi. These feeble white flowers enjoy being surrounded by austerity, rusticity and chaos – which are characteristics of the wild primitive state of nature that is untouched by civilization and culture. Yūgao does not at all concern about worldly matters such as status, power, fame, human civilization and material. While roses and orchids live in a civilized yet artificial world celebrating all the noble symbolic meanings that are attached to them, yūgao lives in the wild enjoying its shabby and primitive yet genuine and inartificial state as an integrated part of the mighty Mother Nature. In other words, roses and orchids have already become an anthropocentric victim that is constantly being manipulated in different ways (for political, economic and religious purposes) while yūgao, though unrecognised, isolated and far from the civilized human world, takes pleasure in “un-civilization”, unpretentiousness, solitude, tranquillity and wabi. By being “imperfect”, powerless and distant from mundaneness, yūgaoremains its harmonious cosmic relationship with nature as well as the universe.

Besides wabi, this tiny pale flower also embodies the Japanese aesthetic value of sabi. In the scene in which Genji’s man, obeying the order from his master, goes and picks the white flowers for Genji, a pretty young maid comes out from the small house and offers the man with a perfumed fan. “Here,” she says, “give them (the yūgao) to him on this – their stems are so hopeless.”(2) The flowers are too fragile to be held by human hands. With its feebleness and colourlessness, yūgao stirs sorrow and desolate sentiments. These white flowers are so fragile as if they are dying. Yet, such feeble state and “imperfection” become a form of perfection. In the aesthetic concept of sabi, beauty does not necessarily require a perfection of form. The delicacy and ephemerality of yūgao should not be understood as being in the process of dying; instead, the flowers are returning to their origin. They are returning to the earth. Their “imperfection” allows them to achieve reunification with the universe. The feebleness of yūgao manifests the circle of departing from and returning to nature: being born from the universe, leaving the universe for ego, individualism, reason and civilization, and becoming one with the universe again. It is exactly the aesthetics of sabi that makes yūgao’s frailty so endearing, spiritual, beautiful and alluring.

Yūgao, the female protagonist of the chapter who shared the same name with the white flowers, is persuaded by Genji and goes with him to a deserted villa near Gojō at dawn. The place is strangely disturbing and quite isolated. “The place is eerie,” Genji says to himself when he is examining the surroundings of the villa.(3) With the shrubbery plants, ancient groves and a fallen gate covered with ferns, the atmosphere is not only silent and remote, but also very desolate and gloomy. Yūgao and Genji spend the evening together in the villa exchanging affectionate poems and gazing out at the melancholic scenery of the place under the twilight glow. Terrified by the gloomy view of the villa’s garden, Yūgao is anxious and yields to Genji little by little. “She had now lain by him all day, piercingly young and sweet in her shy terror.”(4) Genji is charmed by Yūgao’s bashfulness, timidity and feebleness.

Yūgao’s delicate charm of frailty is known as rōtashi(﨟たし), which is “an adjective denoting a Heian ideal of feminine beauty that is used to describe the frail beauty and charm of a girl or woman that inspires in the observer a desire to protect or cherish her.”(5) Similar to the white flowers, the charm of rōtashiis aroused by the beauty of wabi-sabi. Yūgao, the female protagonist, and yūgao, the white flowers, are both a feeble and timid being. Not clinging on materials, status or reputation, both of them are pure, humble and effortlessly beautiful. “It is frailty that gives a woman her charm, though. I do not care for a woman who insists on valuing her own wits,” Genji says to Ukon, the nurse of Yūgao, one evening after the death of the lady. Shy, weak and powerless, both Yūgao and yūgao gleam in their own modest and bashful way, profoundly revealing the beauty of wabi and sabi.

As the story proceeds, a growing grotesque atmosphere dominates the scene. In the dead of night, Genji sees a beautiful woman in his dream, accusing him of being heartless and berates him for having a love affair with an insignificant person like Yūgao. The woman then begins to shake Yūgao awake. Frightened, Genji wakes up and feels a heavy menacing presence around him. Yūgao moans. Turning to look at her in the torchlight, Genji catches a glimpse of the woman in his dream sitting next to Yūgao’s pillow. The woman immediately vanishes. Yūgao is possessed by a malign spirit. Terrified and delirious, she soon grows cold and stops breathing.

When the night is finally over, Koremitsu, Genji’s foster brother and confidant, comes to the villa and conveys Yūgao’s corpse to a quiet temple in Eastern Hills. “Genji did not have the strength to lift her in his arms, and it was Koremitsu who wrapped her in a padded mat and laid her in the carriage. She was so slight that he was more drawn than repelled.”(6) Even though Yūgao is now a corpse, cold and unpleasant to touch, Genji finds her “more drawn than repelled.” The beauty of the corpse is revealed as it embodies the aesthetics of wabi-sabi. The bleak melancholic corpse, rather than frightening, is calm and tranquil. It evokes a deeply personal and sensual aesthetic consciousness. It is a bittersweet representation of both melancholy and serenity, a sense of peace and solitude buoyed by liberation from emotions, desires and material hindrance of the earthly mundane world. Thus, the beauty of the corpse can only be perceived when one turns the focus from outer appearance to look within. Genji is drawn to the inner spirituality and solitude of Yūgao’s corpse, which is now subtly, piece by piece, returning to nature, returning to the origin of life. Similar to yūgao, the white flowers, the corpse of Yūgao does not symbolize death. Instead, its ephemerality witnesses a rebirth in another metaphysical space. The corpse symbolizes the reunification with nature. The perishing is beautiful.

On the second evening after Yūgao’s death, Genji follows Koremitsu to the temple where the corpse is rested. Looking at the pale corpse, Genji is not afraid. “No fear troubled him. She was as lovely as ever; as yet she betrayed no change.”(7) Once again, Genji finds the corpse pleasant to gaze upon. Although the corpse is cold, pale and static, one can feel the vivid circulation of qi (8) under such unvivid, imperfect and weary appearance. One can sense the substance of the corpse, piece by piece, tranquilly returning to the mighty Mother Nature. It is the beauty of wabi-sabithat cultivates the inner aesthetics of a dead body, and helps viewers maintain a calm and peaceful mind when they see corpse or witness the death of someone.

Higashiyama Kaii, a Japanese artist, once said, “When I enjoy the sunset over the far mountains while sitting on a manless grassland, I feel that, at that very moment, I am reunified with nature. There is a very powerful self-consciousness of being one entity with nature. I am alive and dead at the same time.”(9) The beauty of wabi and sabi is manifested profoundly in this statement. Alive, because he is an individual who has a strong ego and is clinging on the materialistic world, making him disconnected with nature; dead, because Higashiyama, while being alone on the grassland, is reunified with nature, leaving all human desires and material hindrance behind in the earthly world and returning back to the origin, thus the universe. What Higashiyama experienced is a cycle of birth and rebirth. Being alive is a process of approaching death; while death is in fact the origin of being. Death is the beginning of a new life. Thus, death is the end of being alive, while at the same time, seemingly paradoxically, it is also the beginning of being alive. It is an eternal cycle. It is the order of the universe. The death of Yūgao, therefore, in spite of its sorrow and desolate appearance, symbolizes her grand reunification with nature – the ultimate goal of human life, as in the contexts of Taoism and Zen Buddhism. This is the essence of the aesthetic concepts of wabi-sabi. Yūgao’s desolate corpse becomes gracefully beautiful, exemplifying the beauty of vitality and longevity at another cognitive and metaphysical level that cannot be explained by worldly logos or human’s analytic powers.

After seeing Yūgao for the very last time, Genji goes back home and, under the clouded twilight sky, murmurs in blank despair:

“When the clouds to me seem always to be the smoke that rose from her pyre, 

how fondly I rest my gaze even on the evening sky!”(10)

Such poetic atmosphere not only reflects Genji’s great grief over his loss of his lover, but also testifies Yūgao’s reunification with nature, her being one with nature. All her sadness, happiness, pain, memories, desires, emotions, sensuality and earthly attachments are now melting into air, leaving only peace and tranquillity. Genji’s poem is solitary without an affectionate response.(11) The absence of a respondent poem underscores the finality of the parting of the two lovers. Genji’s poetic lament undoubtedly manifests the aesthetics of wabi-sabi melancholically and elegantly.

The image of the lovely feeble yūgaoblooming briefly against the deserted wall in the shabby neighbourhood of Gojō illustrated in the beginning of the chapter effectively coveys, along the proceeding of the story, Yūgao’s feebleness, humble existence and ephemeral beauty, and presages her early and sudden death. The evanescent quality of both yūgao and Yūgao thrives most profoundly in the twilight, corresponding to the meaning of the name – “Twilight Beauty” – and at the same time revealing the aesthetic ideal of wabi-sabi with the finest manner. Frailty, desolation and melancholy are the most significant elements in this chapter, giving The Tale of Genji greater sensitivity and grotesquery as well as a refinedly lyrical tone. The beauty of yūgao, the feeble white flowers, and Yūgao, the pitiful young protagonist, is not defined by superficial appearance. Such sublime beauty can only be perceived by a tranquil and sensitive state of mind. Having the ability to see the “invisible” and pare away the unnecessary can lead one to the essence of wabi-sabi.

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References:
(1) Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji, trans. Royall Tyler (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 56.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Ibid, 65.
(4) Ibid, 66.
(5) Janet Emily Goff, “The Tale of Genji as a Source of the Nō: Yūgao and Hajitomi,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 42, No. 1 (1982): 195.
(6) Murasaki, The Tale of Genji,69-70.
(7) Ibid, 72.
(8) Qi is a Taoist term that can be translated as “energy flow” or “life force.”
(9) Higashiyama Kaii東山魁夷, Mei yu you li 美與遊歷 [Beauty and Travel], trans. Zhuge Weidong 諸葛蔚東 (Shijiazhuang Shi: Hua shan wen yi chu ban she: Hebei jiao yu chu ban she, 2001), 38.
(10) Murasaki, The Tale of Genji, 76.
(11) In the manner of sequence of love poetry in the Heian imperial anthologies, a lover should start the initial overture and his/her partner should respond the overture with a corresponding affectionate poem, declaring the mutual affection or personal hesitation.

The Japanese Aesthetic Concept of Wabi-sabi (侘寂)

Wabi-sabi (侘寂) has always been considered as the essence of Japanese conception of beauty. Although the words wabi and sabi are always linked together, they are two individual aesthetic concepts that should be understood separately. Wabi (侘), which means “tranquil simplicity”, suggests that one should remain unprivileged, poor and primitive, in other words, not to be dependent on worldly and artificial attachments – wealth, power, fame, reputation and materialism – and yet “to feel inwardly the presence of something of the highest value, above time and social position.”(1) Wabi is the manifestation of the beauty in nature untouched by human hands, thus, the very naturalness and austerity. The appearance of an object does not determine its wabi as it may be ornamented, altered or artificial. As Prusinski pointed out, “the beauty of wabimust be taken into account with the feeling in and essence of itself. There is beauty in its state of being rather than only from the observer’s subjective view.”(2) A person does not necessarily embody the essence of wabi either as they can be dressed according to their social status, and cultivated and trained under particular rules, manners and etiquettes. Anything that is managed, articulated and artificial does not bear the aesthetics of wabi.

While wabi stresses on the sophisticated yet precarious subtle line between beauty and shabbiness, and appreciates the intrinsic attribute of an object, sabi (寂) sees beauty through the rust, desolation, imperfection as well as the perishing and feeble state of an object. A newly-made object, which is a “manipulated” artificial product created from organic natural materials, is undoubtedly beautiful. Yet, what gives it aesthetic value and meaning of existence is its fate to wear and perish. As Itoh described, “Indeed, sabi is at its ultimate when age and wear bring a thing to the very threshold of its demise. Appreciation of sabi confirms the natural cycle of organic life – that what is created from the earth finally returns to the earth and that nothing is ever complete. Sabi is true to the natural cycle of birth and rebirth.”(3) It is exactly this subtle conception – to destroy artificiality and appreciate the intrinsic quality and unaffected simplicity of nature – that makes the Japanese aesthetics of sabi so extraordinarily spiritual and heart-stirring.

京焼・伊藤南山＆書・川瀬みゆき「ふたり展」 （２０１４年３月２２日～３０日）

行書の「侘寂」（わびさび || wabi-sabi）

(photo taken from: http://blog.kawasemi-style.com/?month=201404)

References:

(1) Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), 23.
(2) Lauren Prusinski, “Wabi-Sabi, Mono no Aware, and Ma: Tracing Traditional Japanese Aesthetics Through Japanese History,” Studies on Asia Vol. 2 (2012): 29.
(3) Itoh Teiji and Tanaka Ikko, Wabi sabi suki: the essence of Japanese beauty, trans. Lynne E. Riggs (Hiroshima, Japan: Mazda Motor Corp., 1993), 7.