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GHOSTS, MONSTERS, AND DEITIES 113 one in their right mind would think of him without scorn. He makes himself out to be a great Confucian, but he is no Confucian at all. We might call him a truly rare monster who makes a living by deceiving lords great and small. translated by William J. Farge Rootless Grass HIRAGA GENNAI Z Hiraga Gennai (1728–1779), son of a low-ranking retainer of Sanuki Domain, was appointed by Lord Matsudaira Yoritaka (1711–1771) as the domain’s herbalist. Under the lord’s sponsorship, he went to Nagasaki in 1752 to study herbology and mineralogy and later moved on to Edo where he added Chinese studies and medical science to his repertoire. A child of the age when new fields of study and professions emerged for innovative young men, Gennai risked his rank as a samurai when he resigned from the Sanuki Domain in 1761, succumbing to the allure of possible opportunities. He achieved instant fame with an exhibition of Japan’s natural resources, which he organized in order to encourage domestic production over importation. The reputation of the exhibition and his voluminous encyclopedia of natural resources attracted the attention of the all-powerful grand councilor of the Bakufu, Tanuma Okitsugu (1719–1788). Gennai was the sort of renaissance man whose ambition saw no bounds. He built his career on being the “first in Japan” to develop a thermometer, asbestos cloth, and even an electric generator. His method was no different from what is called “reverse engineering” in current computer science: he dismantled models he obtained through his Nagasaki connections in order to discover the original principles behind them. He was also the first to introduce and teach Western-style porcelain art and oil painting. As a speculator, he worked on large-scale projects such as gold mining, salt production, and rice transportation, none of which seems to have produced any remarkable result. His self-declared status as the “first in Japan” carried over to his literary career, which he maintained on the side. His jōruri play The Holy Story of Yaguchi Ferry Crossing (Shinrei Yaguchi no Watashi, partially performed, 1770), composed under the pen name of Fukuuchi Kigai, was the first to feature the Edo dialect in this genre. Using the pen name Fūrai Sanjin, he invented dangibon, a written genre of comic sermons, which imitated popular lectures delivered on temple grounds and such. His major works in this 114 GHOSTS, MONSTERS, AND DEITIES category, Rootless Grass (Nenashigusa, part I, five volumes, 1763; part II, five volumes, 1769) and The Dashing Life of Shidōken (Fūryū Shidōken-den, five volumes, 1763), established him as a creative writer. According to his own claim,threethousandcopiesofRootlessGrassweresold,makinghimthefirst best-seller fiction writer in Edo and the “founder” of the entire gesaku genre. There is a thick aura of mystery about Gennai the man as well as his life and career. On the one hand he is labeled a genius, an inventor, a renaissance man; on the other, he has been called a trickster, a fraud, and a jack-of-all-trades who produced nothing in the end. Rumors abound, particularly about his incarceration and death: he was involved in an injury or possibly a murder case in 1779, but it is unclear what prompted his arrest and whether or not he died in prison of tetanus or from an unnatural cause, or whether he escaped with the aid of friends. Scholars have attempted to separate facts from biases and the man from his legends, but they have not arrived at an agreement on such issues as the level of his scholarship, his competence in Chinese and Dutch, or the quality of his pictorial and literary art. The mixed impression of personality and quality in Gennai’s career has so fascinated the Japanese that he has been featured in many biographies and studies as well as representations in literature and the media ever since the Edo period. Rootless Grass tells the story of Enma, the emperor of hell, who falls in love with the female impersonator Kikunojō II (1741–1773). Gennai ’s description of hell is just as lively and, in a sense, realistic as that of the famous scene of the Ryōgoku Bridge. Hell is in the process of elaborate construction to accommodate the huge recent population growth caused by the increased crime rate in Edo. As hell is likened to Edo with its population explosion and technical advancement (the mass...

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