The Art of Censorship in Postwar Japan

Chapter 5 Pornographic Adaptations of the Classics: The Safflower (1948–1950) and The Record of the Night Battles at Dannoura (1970–1976)

ChAPtEr 5 pornographic Adaptations of the Classics The Safflower (1948–1950) and The Record of the Night Battles at Dannoura (1970–1976) In late 1948, publisher Matsukawa Ken’ichi was indicted for the publishing , sales, and possession of 1,400 copies of The Safflower and for selling 170 copies of a privately published secret edition of Kafū’s “Yojōhan.” In the Tokyo District Court verdict of August 1950, although the publisher was acquitted of all charges relating to The Safflower, he was convicted on the “Yojōhan” charges and given a three-month prison term as well as an additional two-year suspended sentence. Two booksellers also indicted were similarly acquitted of all charges related to The Safflower but convicted for “Yojōhan,” with the first receiving the maximum allowable fine of 5,000 yen for selling 147 copies and the second fined 3,000 yen for possession with the intent to sell for a mere two copies.1 Significantly, the court found all involved guilty for selling just over 300 copies of “Yojōhan,” while it acquitted them for selling almost five times the number of copies of The Safflower. What can explain the huge disparity in these verdicts? Clearly not the breadth of distribution. Because the judges offered no explanation for their decision to convict “Yojōhan,” instead devoting their entire verdict to justifying why they exculpated The Safflower, we can only speculate as to the reason .2 But tellingly, the prosecutor opted not to put the author Kafū himself on trial while severely punishing the publishers and booksellers for republishing and selling “Yojōhan.” The perceived gravity of the offense suggests that the sanctity of a canonized author like Kafū was at stake. A discussion on how such charges of authenticity and inauthenticity surrounding authorship figured prominently in the “Yojōhan” trials follows in the next Pornographic Adaptations of the Classics 157 chapter. First let us consider how the concurrent trials of The Safflower and Dannoura staged a debate over the authenticity of the work itself and especially its archaic language. The Safflower: Authentic Classic and Archaic Genre Grabbing a pickled radish, the maidservant takes her leave. The cheating man is frustrated and escapes grumbling. takuwan o/nigitte gejo wa / sarete iru mao no fushubi wa/koboshikoboshi nige —The Safflower (Haifū suetsumuhana, ca. 1776)3 The Safflower is a late eighteenth-century collection of senryu, a genre of comic verse that was essentially a more vulgar and witty offshoot of Bashō’s haikai.4 In choosing the name of one of the most vulgar characters from a classic like TheTale of Genji—the large, red-nosed Lady Suetsumuhana—the collection can be said to insistently embrace the low within the high literary tradition. The association between the two works was limited mostly to its title, although some of its verses contain parodic sexual references to Genji, as well as to other classic Japanese premodern texts.5 The work consists of primarily capping verses (tsukeku), seventeen-syllable verses that were originally created by adding a verse to the previous fourteen-syllable one (maeku) composed by another poet. As an exclusive collection of indecent senryu, or “last choice” verses (suebanku), the work is composed of the bawdiest of the bawdy. Its verses describing “instances of rape, illicit intercourse, streetwalking , [and] pornographic pictures” were originally gathered into this single volume from among those routinely deleted from published collections out of fear of censorship.6 In the late eighteenth century, similar collections were published but were eventually discontinued as a result of the Kansei Reform (1787–1793) censorship regulations. In the modern period as well, The Safflower repeatedly encountered censorship bans, including, most notably, a 1928 annotated version by author and publisher Umehara Hokumei, who was often targeted by the censors for his erotic and proletariat writings.7 In the 1950 indictment, the prosecutor charged the publisher Matsukawa with “collecting old senryu verses that were vulgar into a pocketsized edition [bunkobon] and adding footnotes” (YS, 1:146). Of significance, even in this terse indictment the prosecutor noted the addition of footnotes by the publisher and the choice of a portable and inexpensive medium. At 158 the Canon under Fire issue here was a question of access and accessibility, its republication into a comprehensible and portable form. For the judges, however, making a lost Japanese poetic tradition available to contemporary Japanese readers redeemed the enterprise. In their verdict, the...