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480 TOURISTS AND ONLOOKERS But who would think now it was other than a bird flying among trees? Who would doubt it was a heroic beast running over low hills? He copied its shape in colors, And it covers the entire screen. Look at it closely, the downy hairs have become gigantic. Now I realize the majesty of Creation! —Minagawa Kien, 1734–1807 The writer Kien apparently composed this after admiring a flea painted in massive magnification by Nakagawa Rosetsu (1754–1799), although such a work is not extant. Rosetsu must have used an imported European microscope. translated by Timon Screech % ) % TERAKADO SEIKEN Z Terakado Seiken (1796–1868), an orphaned son of a minor official of Mito Domain, went through a period of delinquency before he soberly devoted himself to the Confucian classics, opening his own private academy in his late twenties. His failureto entertheadministrationofMito seemsto have beenthecatalystfor penning his first and most famous work, An Account of the Prosperity of Edo (Edo Hanjōki, five parts, begun in 1831 and published until 1838). Its wildfire success proved to be a mixed blessing, as fame invariably invited scrutiny and official notice. After a preliminary ban in 1835, Seiken, undaunted, issued even more pointed attacks on administrative ineptitude. Finally in 1842, as part of the Tenpō Reforms, copies of the book and the woodblocks were confiscated because they “spread town gossip full of rudeness” and “inappropriately quoted from the classical sages.” Seiken was then prohibited from official service, a virtual dishonorable discharge from samurai status. During the remaining twenty-six years of his life, Seiken wandered throughout central Honshū. Offering his services as a schoolmaster and literary “jobber,” he produced inscriptions, memorial essays, and book prefaces for a considerable rural vanity industry. Fittingly for a reporter of the prosperity of Edo, his death in April 1868 almost coincides with the demise of “Edo” itself—reborn as “Tokyo” and the hub of a radical new order in September of that same year. TOURISTS AND ONLOOKERS 481 Each of some sixty segments of the work centers around a single node of urban vitality, which could not have been observed in such sharp detail without the years of personal experience as a delinquent roaming the darker side of Edo. While he wallows in the glory of consumerist culture of the metropolis, he takes sides with the downtrodden in pointing a finger at the failure of the Tokugawa government. Many of his essays criticize the inequity of the economy and bureaucracy while acknowledging them as necessary conditions for the elaborate consumption of wealth and talent in popular entertainment that distinguished Edo from any other urban center. The text is almost exclusively in literary Chinese of constantly variable purity and ornamentation. Mundane aspects of Edo life were translated into this most elevated form of expression, including quotations from Chinese classics, often wryly distorted or inappropriately applied, caricaturing Confucian studies and its hierarchy. In his descriptions of the hubbub of Edo, the pleasure-loving inhabitants appear as tiny animated figures against elaborate backdrops—puppets, one might say, in some peep show cabinet while Seiken assumes the role of exhibitor or showman, constantly amplifying by grandiose description the crowded miniature before us. As the sights and sounds of the city vary constantly, Seiken’s prose fluctuates between calm, objective description, harangue, and painful and intimate self-revelation. “Urban Chivalry,” selected from book III of An Account of the Prosperity of Edo, is a meticulously detailed account of the fashion of fighting among the laborer class Edokko, which ironically resembles historical battles of the samurai class. The most impressive are the mock-heroic account of the battles themselves and rituals to restore order. Seiken’s exaggerated representation is based on the myth of Edokko, who were full of bluster but short on action. Toughs in town were idolized for their “spit and vinegar” attitude and their readiness to fight anyone who challenged them. The greatest folk hero was Banzuiin Chōbei (1614–1650), the crime boss whose stories repeatedly appeared in the book market and on the kabuki stage until the end of the nineteenth century. The line “even if Idaten the fleet-footed god should arrive on his demon horse wearing a leather battle coat” directly quotes a scene from Tsuruya Namboku’s play featuring the son of Banzuiin Chōbei, who meets for the first time Shirai Gonpachi, a fictionalized young tough from the country. Here the Edokko hero repeats his father’s claim as champion of...

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