In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

41 C H A P T E R 2 EDOKKO: THE TOWNSPERSON Characteristics of the Edokko As we have seen in Chapter 1, the center of Edo was the shogun’s castle. At least until the Genroku period (1688–1704) the city was primarily the capital of the warrior. It was a teeming metropolis, a million strong, with men outnumbering women by more than two to one. Edo bustled with warriors, craftsmen, merchants, and performers from throughout the land. The upper class amused itself at the kabuki or in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters; the activities of the big spenders captured the public imagination. The shogun, daimyo, and their retainers spent almost all their money in the city; Edo was a center of consumption. Originally, very little was produced there, neither daily necessities nor high-grade cultural artifacts. Instead, articles were imported from Kamigata, that is, from the Kyoto and Osaka area. Such goods were called kudarimono—quality products that had “come down” from Kamigata. Wares that had not “come down” were considered inferior: thus the origin of the word kudaran (“not come down”), meaning uninteresting or worthless. The sale of imported goods netted great profits for Edo branches of stores headquartered in Ise, Òmi, or other provinces . From around the Genroku period these businesses, known as Edo-dana and located at Nihonbashi, Denmachò, and elsewhere, expanded greatly. This expansion signaled the rise of the Edo chònin ’s economic power. As mentioned earlier, Edo-dana were staffed exclusively by men who had come to Edo only to work. These men even saw to their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Unable to sink their roots in the city, Edo-dana employees remained perennial outsiders. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, a new type of individual appeared: the Edokko, a pure Edo chònin, who was rooted in the city itself. The first recorded usage of the term Edokko occurs in a 42 Edokko: The Townsperson senryû of 1771,1 and thereafter the word was used by many authors. Around 1788 Santò Kyòden (1761–1816) perfectly defined the character of the Edokko in a sharebon (“smart book,” witty novelettes mainly about the licensed quarters) entitled Tsûgen sò-magaki (Grand Brothel of Connoisseur Language) and a kibyòshi (“yellow-covered book,” illustrated satirical fiction) entitled Nitan no Shirò Fuji no hitoana kenbutsu (Nitan no Shirò Views the Caves of Mount Fuji). According to Kyòden,2 the Edokko chònin is typified by the following five qualities: 1. He receives his first bath in the water of the city’s aqueduct; he grows up in sight of the gargoyles on the roof of Edo castle. 2. He is not attached to money; he is not stingy. His funds do not cover the night’s lodging. 3. He is raised in a high-class, protected manner. He is quite unlike either warriors or country bumpkins. 4. He is a man of Nihonbashi (the downtown area) to the bone. 5. He has iki (refinement) and hari (strength of character). In my reading of contemporary books I have found forty-six examples of the term Edokko, all illustrative of the pride Edokko took in their identity. The main points of pride can be summarized by the five noted here by Kyòden. Kyòden’s five characteristics have, however, been subjected to much ridicule: it was Nagoya castle, not Edo castle, that was decorated with gargoyles; the aqueducts had only dirty water; the supposed “high-class” upbringing of the Edokko was nothing but an imaginary inversion of a childhood spent in poverty. Some have said that the Edokko’s vanity was merely a product of his feelings of inferiority toward the wealthy Kansai-based Edo-dana merchants; that the Edokko was merely a low-class, poor, uncultured chònin with neither strength nor guts. Documents of this age, however, demonstrate otherwise. Edokko had lived in this city from its early years and considered it home. With the passing of the Genroku and Kyòhò periods, and with the shogunal house going into its eighth and ninth generations, the true sons of Edo from Kanda, Kyòbashi, Ginza, Shiba, and the rest of the shitamachi (downtown) area were in fact accumulating great wealth. It was these pure-bred Edo chònin who were the true Edokko. These men operated riverside fish markets, worked as fudasashi (rice brokers and financial agents) at the bakufu’s Asakusa rice granary, dealt in lumber at Kiba...

Share