Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/320

304 fiction during the Yedo period. There was no social intercourse to speak of between men and women of the better class. Whenever reasons of economy did not stand in the way, the women lived a very secluded life, seeing no men but their near relations. Their marriages were arranged for them, and romantic attachments were extremely exceptional. The manners and customs of the respectable classes of society were therefore not a promising field for the writer of fiction. He preferred the freer atmosphere of the Kuruwa, to which pretty gardens and handsome buildings, with the showy education and gay costumes of their inmates, lent a superficial appearance of elegance and refinement. The element of romance in the lives of these women was perhaps small, but it existed, and it was far more natural to credit them with romantic adventures and passions than their more immaculate sisters. And if the novelist's description of these places as the home of wit and jollity, and the natural resort of all young men of spirit and fashion, had a tendency to corrupt public morals, it is also to be remembered that the class of readers whom he addressed were not particular in these matters. It was a case of populus vult corrumpi, et corrumpitur.

The most famous of the Hachimonjiya publications is a work entitled Keisei Kintanki (1711). Jishō's name appears on the title-page, but it is probably one of those which were really written by Kiseki. It is not a novel, but a debate on a subject of which I must renounce the attempt to give an idea. In so far as mere words go, there are more objectionable works, but the whole attitude of the author is profoundly immoral. What is specially unpardonable is his irreverent use of terms borrowed from the Buddhist religious vocabulary, and