Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/96

84 and the sound fell with pleasant promise on their ears. They speculated on what was in store for them. One thought it would be miso soup and pickled whale-skin. ‘No,’ said the second, ‘as this is our first visit of the New Year it should be miso soup and rice-cakes.’ But the third, after careful reflection, settled firmly for miso soup and noodles. … Fujiichi then came into the room and talked to the three of them on the requisites for a successful career. Then he concluded, “You have been talking with me since early in the evening, and you may think it high time the supper was served. But one way to become a millionaire is not to provide supper. The noise of the mortar which you heard when you first arrived was the pounding of starch for the paper covers of the great ledger.’ ”

Not all of Saikaku’s stories are as humorous as this one, but even in his accounts of women who go mad for love, or of young men put to death for crimes of which they were innocent, the author maintains a detachment from the story which may remind us of Fielding in Tom Jones. At every point he contrives to show the comic features of an apparently serious tale. His books and those of other novelists of the time are sometimes called ukiyo literature. Ukiyo is a term which formerly had been used in the sense of the “sad world”, but, by taking another meaning of the word uki, ukiyo came at this time to mean “the floating world”. This was the perfect description of the new society. Change, which had formerly been considered a sad phenomenon, as expressed in the falling of the cherry-blossoms or the scattering of the autumn leaves, now came to stand for all that was most desirable. Everyone wanted to be up to date, and novelty was the goal not only of the