Page:Sketches of Tokyo Life (1895).djvu/25

Rh the jester this quality is fully availed of; but the rakugoka is not always a mere quibbler, for not a few of his tales teem with pathos, their chief distinction from the tales of his more martial confrères being that to him love is a more congenial theme than war. Love and humour he makes his domain. Being of a later birth than the kodanshi as the Taiheiki-reader’s successors are called, he was long looked upon as an intruder upon their preserves, and ranked lower in the popular estimation, but of his greater popularity there can be no question. In the second quarter of the seventeenth century, Anrakuan Sakuden, a noted raconteur of the time, wrote for a nobleman his Cure for Drowsiness, a book of anecdote, upon which rakugoka have all freely drawn for their subjects; and a quarter of a century later, appeared the first professional rakugoka. The new profession soon gained members; but it was Fukai Shidoken, who first gave it its great popularity. Shidoken had been brought up in a temple, but being driven thence by his fellow-acolytes’ jealousy of his ability, he turned an itinerant priest. He was, however, disgusted with the crass ignorance and hollow pretences of the priesthood wherever he went, and he abandoned that calling for the occupation of a story-teller. His tales were disfigured with obscenities, but he drew large crowds as his priestly lore served him in good stead in embellishing his stories with saws and instances from classical and canonical literature. No other story-teller of his time was at once so humorous and erudite. He died in 1764 at the age of eighty-three. At his death, his profession was fully established and recognised as a legitimate calling.

The yosé, or regular story-tellers’ halls, were first built about a century ago. There were in Yedo seventy-five yosé in 1815, which increased in ten years by fifty; but a famine and, later, the prohibition of female singers by the Government reduced the number of these halls to seventy-six; and eventually they were closed altogether. But as the