Page 31 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

cat. 6
Writing box with imperial
cart design,
seventeenth century,
lacquer on wood with makie,
3.9 x 22.4 x 20.9
(I'AxSVaxS'A),
Tokyo National Museum,
Important Cultural Property

30

in Edo. In addition, rural men and women sought temporary employment in towns and cities during
the slack agricultural season or after falling on hard times. This led to an environment where status
distinctions were not observed as the authorities had wished, even though social honor and prestige
had become widely esteemed, especially in Edo, with its warrior population of over a half million.
Much of this samurai status culture found its way to commoners, in part through commer-
cially available etiquette booklets. More directly, Edo commoners, by interacting with and observing
the samurai at close quarters, soon adopted honorific formal speech, a cultural transmission in which
24
commoner daughters employed in samurai households played a significant role. In a spirit of
simultaneously emulating and contesting, there also developed a novel ethos of commoner pride and
brashness ("there are two things one need not be afraid of: lice and samurai"). This Edokko type of
quick-tempered commoner, self-consciously different from Kyotoites or Osaka merchants, was proto-
typically embodied by the superhero Gongorô, who, every year in the eleventh month, thundered
"Shibaraku!" on the kabuki stage. Shibaraku (the name of the play) means "Just a minute, you," and
by shouting it, Gongoro in the nick of time stopped the villain's execution of several "righteous"
25
people. As Kaiho Seiryô (1755 -1817) observed in 1813:

The people of Edo... are stout, supercilious, and contrary. This militant aura goes back to the time when Tokugawa
leyasu settled here [and built Edo] Because the warrior temper has defined Edo, this warrior spirit has shifted over
to the people who all have become stout-hearted... [and] to other regions, so that now the people of all the castle
towns have adopted this Edo street-knight mentality In fighting higher authority, they are always determined to
hold out until they win. 26

This emergence of a distinct urban culture, with its own deferential language, proud pos-
27
turing, and innumerable pastimes, was made possible by the fortunes of merchants and money
exchangers. In the early eighteenth century it was clear to a social observer like Sorai that the
cash nexus and contractual relationships had started to damage seriously the feudal relations of