A History of Japanese Literature by Kato Shuichi Sanderson Don

Author:Kato, Shuichi, Sanderson, Don [Shuichi Kato]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136613678
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

The Literature of Laughter

In the late eighteenth century, as production came increasingly to involve commerce and a national market developed, the higher-class chōnin not only increased their financial power in the samurai-ruled system but also became a greater creative force in cultural terms, with the development of chōnin schools and the rise of kabuki and the culture associated with the pleasure quarters. This was accompanied by an easing of the tension between the values of duty that the samurai sought to impose on them and the values of 'human feelings' that they themselves prized; eventually the two achieved a more relaxed accommodation. The tragedy of the love-suicide pieces was joined by the humour of comic verse (kyōku and kyōka) and stories (kobanashi). Here for example is a kyōku about the pleasure quarters:

A man and a warrior!

. . . Then why does he turn chōnin

And come here?

(Haifū yanagidaru)

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