Cold penetrated to the heart:
On the crest of the deceased's wife
I stepped in the bedroom.
Yosa Buson (1716-1783). Translation by V. Markova
It seems that we got acquainted with all aspects of samurai life, and … many VO readers immediately wanted to "continue the banquet", that is, so that materials on the history and culture of Japan would appear here and further. And I must say that we really missed one topic somehow. Yes, samurai in Japan were warriors and as warriors had a certain weapon, philosophy, skill set, sport, but besides, they were also human, weren't they? And people on planet Earth have a habit of continuing themselves not only in spirit, but also in flesh, that is, they multiply. And this is how the samurai looked at this occupation? Did they consider the copulation of a man and a woman a sin or, on the contrary, indulge in it with admiration for this gift of the gods? Did they have any unusual, outlandish habits for us … Probably, all this will be interesting to know, because even the most successful and harsh samurai from time to time needed not only sake or tea, but, of course, the caress of a woman.
"Under the mosquito net." Typical shunga, in which the artist's skill consisted in the ability to draw … a mosquito net and "cover" it with a rather traditional plot. Note that almost all of Japan's outstanding artists paid tribute to shunga. It was a sure job. If you want rice, draw shunga! Woodcut by Yanagawa Shigenobu II (1824-1860). Art Museum in Honolulu.
It has already been noted here that even at the dawn of Japanese history, the ancient Japanese gods did not do without weapons - looking at the Ocean covering the Earth from the Heavenly Floating Bridge, brother and sister Izanagi and Izanami immersed a jasper spear in it and stirred its waters with it. After that, the drops that fell from him gave birth to the first earthly firmament. Well, about what they were doing on this firmament further, the chronicle of "Kojiki" tells as follows: "Izanagi (man) asked Izanami (woman): - How is your body arranged? And she answered: My body grew, but there is one place that never grew. Then Izanagi told her that his body also grew, but there is one place that has grown too much: "I think," he said that you need the place that has grown, insert it into something that has not grown, and give birth to Tana. " It is from this connection that all the gods and all that exist in Japan were born. And this, by the way, is much more natural than the creation of people by a god from clay, or the same Eve from a male rib. It is also important that these gods are human-like in everything, and they have something to insert and where to insert, although for Christians who arrived in Japan, it was very strange to hear that the world, according to the faith of the Japanese, was created not by one single creator, but by two, yes moreover, and in such an uncomplicated way!
Further more! It turns out that the marriage itself was invented by the same two deities, although in relation to intercourse - alas, this act was secondary! “Here the god Izanagi no Mikoto said:“If so, I and you, having walked around this heavenly pillar, will marry,”and further:“You go around to the right, I’ll go around on the left to meet,”he said, and when, having agreed, began to bypass, the goddess Izanami no mikoto, the first to say: "Truly, a beautiful young man!", and after her the god Izanagi-no mikoto: "Truly, a beautiful girl!" he announced to his younger sister: "It is not good for a woman to speak first." And yet [they] began the marriage business, and the child that gave birth [was] a leech child. This child was put in a reed boat and allowed to sail."
"Nihongi" brings an important clarification to this episode: Izanagi and Izanami, although they wanted to copulate, that is, sexual intercourse was a normal thing for the gods too, not to mention humans, but they did not know how! And then a wagtail came to their aid! She began to shake her tail, and the gods, seeing this, found the way of intercourse!
Then it turned out that the failure in the first children of the young gods happened because … a woman (even a goddess!) Spoke first. That is, the subordinate position of a woman in relation to a man comes from the Japanese from there, from the gods! From them also comes the worship of the phallus in Japan, since there is a legend about a certain blacksmith who forged a huge iron phallus, with the help of which one of the Shinto goddesses knocked out teeth that appeared at the causal place completely inappropriately and - one can only marvel at the fantasies of the ancient Japanese who managed make it all up!
Woman and samurai in the toothpick salon. Suzuki Harunobu. Woodcut 18th century Tokyo National Museum.
But what do you think? In Japan, even now there is a Kanayama-jinja temple, on the territory of which there are several anvils at once and there are images of a huge phallus, which is very popular. Moreover, there is not only one such temple in Japan - there are many of them. And if the Japanese continue to visit them even today, then one can imagine how free their morals were in the distant past, when copulation was perceived in this country not as something sinful, as in Christian countries, but as an action that puts a person on a par with the gods: they were doing the same thing! Moreover, this is not implied, but this is directly indicated in the same Kojiki: “The relationship of a man and a woman symbolizes the unity of the gods during the creation of the world. The gods look at your making love with a smile and are pleased with your pleasures. For the same reason, husband and wife should please and satisfy each other."
Great, isn't it? Where to this our Christian morality with its commandments of abstinence and sin, erected in the Middle Ages, and later almost to the Absolute. And here everything is simple and clear: a man and a woman copulate - and the gods look at it with a smile! The main thing is to please each other. And since this is by no means always possible, there is nothing strange that the inventive Japanese came up with a harigata long ago - an artificial phallus that could be made from a variety of materials, and not only replaced the absent husband, but also helped the woman if suddenly a man thought only about myself. By the way, the Spartans, who were away from home for the war, also supplied their women with a device of a similar purpose, but the inventive Japanese surpassed them in this by an order of magnitude! Well, then Buddhism penetrated into Japan from China and Korea, and with it Buddhist treatises and … Chinese instructions on the art of love. For example, a manual was developed containing 48 poses, and only the main ones, and there were exactly 70 of them! They were depicted on scrolls, engravings and even carved in the form of netsuke (miniature figurines made of bone), which, often depicting people dressed in clothes, had a hidden erotic meaning. And the thing is that the main plot could be on the inside of the netsuke, and you could see what was there only if you turned over the figure, which outwardly was quite decent. For example, Lovers under the Veil. On the composition, only the heads and hands protrude from under the coverlet. The erotic subtext is indicated by the book lying above, which shows mushrooms, which were a traditional phallic symbol in Japan. And all the intrigue is on the inside, namely the naked bodies shown by the artist in intercourse. By the way, there are so many poses, because people very quickly get used to everything, get fed up and need more and more new impressions, and sometimes of a very extravagant nature, from which, by the way, comes such a phenomenon as bestiality and the more famous and widespread homosexuality.
Typical shunga. Marunobu Hisikawa (1618 - 1694).
By the way, homosexuality was already very common in Japan, as in ancient Sparta, and although it was not encouraged, it was not openly condemned. The Japanese (and Japanese women!) Understood that this, although not the most successful occupation, but if there is a hunt, then how to restrain it? However, the men themselves believed that masculinity was proved by the sword in hand, and what the samurai was doing in his bedroom was purely his own business! At the same time, Japanese men, including Buddhist monks, imagined an ideal hero-lover as follows: “A man who does not know a lot about love, even if he is seven inches in the forehead, is inferior and evokes the same feeling as a jasper goblet without a bottom. It is so interesting to wander, not finding a place for yourself, soaked from dew or frost, when your heart, fearing parental reproaches and worldly blasphemy, does not know even a moment of rest, when thoughts rush here and there; and behind all this - to sleep alone and not a single night have a restful sleep! At the same time, however, you need to strive not to seriously lose your head from love, so as not to give a woman a reason to consider you an easy prey (Kenko-hoshi. Notes for boredom. Transl. From Japanese VN Goreglyad. Cit. by Grigorieva T. Born by the beauty of Japan (Moscow: Art, 1993).
In the novel "Shogun", a Japanese woman is very accurately shown at the same time as almost a slave to her samurai husband, and with all of this his mistress, without whose help he could not take a step, and on whom he depended literally in everything, except perhaps their military duties! This was due to the fact that boys and girls in Japanese families were trained to perform completely different functions. Yes, both those and others had to serve the master in the same way, that is, through unquestioning obedience. However, there were different ways to do this. The man had to fight, while the woman took charge of his house, took care of his money, managed the numerous servants and, in addition, pleased the husband in bed. However, there were also some nuances here. The samurai's wife should, for example, take it for granted that her husband, on a campaign that could last for several months, probably cheated on her with other women, and also that when there were no women nearby, he could well turn his eyes and on men. Well, well, then this is her karma, she thought in this case, focusing exclusively on keeping her husband warm, light and comfortable. Indeed, only in this case he could effectively perform the duties of a servant of a superior person in the same way as she performed her duties as a servant in her husband's house!
Woman warrior Momoyo Gozen. In Japanese medieval society, samurai women were supposed to be able to wield a sword, but necessarily - a naginata, throw an uchi-e dart, and use a kaiken dagger. Some of them fought alongside their husbands on the battlefield and earned respect for their courage. It was not typical, but it was also something completely exceptional. Toyohara Chikanobu (1838 - 1912). Walters Museum. Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Interestingly, in the famous "Hagakure" by Yamamoto Tsunemoto, the samurai's love is subdivided into romantic love - love for his mentor, his master, and physiological, base love, with the goal of procreation, but nothing more. Was there something like this in the Middle Ages in Europe? Yes, there was a cult of a beautiful lady, and, more often than not, it was not a young innocent girl, but the overlord's wife, respectable in all respects. And now the knight, who took his oath of oath to him, adored her from a distance in a completely platonic way: for example, he wrote poems in honor of the lady of his heart and read them in her presence, or (if he had a talent for this!) Sang love songs to her. Something more … yes, of course, it also happened, but sexual intercourse in this case was not considered the main goal of such love at all. The knight simply “served a beautiful lady,” and she was really beautiful, or not, it didn't really matter for the knight.
On the other hand, knights worshiped women in Europe, but did samurai worship women? Well, yes, of course, in their own way they loved them, but adore? Well, no, what was not - that was not! Interestingly, for modern Japan, the principles of family life that developed in the Tokugawa era are still largely relevant to this day. For example, a husband usually says to his wife "omae" - "you", while she says to him "anata" - "you." Marriage unions at that time, above all, had an important political significance. A contract was concluded between families, and the romantic side of the matter was unnecessary, as was the case in feudal Europe. It was believed that love in marriage should not arise at all, because falling in love is inherent in extramarital affairs, which is condemned by society. Moreover, it was not the very fact of the existence of such connections that was perceived negatively, but the feeling of love arising from this, which was uncontrollable and pushed people to various rash acts and even crimes. However, men in Japan had the opportunity to forget about all the conventions befitting their position in … the Yoshiwara quarter!
Samurai, sake and women - this is how the artist Kitagawa Utamaro (1753 - 1806) imagined it.
Yoshiwara is one of the most famous "gay neighborhoods" of medieval Edo, although it is clear that such "yoshiwaras" were everywhere in Japan. Fires destroyed it to the ground more than once, especially since the wooden Japanese houses burned very well, but every time Yoshiwara was restored. The worst was the fire on March 2, 1657, which left a fifth of the capital's residents homeless. The Yoshiwara quarter also disappeared in the fire, but in September it was rebuilt and received the name New Yoshiwara. It was there that almost all the most famous artists - masters of Japanese woodcuts - have visited and … they have displayed the genre of ukiyo-e in their works.
The territory of the "cheerful quarter", measuring 1,577 hectares, was one and a half times larger than the previous one and consisted of five streets lined with visiting houses, teahouses, restaurants, as well as residential buildings for all kinds of "service personnel." Interestingly, men spent most of their time in Yoshiwara not having sex (that's how it is!), But drinking cups of sake, dancing, singing and having fun. They were samurai, traders, and merchants - it didn't matter who you were, the main thing was whether you had the money to pay! Well, they came here to spend time in a cheerful company, outside the framework and conventions that they had at home, where relations between spouses were strictly regulated, and excessive gaiety could attract the attention of neighbors and adversely affect the upbringing of children. Therefore, in addition to, in fact, prostitutes, from the very appearance of the Yoshiwara quarter, men also worked in it, combining the functions of mass entertainers and musicians, accompanying the drunken songs of clients. These men were called geisha ("artisans") and also hoken ("jesters"). However, in 1751, the first female ringleader appeared in the Shimabara quarter of Kyoto. And then in 1761, a second such geisha woman appeared in Yoshiwara. It is known that her name was Kasen from the Ogiya house, and at first she worked as a yujo, but managed to pay off all the debts and began to run her own business.
Soon, geisha women became so popular that there was simply no room for men - they could not stand the competition. By the beginning of the 19th century, the term "geisha" (or geisha, as they wrote in Russia) began to denote an exclusively female profession. Unlike courtesans - yujo, geisha worked not so much in the "fun quarters" as they came on call to where men had friendly parties (geisha called them zashiki - which literally translates as "room", and their clients - enkai, "banquet "). The main skill of the geisha was to keep the conversation fun and witty and to entertain the audience while they were drinking. At the same time, they read poems, joked, sang songs, danced, and accompanied the singing of men, and also started simple, but funny and funny group games. At the same time, they played different musical instruments, but the main thing for the geisha was the three-stringed shamisen, a bit like an oversized mandolin. And while the services of a geisha were not cheap, by all accounts, they were worth it!
Still, the position of women in Japan in the samurai era was to some extent better than that in Europe in the era of the knights! During the Heian period, for example, women played a very important role in relations between aristocratic clans, acting as intermediaries between them. The daughter unconditionally obeyed her parents even after marriage, therefore, through the married daughter, her family influenced the family of her son-in-law. For example, she was visiting her parents, and … she received instructions from them as to what to say to her husband and, accordingly, he through her and in the same way conveyed the answer. Already at that time in Japanese society, a widow could inherit her husband's estate and fortune. During the Kamakura period (XII-XIV centuries), a woman belonging to the samurai class had the right to appear at the court and demand the protection of her inheritance rights. Under the Kamakura bakufu, there was a special official who resolved disputes over inheritance. True, then they stopped monitoring the observance of women's rights. Despite this, women hurried to Kamakura across the country to seek justice; on this dangerous journey they were accompanied by confidants and servants, and it was then that they, like the samurai, could carry a sword. Some samurai widows fiercely defended the inherited estates from encroachment and commanded troops of their armed servants.
In the north of Kyushu, by the way, as in medieval Europe, there were many women's monasteries and sanctuaries. In ancient times, the superstitious Japanese worshiped a pantheon of goddesses similar to the Greek; and the religious rites were led by the high priestesses. Mentions of the priestesses can also be found in sources dating back to the end of the Muromachi period (XIV-XVI centuries). This circumstance makes it possible to assume that throughout the history of the country, society in the north of Japan was more patriarchal, while matriarchy prevailed in the south. It is interesting to note that in the south of Japan, agriculture and rice cultivation, which required a "woman's hand", developed primarily, while the inhabitants of the north were mainly engaged in hunting, although over time these differences caused by the natural geographic environment were leveled out under the influence of social circumstances …
It should be noted that in any hierarchical society there have always been strong-willed and determined women who aspired to power and achieved it by any means. After the death of Minamoto Yori-tomo, his widow Masako managed to enter the bakufu with the help of her father, Hojo Tokimasa. In fact, Masako enjoyed more power than even her father, as she held the very honorable position of the shogun's widow and mother of his son. During the Muromachi period, the wife of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa named Hino Tomiko became the richest and most powerful woman in Japan. True, in the Sengoku period, from the end of the 15th to the middle of the 16th centuries, when the fate of the provinces was decided only by military strength and economic power, women gradually lost power. The last of the galaxy of powerful female rulers of Japan was Yodogimi, the mother of Toyotomi Hideyori, who committed suicide in 1615 with her son when Osaka Castle surrendered to Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Woodcut by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839 - 1892). A prostitute and a client with a scythe. Walters Museum. Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Yes, women in Japan were completely subordinate to men, so subordinate that … they themselves chose concubines for their husbands and negotiated with the mistresses of the "merry houses" about the cost of the services rendered to them. However, where, in what country of the world did their position differ from this? The weddings of both European feudal lords and Russian boyars were magnificent, but the polygamist rulers were known both in the West and in pre-Petrine Muscovy. But there it was in the nature of exclusivity, while in Japan and divorces (almost unthinkable in Christian Europe, where the right to dissolve a marriage was only used by the pope only kings!), And concubines, not to mention homosexual relationships, did not surprise anyone and were considered absolutely a natural thing! Moreover, the latter were practiced not so much by the samurai themselves as … by Buddhist monks in monasteries, about which Father Francisco Xavier, in his letter to the headquarters of the Jesuit Order, reported on November 5, 1549: “It seems that the laity here commit much less sins and more listen to the voice of reason than those whom they regard as priests, whom they call bonza. These [bonzes] are prone to sins contrary to nature, and they themselves admit it. And they [these sins] are committed publicly and are known to everyone, men and women, children and adults, and since they are very common, they are not surprised at them and [for them] are not hated. Those who are not bonzes are happy to learn from us that this is a vile sin, and they think that we are quite right in saying that they [bonzes] are vicious, and how offensive it is for God to commit this sin. We often told the bonzes not to commit these terrible sins, but everything we told them they took for a joke, and they laughed, and were not at all ashamed when they heard how terrible this sin was. In the monasteries of the bonzes, there are many children of noble nobles, whom they teach to read and write, and with them they commit their atrocities. Among them there are those who behave like monks, dress in dark clothes and walk with shaved heads, it seems that every three or four days they shave their entire head like a beard "(Alexander Kulanov, Natsuko Okino. Nude Japan: Erotic Traditions of the Country solar root. M.: AST: Astrel, 2008. S. 137.
(To be continued)
