Reading Notes W5: Saikaku, Part A

When delving into the historical context provided in The Norton Anthology of World Literature Volume D about seventeenth-century Japanese writer, Ihara Saikaku, his ability to convey feelings of lust, love and other similar themes are given a focal point. The context section also hints at Saikaku's ability to speak on such themes while incorporating satire/humor. Like many writers before, Saikaku is able to use lust/love as a device to explore the various meanings to distinctly separate individuals in different class brackets. As the context section displays, writings such as From Life of a Sensuous Woman allows him to use sex to comment on "the unsavory underside of the lives of the privileged classes of society, including domain lords, greedy monks, presumptuous samurai, and rich merchants" (592). He also uses these themes to express feelings of desire that most feel but were unable to healthily or openly express during this time period. Works like From Life of a Sensuous Woman delve into these matters checking many boxes of entertainment and literature.

• Two very opposite end of the spectrum stances are provided early on regarding life, love, lust and women : "the two men had opposite attitudes towards life and death. One sought as much sensual pleasure as he could get, even though he knew that it was shortening his life, and the other wanted to give up love altogether and live many more years" (593)
• These two extremes established by these men seeking our main protagonists knowledge of "sensuous love", spin the reader towards varying stories displaying mistakes of love and greed throughout many walks of life
• Divulging the sins/desires of many individuals and focusing on those of higher societal stature provides an outlet to shine the greed, faults or desires (not always in a negative or bad thing), that all peoples face. Not just those of lower societal class. 
• This theme is most prescient when describing our heroines relationship to a high class priest/monk: "Eventually the head priest of one temple fell in love with me, and I agreed to become his temporary wife for three years in exchange for twenty-five pounds of silver. I became what people call an 'oven god'. . . But in the last few years, this large temple had been growing very prosperous, and the monks were losing all restraint" (600-601).

Saikaku, Ihara. "From Life of a Sensuous Woman." The Norton Anthology of World Literature Volume D. 592, 593, 600-601