Anthology of Japanese Literature/The Eternal Storehouse of Japan
The Eternal Storehouse
of Japan
[Nippon Eitaigura] by Ihara Saikaku
This collection of brief tales dealing with how to make or lose a fortune was first published in 1688. It is not only of high literary value, but gives us invaluable descriptions of the life of the townsmen in the late seventeenth century. It bears the subtitle, “The Millionaire’s Gospel, Revised Version.”
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The Tycoon of All Tenants
“This is to certify that the person named Fuji-ichi, tenant in a house belonging to Hishiya Chozaemon, is to my certain knowledge the possessor of one thousand kamme in silver….”
Such would be the form of testimonial when Fuji-ichi sought new lodgings. It was his proud claim that in the whole wide world there was no millionaire quite like himself. For although he was worth a thousand kamme, he lived in a rented house no more than four yards wide. In this way he became the talk of Kyoto. However, one day he accepted a house as surety for a loan of thirty-eight kamme; in the course of time, as the interest mounted, the surety itself became forfeit; and for the first time Fuji-ichi became a property owner. He was much vexed at this. Up to now he had achieved distinction as “the millionaire in lodgings,” but now that he had a house of his own he was commonplace—his money in itself was mere dust by comparison with what lay in the strong rooms of the foremost merchants of Kyoto.
Fuji-ichi was a clever man, and his substantial fortune was amassed in his own lifetime. But first and foremost he was a man who knew his own mind, and this was the basis of his success. In addition to carrying on his regular business, he kept a separate ledger, bound from odd scraps of paper, in which, as he sat all day in his shop, pen in hand, he entered a variety of chance information. As the clerks from the money exchanges passed by he noted down the market ratio of copper and gold; he inquired about the current quotations of the rice brokers; he sought information from druggists’ and haberdashers’ assistants on the state of the market at Nagasaki; for the latest news on the prices of ginned cotton, salt, and sake, he noted the various days on which the Kyoto dealers received dispatches from the Edo branch shops. Every day a thousand things were entered in his book, and people came to Fuji-ichi if they were ever in doubt. He became a valuable asset to the citizens of Kyoto.
Invariably his dress consisted of an unlined vest next to his skin, and on top of that a cotton kimono, stuffed on occasion with three times the usual amount of padding. He never put on more than one layer of kimono. It was he who first started the wearing of detachable cuffs on the sleeves—a device which was both fashionable and economical. His socks were of deerskin and his clogs were fitted with high leather soles, but even so he was careful not to walk too quickly along the hard main roads. Throughout life his only silk garments were of pongee, dyed plain dark blue. There was one, it is true, which he had dyed a persistently undisguisable seaweed brown, but this was a youthful error of judgment, and he was to regret it for the next twenty years. For his ceremonial dress he had no settled crests, being content with a three-barred circle or a small conventional whirl, but even during the summer airing time he was careful to keep them from direct contact with the floor. His pantaloons were of hemp, and his starched jacket of an even tougher variety of the same cloth, so that they remained correctly creased no matter how many times he wore them.
When there was a funeral procession which his whole ward was obliged to join, he followed it perforce to the cemetery, but coming back he hung behind the others and, on the path across the moor at Rokuhara, he and his apprentices pulled up sour herbs by the roots.
“Dried in the shade,” he explained, “they make excellent stomach medicine.”
He never passed by anything which might be of use. Even if he stumbled he used the opportunity to pick up stones for fire-lighters, and tucked them in his sleeve. The head of a household, if he is to keep the smoke rising steadily from his kitchen, must pay attention to a thousand things like this.
Fuji-ichi was not a miser by nature. It was merely his ambition to serve as a model for others in the management of everyday affairs. Even in the days before he made his money he never had the New Year rice cakes prepared in his own lodgings. He considered that to bother over the various utensils, and to hire a man to pound the rice, was too much trouble at such a busy time of the year; so he placed an order with the rice-cake dealer in front of the Great Buddha. However, with his intuitive grasp of good business, he insisted on paying by weight—so much per pound. Early one morning, two days before the New Year, a porter from the cake-maker, hurrying about his rounds, arrived before Fuji-ichi’s shop and, setting down his load, shouted for someone to receive the order. The newly pounded cakes, invitingly arrayed, were as fresh and warm as spring itself. The master, pretending not to hear, continued his calculations on the abacus, and the cake-man, who begrudged every moment at this busy time of the year, shouted again and again. At length a young clerk, anxious to demonstrate his businesslike approach, checked the weight of the cakes on the large scales with a show of great precision, and sent the man away.
About two hours later Fuji-ichi said: “Has anyone taken in the cakes which arrived just now?”
“The man gave them to me and left long ago,” said the clerk.
“Useless fellow!” cried Fuji-ichi. “I expect people in my service to have more sense! Don’t you realize that you took them in before they had cooled off?”
He weighed them again, and to everyone’s astonishment their weight had decreased. Not one of the cakes had been eaten, and the clerk stood gazing at them in open-mouthed amazement.
It was the early summer of the following year. The local people from the neighborhood of the Eastern Temple had gathered the first crop of eggplants in wicker baskets and brought them to town for sale. “Eat young eggplants and live seventy-five days longer” goes the saying, and they are very popular. The price was fixed at two coppers for one eggplant, or three coppers for two, which meant that everybody bought two.
But Fuji-ichi bought only one, at two coppers, because—as he said—“With the one copper I now have in pocket I can buy any number of larger ones when the crop is fully grown.”
That was the way he kept his wits about him, and he seldom made a mistake.
In an empty space in his grounds he planted an assortment of useful trees and flowers such as willow, holly, laurel, peach, iris, and bead-beans. This he did as an education for his only daughter. Morning-glory started to grow of its own accord along the reed fence, but Fuji-ichi said that if it was a question of beauty such short-lived things were a loss, and in their place he planted runner-beans, whose flowers he thought an equally fine sight. Nothing delighted him more than watching over his daughter. When the young girl grew into womanhood he had a marriage screen constructed for her, and since he considered that one decorated with views of Kyoto would make her restless to visit the places she had not yet seen, and that illustrations of “The Tale of Genji” or “The Tales of Ise” might engender frivolous thoughts, he had the screen painted with busy scenes of the silver and copper mines at Tada. He composed Instructional Verses on the subject of economy and made his daughter recite them aloud. Instead of sending her to a girls’ temple school, he taught her how to write himself, and by the time he had reached the end of his syllabus, he had made her the most finished and accomplished girl in Kyoto. Imitating her father in his thrifty ways, after the age of eight she spilt no more ink on her sleeves, played no longer with dolls at the Doll Festival, nor joined in the dancing at Bon.[1] Every day she combed her own hair and bound it in a simple bun. She never sought others’ help in her private affairs. She mastered the art of stretching silk padding and learned to fit it perfectly to the length and breadth of each garment. Since young girls can do all this if properly disciplined, it is a mistake to leave them to do as they please.
Once, on the evening of the seventh day of the New Year, some neighbors asked leave to send their sons to Fuji-ichi’s house to seek advice on how to become millionaires. Lighting the lamp in the sitting room, Fuji-ichi set his daughter to wait, bidding her let him know when she heard a noise at the private door from the street. The young girl, doing as she was told with charming grace, first carefully lowered the wick in the lamp. Then, when she heard the voices of the visitors, she raised the wick again and retired to the scullery. By the time the three guests had seated themselves the grinding of an earthenware mortar could be heard from the kitchen, and the sound fell with pleasant promise on their ears. They speculated on what was in store for them.
“Pickled whaleskin soup?” hazarded the first.
“No. As this is our first visit of the year, it ought to be rice-cake gruel,” said the second.
The third listened carefully for some time, and then confidently announced that it was noodle soup. Visitors always go through this amusing performance. Fuji-ichi then entered and talked to the three of them on the requisites for success.
“Why is it that today is called the Day of the Seven Herbs?” one asked him.
“That was the beginning of economy in the Age of the Gods: it was to teach us the ingredients of a cheap stew.”
“Why do we leave a salted bream hanging before the God of the Kitchen Range until the sixth moon?” asked another.
“That is so that when you look at it at meal times you may get the feeling of having eaten fish without actually doing so.”
Finally he was asked the reason for using thick chopsticks at the New Year.
“That is so that when they become soiled they can be scraped white again, and in this way one pair will last the whole year.
“As a general rule,” concluded Fuji-ichi, “give the closest attention to even the smallest details. Well now, you have kindly talked with me from early evening, and it is high time that refreshments were served. But not to provide refreshments is one way of becoming a millionaire. The noise of the mortar which you heard when you first arrived was the pounding of starch for the covers of the Account Book.”
Translated by G. W. Sargent
- ↑ A summer festival.