What the Seasons Brought
to the Almanac-Maker
[Kōshoku Gonin Onna, Book III] by Ihara Saikaku
Saikaku’s “Five Women Who Loved Love” (1686) is one of the masterpieces of Tokugawa literature. It consists of five independent stories, of which the third is here given. These stories are in turn divided into five chapters, each with a title of its own. The incidents described were based on actual events which took place shortly before Saikaku’s novel, and were already familiar to many people in the form of ballads and recitations by professional storytellers.
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The Beauty Contest
According to the almanac for 1682, New Year’s Day was to be devoted to the practice of calligraphy. Then, having started the year auspiciously, men could start making love on January 2.[1] In the Age of the Gods this art was taught by the wagtail bird[2] and ever since those days it has brought endless mischief between the sexes.
In Kyoto there lived a lady known as the Almanac-maker’s Beautiful Spouse, who stirred up a mountain of passion in the capital and figured again and again in notorious romances. Her moon-shaped eyebrows rivaled in beauty the crescent borne aloft in the Gion Festival parade; her figure suggested the cherry buds, not yet blossoms, of Kiyomizu; her lovely lips looked like the topmost leaves of Takao in full autumnal glory. She lived in Muromachi-dori, the
