Santō Kyōden facts for kids
Santō Kyōden (山東 京伝, 13 September 1761 Edo – 27 October 1816) was a Japanese artist, writer, and the owner of a tobacco shop during the Edo period. His real name was Iwase Samuru (岩瀬 醒), and he was also known popularly as Kyōya Denzō (京屋伝蔵, kyōya denzō). He began his professional career illustrating the works of others before writing his own Kibyōshi and Sharebon. Within his works, Kyōden often included references to his shop to increase sales. Kyōden's works were affected by the shifting publication laws of the Kansei Reforms which aimed to punish writers and their publishers for writings related to the Yoshiwara and other things that were deemed to be "harmful to society" at the time by the Tokugawa Bakufu. As a result of his punishment in 1791, Kyōden shifted his writings to the more didactic Yomihon. During the 1790s, Santō Kyōden became a household name and one of his works could sell as many as 10,000 copies, numbers that were previously unheard of for the time.
Early life
Santō Kyōden was born in Fukagawa in Edo (modern Tokyo). The Iwase family into which he was born were pawnbrokers. Kyōden was the oldest of four siblings. He had one younger brother, Iwase Momoki (岩瀬 百樹) who later became a famous writer under the name Santō Kyōzan. Kyōden also had two younger sisters named Kinu and Yone. His name as a child was Jintarō. He first began his studies at the age of nine by reading aohon or "blue covered" books, kurobon or "black covered" books, and akahon or "red covered books" and by copying works of other authors. While Kyōden was beginning his studies he was gifted a desk by his father, Denzaemon which he would continue to use up until his death.
Literary career
Ukiyo-e
Kyōden began his career by studying ukiyo-e or woodblock prints which typically depicted "the floating world" of the Yoshiwara under Kitao Shigemasa (北尾 重政), and began illustrating kibyōshi under the pseudonym Kitao Masanobu (北尾 政寅). He began his professional career by illustrating the works of other authors.
His visual artwork is held in several museums, including the Harvard Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the British Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chazen Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Kibyōshi
In the 1780s, he began writing kibyōshi or "yellow covered" picture books under the name Santō Kyōden. Several of these works are written by Santō Kyōden and illustrated by Kitao Masanobu. His works gained popularity in 1785. Kyōden wrote thirteen kibyōshi in 1793. Kyōden continued to write kibyōshi until the eventual decline of the genre due to censorship laws during the Kansei Reforms.
Sharebon
Kyōden's first sharebon or "book of manners" was published in 1785. Sharebon acted as guidebooks for how to act in the Yoshiwara. In 1789, Kyōden was punished for his illustrations in Koku bykau mizukagami by Ishibe Kinko. This work displeased authorities and resulted in Kyōden being fined for his illustrations. Following his punishment, Kyōden continued to illustrate, but only his own works. This was not the only punishment Kyōden faced as two years later, Kyōden was handcuffed for fifty days because of three sharebon he wrote.
Kyōden was not the only one punished however. Kyōden's father was also reprimanded. The two censors who had approved the books were not only fined, but they were also banished from Edo. The publisher of Kyōden's three offending works, Tsutaya Jūzaburō (also commonly referred to as Tsutaju), had half of his assets seized by the government as Kyōden's works violated publishing edicts during the Kansei Reforms. Immediately following his punishment, Tsutaju issued a public apology and admitted that he pressured Kyōden into releasing those works. Kyōden himself was hesitant in releasing them due to the content of them. It would seem that Kyōden was trying to avoid punishments as the punishment he faced two years ago was still fresh in his mind. Ironically, this caused sales of Kyōden's works to increase because rumors spread that Kyōden was never going to write again and Tsutaju capitalized on these rumors by reissuing second editions of Kyōden's most popular kibyoshi. As a result, Kyōden stopped writing gesaku or "playful writings" shortly thereafter.
Yomihon
Following his punishment in 1791, Kyōden shifted to yomihon or "books for reading." Yomihon are known for being large scale and for being more dramatic and didactic rather than episodic and humorous like many of the works Kyōden had previously written. Kyōden's first yomihon was Tzuzoku Taiseiden or the "Popular Biography of Confucious." In the autumn of that year, Kyokutei Bakin, who would later go on to write Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, or "Tale of Eight Dogs," was made Kyōden's apprentice.
Overall career
It is estimated that over the course of Kyōden's career, Kyōden was involved in approximately 200 unique pieces. He is estimated to have written 125 of them himself. Although this number may be bloated because reissues may be included as well. The way in which Kyōden was paid for his writings was different from the way in which other writers at the time were paid. Most authors of the time were paid a "nominal fee" if their works were to gain popularity, but Kyōden was paid "regularly on a manuscript-for-fee basis." The problem with this however, was that when Tsutaju reissued second editions of Kyōden's most famous works, he did not get paid for those, because he was only paid for the manuscript. Adam Kern argues that most of the writers during this time were more concerned with establishing themselves as an identifiable brand first and then writing derivative literature. Within his works, Kyōden would present the image he wanted his readers to have of him as a writer. He would describe in detail the struggles he faced, such as struggling to meet deadlines and trying to constantly produce new writings for his publishers. There is great contention as to whether pieces written by Kyōden and other writers were plagiarized, however Kern argues that it was conventional at the time for works to be derivative and that Kyōden "appreciated this predicament, reveled in it, and even flaunted it in his kibyōshi."
Tobacco shop
Advertisements and Promotions
Kyōden was not only an established author. Kyōden was also the owner of a successful tobacco shop named "Kyōya Denzō's Shop" that opened in the autumn of 1793 in Ginza. One way Kyōden was able to increase sales was by placing advertisements for his shop within his writings. Although this is common practice today, this was a new development in Japan at the time. In order for Kyōden to differentiate that from his writing he would put a box around his advertisements and announce "this is an advertisement." Even his pseudonym, Santō Kyōden contains a reference to the location of his tobacco shop. To means "to the East" of san "the mountains" in kyō or "Kyōbashi." Den is a reference to his status as a merchant named "Denzaburo."
Kyōden was also able to capitalize on his celebrity status to draw customers to his shop. Kyōden made sure to establish himself as a brand before he opened his shop so that people would be drawn to the shop to have a chance of meeting "Japan's first celebrity writer." However, it seems that Kyōden left the day-to-day activities to his father while he would lock himself in his office on the second floor to continue writing.
Goods at his shop
The goods that were sold at Kyōden's tobacco shop include tobacco pipes, smoke pouches, and other smoking related goods. However his store also sold other things that aren't smoking related. He also sold a "cure-all pill" called tokushogan and "reader's pills." These "reading pills" became a mainstay of his shop. Kyōden also sold paper products.
Kyōden's first marriage
Santō Kyōden's first marriage was to Okiku (or Kikuzono) in February 1790. Prior to their marriage in 1786, Kyōden began referring to Okiku by name within his works which he continued to do up until Okiku's death. It is estimated that in 1790 when they got married, Okiku was somewhere between the ages of twenty-six to twenty-nine. However, their marriage was short-lived as not even four years after their marriage Okiku died.
Kyōden's second marriage
It is believed that in 1797, or sometime around then, Kyōden met his second wife, Tamanoi, who later goes by the name of Yuri. At the time Kyōden was forty and Yuri is estimated to have been about twenty-three. Kyōden not only married Yuri but he also adopted her younger sister, who he gave the name Tsuru. Bakin claims that Kyōden had originally planned on adopting Yuri's younger brother, but he died at the age of twenty. However, their marriage was also cut short, but this time by Kyōden's death.
Death
Before Santō Kyōden's death, Kyōden had been complaining of chest pains. The chest pains began in either 1813 or 1814 and Kyōden complained of the pain when he would go on walks. Kyōden remained indoors until his chest pain was lessened in the summer of 1815. Kyōden then met with several of his friends and attended various gatherings. In July 1816, Kyōden died. Kyokutei Bakin claims that Kyōden overworked himself to death. However, Mizuno Minoru, a researcher of early modern Japanese literature, claims that Kyōden died of a heart attack. He was buried in the Eko-in cemetery.
Tobacco shop and Yuri
Following Kyōden's death, Yuri, Kyōden's second wife struggled to keep Kyōden's tobacco shop afloat. Kyōden's brother Kyōzan moved into Kyōden's house to help her run the business, but according to him and Bakin, Yuri was "maddened with grief." Her condition seemed to deteriorate further after Kyōzan moved in. Bakin stated that the way in which she spoke and behaved was strange. This continued until her death in February 1818. Bakin blamed part of this on Kyōzan claiming that he drove her to insanity and he also blamed Kyōzan for squandering the rest of Kyōden's assets from his tobacco shop.
Post-death popularity
Kyōden remained somewhat popular immediately after his death. Kyōden's continued popularity can be seen through the numerous biographies written about him. The first of these was Iwademo no ki by Kyokutei Bakin in 1819. The second is Santō Kyōden ichidaiki but the author is unknown and this was published in 1834. Also in 1834, Kyōden was listed as one of the "six immortals" of gesaku by Bokusentei Yukimaro. For the next hundred years, interest in Kyōden and in gesaku declined. There were a few exemptions such as Santō Kyōden in 1916 by Miyatake Gaikotsu and Koike Tōgorō's Santō Kyōden no kenkyu in 1935.
Selected works
Kibyōshi
- Those Familiar Bestsellers (御存商売物, Gozonji no Shōbaimono) (1782)
Sharebon
- Musukobeya (令子洞房) (1785)
- A Connoisseur's Words (通言総籬, Tsūgen Sōmagaki) (1787)
- Three Madames and their Dirty Tale (古契三娼, Kokei no Sanshō) (1787)
- Shigeshige Chiwa (繁千話) (1790)
- Shikake Bunko (仕懸文庫) (1791)
- Nishiki no Ura (錦之裏) (1791)
- Shōgi Kinuburui (娼妓絹籭) (1791)
Yomihon
- Chūshin Suikoden (忠臣水滸伝) (1799)
- The Tale of the Three Thousand Year Flower (優曇華物語, Udonge Monogatari) (1804)
- Sakura Hime Zenden Akebono no Zōshi (桜姫全伝曙草子) (1805)
Historical Works
- Kinsei Kiseki-kō (近世奇跡考) (1804)
- Curios (骨董集, kottōshū) (1814–15)
Other names
It was common for authors and illustrators to write and illustrate under a number of different aliases depending on what genre they were writing. Santō Kyōden was one such writer and illustrator that used a host of different names.
- In Kyōka, or "mad-verse" poetry he went by the name of Migaru no Orisuke.
- With his ukiyo-e and book illustrations, he went by any one of the following names: Kitao Masanobu, Kitao Rissai Masanobu, Kitao Sessai Masanobu, or simply Masanobu.
- His later, archaic works before his death are written under the name Seisei Rōjin.
See also
In Spanish: Santo Kyoden para niños
