PART I: MADAM ‘THAT EVENING CICADA’

THE PERIOD OF stability that Japanese society experienced from the late 1630s lasted over two-hundred years. The basic condition for that durable social order was the seclusion of its islands from the outside world. This policy of the shogunate led to the development of an intricate ‘neighbourhood watch’ system structured under the non-expansionist mottoes of‘standing still’ and ‘quietude.’ In line with those mottoes was the perpetual issuing of minute sumptuary decrees by the authorities, which brought about an overall balance between production and consumption. Linked with this balance was the fact that the Japanese population remained more or less unchanged during that period. Despite the whole catalogue of rules and constraints thus accumulated for daily life dunng that period, the stability of the society did not result in gloomy stagnation. How was that possible? The answer may lie in the era's abundance of self-contented elders with little interest in climbing the social ladder. I have labelled them ‘modestly literate picnic-lovers’, or in Japanese, ‘gakumon hodo-hodo, yusan gonomi’.

Before examining the characteristics of this group, let me first introduce a lady who seems to be an example of such an elder. Her name, Kichō, has survived in a three-volume, elaborately illustrated book for fanatics of variegated pot plants, which was published in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1827. The book was compiled by someone identified only as Kinta, or Masuda Kintarō, perhaps a pseudonym, who was a ‘gardener or nurseryman in Aoyama.’ Kinta made the book with the cooperation of a number of famous Edo painters, as well as the support of collectors of such pot plants in and around the city, whose social positions ranged from daimyo to farmers and merchants. The book dedicated two full pages to the illustration of Kichō's matchless pot plants, well-known among connoisseurs of that genre. Three of those plants bore the name of Kichō: Kichō Teisei Momo, the garden-grown peach of Kichō, Kichō Koicha Maki, the Japanese black fir of Kichō with dark brown leaves, and Kichō Tsubaki, the camellia japonica of Kichō, all of which showed distinct traits of variegation with their leaves patterned by a partial lack of chlorophyll.