『妓者呼子鳥』の後続作品受容

Many scholars have already debated about heterogeneity and multimedia in the literary culture of eighteenth-century Japan, and many among them analysed from different points of view the intertextual richness of late Edo-period literature, as exemplified by its numerous parodies and diegetic transpositions. It would be superfluous to mention literary works created by adding one or more original elements to a well-known story or an incident that occurred in those years, as well as literary works created as sequels to previously published stories: every literary genre abounds in these types of creations. As an example, everyone surely knows the influence on numerous subsequent works exerted by Tanishi Kingyo’s chūbon (middle-format book) Keiseikai toranomaki (The Secret Treatise on Buying Courtesans, 1778), which adopted a narrative style that combined realistic dialogue and chanting diegesis, and fictionalised the story of some characters rumoured about at those times, such as the courtesan Segawa of Matsuba House and the wealthy usurer who ransomed her, Toriyama kengyō, becoming a bestseller. Kingyo’s short story started to be transformed into an illustrated tale in the same year of its release, appearing again under the title of Kuruwabanashi misoka no tsuki (Stories from Yoshiwara under New Year’s Moon, 1778), and during the An’ei period parodies of it appeared as well. Moreover, the story of Segawa and Toriyama kengyō, or more precisely Kingyo’s version of that story, was widely retold through numerous books, in the hanshibon (half-page book) format or the chūbon format, and in kabuki plays, such as Hitokanade kodakara Soga (A Song for the Great Soga Children, 1856) and it is possible to trace the route of the afterlife of this story up to the bakumatsu period, following the metamorphoses it underwent according to the different genres that incorporated it. My speech focuses on a short story published as a little-format book (kohon) by Kingyo, Geisha yobukodori (Geisha and the Lamenting Cuckoo, 1777), which is generally considered a literary work which exercised little influence on subsequent literature. The aim is to follow the reception of its narrative units and motifs, scattered in subsequent popular literature, and, in doing so, to reflect on the kind of modifications on the narrative material that this type of intertextual appropriation implies, as well as the consequences for a work’s genre adherence that such an appropriation entails. After determining the different narrative units Geisha yobukodori is composed of, such as the tattoo-removal sub-plot, the fury of the jealous woman informed of her lover’s unfaithfulness, or the fight of the human soul fires, my presentation will analyse the reception of each narrative unit in subsequent literary production.