#Banraido Kiyufuku

[talesofedo]

Around 1850, a doctor by the last name of Harada was sent from his hometown, Wakayama in Kii province, to the city of Edo to serve the Ando household, who were in charge of the Tanabe domain in Kii. While Harada stayed indoors for a long period of time because of the ongoing rain, he composed a little book called "Bragging of Edo", which he published under the pseudonym Banraido Kiyufuku, giving us a little insight in the culture of the shogun's city at the end of the Edo period. ___ On weather and climate:

Since Edo soil is thin and the water table high, the climate is very humid. The consistency of the soil resembles ash, so traversing the streets after a shower feels like slogging through mud. Daytime temperatures in summer are so hot one thinks one is being roasted alive. On the other hand, it cools down in the morning and evening, and on rainy days unlined clothing does not suffice to keep one warm. Edo winters are three times colder than those of Wakayama. In the uptown (Yamanote) area the ground freezes, and each morning frost columns six or nine centimeters tall appear. After seven o’clock in the morning the ground that has swelled up begins to thaw, and unless one wears clogs it is difficult to pass through the streets. Most clear days are windy. When the wind is strong, dust fills the sky. It soils one’s clothing and socks, and one can hardly walk with the eyes open. Perhaps for this reason Edo natives wear dark blue socks and low-brimmed woven hats. Here and there crude dust goggles are sold for thirty-two coppers. Fires probably spread so widely because of the wind. Few fires break out on calm days and none at all on rainy ones. Thus Edo citizens are terrified by a series of fair-weather days, whereas Wakayama residents fear the rain [because of floods].

On local homes, presumably commoners’ homes:

Residential dwellings are crude, incomparably inferior to those of the Kamigata area. Walls are made of foul and insufficiently adhesive mud that poorly resists wind and water. [Roofs, constructed simply by] setting wooden planks on top of walls, are tiled only at the edge with no [supporting bed of] clay. If you kick a building, the tiles all come tumbling down.

Commoners’ homes (row houses / tenements):

The middle and lower classes always live in duplex housing units. Nobody owns equipment for pounding glutinous rice or mortars for hulling rice. [In their houses] they have no heated baths or braziers for guests to warm themselves. Visitors are granted no seating cushions nor do residents make their own miso. They possess no boards for pounding things, no oval wooden food buckets, and no laundry poles. Laundry is taken apart, lightly starched, and set out on a wooden plank to dry.

Fires:

Fires break out most frequently from the ninth month to the following year’s fourth month. At least two or three fires occur every night, and on some nights there are as many as five or seven. Minor fires consume from two or three dwellings to five or six wards; major ones burn four to eight kilometers. A drum is kept at the headquarters of [each] fire brigade; wooden clappers are stored at the headquarters of assistant inspectors (o-tsukaiban); and fire bells are found at commoner houses. The first three strokes [on the fire bell] are known as the “announcement” (oshirase); this is followed by a proclamation of the direction of the fire. At a double stroke, known as “prepare to go” (de o kakeru), assistant inspectors ready their horses. When the requisite number of firemen have assembled, the bells suddenly turn silent and one would hardly imagine that a fire has broken out. After the fire has been extinguished, five strokes sounded at both headquarters signal “all quiet” (shizumari).

Local beaches and rivers:

Nearby seashores are all muddy rather than sandy. Extremely crude muddy fields are found near these shores. Only the Tama River yields sweetfish (ayu), because it is sandy. All the other rivers are muddy and their water murky rather than clear.

Transportation in the city:

Within the city, carts are always used for hauling rocks, dirt, and grain, or for[transporting personal effects] when changing residences. Pack horses are only used for conveying produce, flowers, and wild boar and deer meat into the city, or night soil out of it. Businesses offering palanquin transportation are found in most wards. At well-traversed spots in the suburbs carriers of five or six palanquins wait for customers. Palanquins are used by people hurrying home or on trips, or by frivolous types who ride for fun because they enjoy the fact that o-ashi (“leg,” or “means of transport”) also means “coppers” (zeni). If one loses one’s way at dusk or is caught in a downpour far from home, one does well to pay for a palanquin ride.

Prices of home goods:

Buckets, floor mats, standing screens, and porcelain are all very expensive. Paper and sugar are extremely cheap.

Bath houses:

Bath houses have separate tubs for men and women. The entrances, too, differ. The men’s side has a second floor, where one finds shōgi and go game boards, braziers, and tobacco trays. Samurai and worthy townsmen ascend to this floor and a manservant brews tea and offers it to guests. Sweets of one’s choice may be purchased for eight coppers apiece. Eight coppers for the bath and eight more for the second floor result in a total expense of [a mere] sixteen coppers. Renting a rice-bran pouch [for scrubbing the body] sets one back four coppers, and a “grime scraping” [having dead skin removed with a rough washcloth] costs four more. Bathhouse tycoons pay to have their bucket of hot water brought to them. For one hundred coppers a month one is relieved of the task of fetching water and scrubbing one’s own body. Most samurai on duty visit these bath houses.

Restaurants and tea houses:

Restaurants serving cooked-rice meals in bowls, buckwheat noodles, or sweet bean soup with glutinous rice cakes are ubiquitous. So are tea houses with seating areas. The price for tea is usually sixteen coppers. One should not casually enter teahouses on the grounds of Asakusa (Sensōji) or at the riverbank at Yoshiwara (i.e., Nihon-zutsumi), for anyone who fails to order something priced at more than one hundred coppers is snubbed or effectively ignored.

Merchants:

A world of difference separates the courtesy and respect shown by Edo merchants and those of Wakayama. Edo merchants bow and repeatedly express gratitude for a purchase costing but a copper. Even fishmongers and greengrocers who make daily rounds to one’s home never fail to present summer and winter gifts. During the first seven days of the New Year, customers of all Edo shops are granted a gratuity in proportion to the size of a purchase. All wares are marked with a price tag, so one does not have to haggle or worry about being overcharged. Yet one ought to fear the street stalls at Yanagiwara, the second-hand shops at Shiba Hikage-chō, and local hawkers operating at [Ueno] Yamashita or at riverbanks. They present crows as herons, claim that tattered jackets are magical robes, and charge mountains of silver for a cheap straw hat. Here one must be on one’s guard.

People:

Perhaps because the city is so vast, locals are big-hearted. Warriors are polite rather than officious. Bannermen and their sort are especially congenial and display none of the specious dignity of Wakayama warriors.

Sake:

High-grade sake is very expensive. It tastes good but inebriates one only briefly and does not leave one with a hangover. Daimyo employees who drink heavily end up quickly emptying their wallets and probably even fall into debt. “Sweet sake” (amazake) resembles the water floating on top of rice gruel. It is not the least bit sweet.

Miso:

Even though miso is called “red miso,” it differs from its Kamigata counterpart. It is exceedingly sweet, perhaps because it is flavored with ample syrup from cooked soybeans. Because it is so sweet, the flavor remains on one’s tongue long after one eats it. “White miso” is also available but expensive. It is never consumed at middle- or lower-class homes.

Sweets:

Confections do not compare to those of the Kamigata area. Signboards and shop curtains announce “Kyoto sweets”—this speaks volumes. Buns (manjū) filled with bean jam are particularly bad. The plumpness of the wrapping is worse than a whore’s underbelly or a geisha’s cheek. But glutinous rice cakes (mochi), including those not of top quality, are delicious. “Otetsu dumplings,” “Eitai dango,” and “Imasaka [buns]” are attractive and elegant.

Staple foods:

Broad beans (sora mame) are of an extremely poor quality and unfit for consumption. Since no large adzuki beans are found, cowpeas (sasage; Vigna unguiculata) are used for cooking with rice. To differentiate normal wheat (tsune no mugi, i.e., barley) from wheat (komugi), the former is called “great wheat” (ōmugi). It is split [for faster cooking], probably because of the high cost of firewood.

Noodles

Buckwheat noodles are made without egg. Since the dough is rendered viscous by adding wheat flour, the noodles are tough. They stick in the throat and one cannot even down three small bowls of them. The flavor of the soup is exquisite, so if the buckwheat noodles of Wakayama were combined with the soup of Edo, this would be the best of both worlds. One would eat it until one’s stomach burst. When soup is added after the noodles are placed into a bowl, the dish is known as kake (short for kake-soba). When the noodles are heaped onto a small “steaming basket” (mushikago, a square wooden frame containing a bamboo screen-like bottom) and eaten like fine wheat noodles (sōmen, i.e., by dipping them into the soup by mouthfuls), this is known as mori (short for mori-soba, i.e., soba heaped up). When one enters a buckwheat-noodle shop, one is always asked “kake or mori?” I relegate the decision to my mood at the moment and answer without hesitation. The noodles are placed in attractive dishes and noodle shops all offer sake, in fact high grade sake.

Food prices:

Hatsudake mushroom (Lactarius hatsudake tanaka) are very plenteous, but matsutake mushrooms (Tricholoma matsutake) are scarce and command the price of pearls—daimyo employees cannot even dream of savoring them.  Sweet potatoes command only half the price they do in Wakayama and are delectable. With everything else in Edo being as expensive as it is, the low cost of sweet potatoes is a heavenly blessing for humble daimyo employees of my sort. These potatoes cost only eight coppers, and eating them provides relief from the boredom of never-ending winter nights or long spring days. Herring roe is kept in water and is available year round. It is very cheap and represents the greatest luxury a daimyo employee can afford to eat with his rice. Many species of shellfish are available. Tiny short-necked clams (asari; Ruditapes philippinarum) and larger clams (hamaguri; Meretrix lusoria) are particularly bounteous. They are sold shelled, are cheap, and taste good. They represent the secondmost luxurious item a daimyo employee can afford to eat with his rice. Scallops are soft in texture and delicious, worthy of being called “Xishi’s tongue.” Yet they are so costly they ought to be savored alone, together with sake. Eating them with rice is a contemptible extravagance. Gray mullet (ina), sardines, and gizzard shad (konoshiro) are abundant and very inexpensive. Horse mackerel (aji) is extremely dear and pike conger (hamo) exceedingly scarce. Harvest fish (managatsuo; Pampus argenteus) is nowhere to be had. Octopus and stingray (glossed ebuta, Wakayama dialect) are so expensive that a poor samurai can hardly hope to relish them. Salt is very expensive. It sells for one hundred coppers for two or three shō (c. 3.6 or 5.4 liters). Tofu lees (tōfu-gara) are very cheap. An amount equal to three lumps of it in Wakayama sells for two coppers in Edo.

Bathrooms:

Urine buckets are entirely absent from rural villages skirting Edo, to say nothing of the city itself, with the result that urine runs into the streets. From what I have seen, night-soil collectors only scoop up the solid waste in the outhouses, leaving the urine behind. The only explanation for this is that so many dwelling houses saturate urban regions, which extend fifteen kilometers in all four directions, that not everything can be collected.

Miscellaneous:

Florists can be recognized by the willow tree planted at the shop entrance. Camphor wood, rather than juniper (toshō or nezu, glossed as morondo), is used for mosquito-repelling incense. Such incense is called ka-yari (literally, “mosquito chaser”). How odd that it is sold by florists! If one inadvertently loiters around the lookout of an Edo Castle gate, the guards shout loudly “Pass on!” just as beggars are scolded in Wakayama. Edo widows and wives are hard to tell apart because both have identical rounded hairdos (maruwage).