Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the “profiles” of medieval Japanese gamblers and proposes that the risk-takers Fujiwara Akihira 藤原明衡 (?-1066) refers to in his eleventh-century Shinsarugakuki 新猿楽記 would have been familiar to medieval audiences as members of bakuto (gambling gangs).

Paper long abstract:

Gambling and wagering represented a chance to claim both tangible and intangible winnings in premodern Japan. Most members of Heian- (794-1185) and Kamakura-period (1185-1333), society, from emperors to warriors, wagered on games including go, sugoroku and shōgi.

Fujiwara no Akihira 藤原明衡 (?-1066), a mid-ranking scholar-official of the Heian period, describes a typical gambler in his eleventh-century Shinsarugakuki 新猿楽記 (“An Account of the New Monkey Music”). Aside from his impressive knowledge of go and sugoroku, Akihira writes that the gambler is also said to be dexterous, competitive, and exhibits the “capacity for theft and murder.” As emperors, aristocrats and monks regularly played, and gambled on, go and sugoroku, Akihira’s description at first glance seems to be at odds with the reality of who, in some unfortunate cases, “risked it all” on the roll of the dice in Heian and Kamakura Japan. This paper examines the several “profiles” of a medieval gambler and proposes that the risk-takers Akihira was referring to would have been well-known to audiences in the Heian and Kamakura periods as rascals and rapscallions who sometimes belonged to gambling gangs or bakuto 博徒.