Paper short abstract:

Iguchi monogatari (Tales for the ignorant; 1662) by Soga Kyūji is “an exemplary didactic book written in vernacular Japanese in the zuihitsu mode." Building upon earlier discourses of frugality and hard work, the text seeks to redefine for merchant-class readers what it means to live a good life.

Paper long abstract:

Iguchi monogatari (Tales for the ignorant; 1662) is described by Suzuki Jun as “an exemplary didactic book written in vernacular Japanese in the zuihitsu mode.” A preface identifies the author as Soga Kyūji, Echigo Province, who is otherwise unknown. The publisher presents the 8-volume text, which consists of 142 separate sections, or chapters, as the work of a person highly knowledgeable in Chinese studies and suggests that the book will appeal to readers untrained in classical Sinitic because it succeeds in presenting difficult religious and philosophical concepts in ways that are easy to understand. A recurring concern in the first few volumes of the text is the question of how to attain wealth. The author clearly owes a debt to Chōja kyō (The rich man’s bible; 1627), a one-volume text from a generation earlier, which reflected the merchant class interest in making money and preached the path to riches through practice of frugality and honest hard work. Iguchi monogatari builds upon Chōja kyō’s discourse of poverty and wealth but also introduces new concepts and intellectual perspectives that reveal a more ambitious project: to broadly define for merchant-class readers what it really means to be rich. The proposed paper explores the author’s use of the zuihitsu mode in Iguchi monogatari to make innovations to old discourses and articulate a new, more “modern,” path to the good life.