A collection of essays from the late Edo period. The collection consists of 10 volumes with 100 stories in each volume. The author, Moriyasu Negishi, was a humble man who rose through the ranks from a magistrate on Sado Island, to chief accountant, and finally, town magistrate, becoming famous in the process. These books are a collection of stories he personally saw and heard, ranging from ghost stories to funny stories, and covering every field.
This "Mimibukuro (Earmuffs)" was originally a collection of stories that the author had heard in his spare time between official duties, had seen or heard from friends and acquaintances that he found interesting, or tales that he thought would benefit his students. The author should have selected and polished the stories he collected, but he was too busy with his official duties and left them as they were. As the author says in the preface, it was originally intended for his disciples and not for others to see. However, it was somehow leaked and became a book that has remained in the public domain to this day.
The contents of the books are diverse, ranging from a single tanka poem said to have been left by the monk Ikkyuu, to stories about effective medicines, and even a lesson from Ooka Echizen no Kami. Among them, the tenth volume (1814) contains the story of "Obata Koheiji," a famous Kabuki ghost story.
When Koheiji, a disciple of the second generation Danjuurou, goes down to a country theater, he is pushed into a swamp by his adulterous wife's lover and drowns. When his theater colleagues went to Koheiji's house to inform his wife of the news, they were told that Koheiji had already returned home. However, when they looked into the room where Koheiji was supposed to be, he was not there.
This story seems to be based on the premise of "The Romantic Revenge Story of Asaka Swamp"[I was unable to find a translation for this, so I made this one myself.] by the Edo playwright Santou Kyouden, which had already been published at the time. However, a story in Mimibukuro's fourth volume, called "The Mysterious Death of a Playwright," shows that tales of inexplicable happenings related to theaters existed before Kyouden's prototypal work.
In this story, a traveling playwright makes money by traveling, and on his way back to Edo by boat, he falls into the sea and is lost. When his theatrical friends rush to inform his wife in Edo, she says that her husband has already returned home. However, there is no sign of him in the bedchamber where he is supposed to be sleeping. The wife was told a strange story by her returning husband, but she was strictly forbidden to speak about it, and when she tried to tell that story, she heard a tremor as if a great object had fallen on her.
These connections show that "Mimi-bukuro" is an invaluable source for understanding the stories told by the common people of Edo at that time.
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