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Recommended: Portrayals of women in media

People throughout history have always attempted to break a certain silence: Martin Luther King Jr. with civil rights, Nelson Mandela with justice, Edward Snowden with constitutional violations. Ihara Saikaku also broke the silence with his piece Life of a Sensuous Woman. Saikaku wrote about topics and issues that most Japanese people thought about yet no one dared to voice. Saikaku broke that silence, writing about topics no one dared to consider. Despite the title, several themes are prevalent in Life of a Sensuous Woman: the true nature of women, the true nature of men, and Buddhist confession.
Life of a Sensuous Woman is about a nameless elderly woman telling her life experiences to two young men. The woman confesses to all the unspeakable acts she has done, like how much sex she had and who she slept with. The woman’s tales begin with her life as daughter of a former aristocrat in the capital Kyoto, Japan. The woman told them of the occupations she had in her lifetime, starting as an attendant in the Imperial Palace and eventually becoming a prostitute. The woman tells her experiences of love, what it is to be loved, and the true nature of love and love-making. In the end she comes to terms with her life and confesses to her life of mischief.
One of the first and most prevalent themes in Life of a Sensuous Woman is women. Everything from the way they act, to the way they think is accurately conveyed in the story. The story portrays women as very adaptable people. In Life of a Sensuous Woman the old woman had many occupations: attendant, prostitute, teacher, errand-runner, geisha, and a mistress. This shows that no matter the situation a woman is thrown in, she always manages to land on her feet. As Elizabeth Cadell once sai...

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...t people. But as shown in Life of a Sensuous Woman, not only does history repeat itself, some elements remain unchanged. Men and women have not changed much in the past 300 years. If Life of a Sensuous Woman was to be read by random people and asked to guess when it was published, most if not all would guess that it was published within the past thirty or so years. Through clever usage of satirical elements, Ihara Saikaku forces readers to take a hard look at life and question the basic fundamentals of it.

Works Cited

Saikaku, Ihara. “Life of a Sensuous Woman.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Puchner, Martin, and Suzanne Akbari, eds. Vol. D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print. 6 vols.
"Mahatma Gandhi Quote." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore, n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.
"Elizabeth Cadell Quotes." Goodreads.com. Goodreads Inc., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

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