Gambling in Historic Japan

[chomiji]

So if a Gojyo-type character were to end up in Edo-era Japan, would he be able to support himself by gambling? This stray thought brought me to this article from the Japan Times Online:

By the middle of the Heian Period (794-1185), gambling had become rampant among the inhabitants of the capital, Heiankyo (present-day Kyoto). People wagered enthusiastically on practically anything: cock fights, horse races, cricket fights and fanciful competitions that made use of flowers, pictures or folding fans.

Around this time professional gamblers, known as bakuto, first appeared. Historical accounts gave details of brawls, killings and robberies involving gamblers, which led to increasingly strict measures to repress their activities. Between 1225 and 1284, the authorities issued no fewer than nine edicts prohibiting gambling.

During the Edo Period (1603-1867), members of the ruling samurai class were discouraged from gambling ... .

What's less clear is what he'd be playing - not cards, which came in with the Portugese, later. From the discussion later in the article, the likeliest thing would be a dice games of various sorts. Hmm ... .

Comments

[chomiji]

That pic is so pretty (and rather more realistic in some ways than the fangirl artists usually get ... XD   ). I've seen it before, and it probably informed my description of what Sanzo saw in "On the Rocks."

The Mr. may have some of those films/episodes down in our rec room. He went on a samurai and samurai-related video kick a couple of years ago (and after that it was a Chinese martial arts epic kick, triggered by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), but as mentioned previously, I don't like watching stuff myself, and he'd usually sneak off and watch them when I was online, or whatever. Maybe you oughta come over sometime and we can make popcorn and watch stuff.

[chomiji]

Since I don't usually watch TV at all, I doubt I'll mind the screen size, and I love animals ... .

[sanada.livejournal.com]

Most of the gambling scenes I've read in manga set during the Edo period have involved the dice game cho-han ("odd-even") or fights/races. Wiki has an article on cho-han here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cho-han_bakuchi

[chomiji]

Interesting ... I presume that would only be done by a woman with an already interesting reputation. I'm now recalling that Chinese women gambled among themselves when playing mahjong, but that was at a much later period.

[chomiji]

>> magical macguffin sacred scroll <<

Shades of various Saiyuki fics! (Sounds like a combo of freeradical9's recent "Minus Wave Cure" and louiselux's about the sacred sex scroll ... .)

[chomiji]

I imagine you can guess where this is going!   XD   The trouble is, I don't have a plot, just part of a scene. The shirtless business certainly adds to the concept ... .

(Yeah, I bet Yuan gambles. I wonder if Tokito does ... probably cheats if so, the little snot!)

[chomiji]

Yeah, but you don't know what I'm after with this ... it was gonna be a crossover ... .

XD

[chomiji]

Nu-uh. That's not it - I'll stop dancing about and obfuscating bashfully. SDK's Sanada Yukimura was going to run into him. Although as I said over at louiselux's, this is mainly just an exercise in "My two POV characters in my two favorite manga series: How are they the same? How are they different?"

Personality-wise, Yukimura would not seem to have a lot in common with Gojyo ... but he has a surprising amount in common with Kenren. It's interesting.

[chomiji]

Mind now, they're by no means identical ... .

But there's the whole easygoing, charismatic leader of men thing. Of course, Yukimura's leading an exiled clan of underdogs, who are now basically reduced to guerilla/insurgent tactics, and Kenren's leading the well-equipped troops of Heaven.

There's the self-confident sexual charisma. But Kenren's is more macho guy in leather and Yukimura's is more playful and slightly genderbending (actually, more than "slightly" every once in a while ... .).

There's the liking and understanding re kids, which we see with Kenren and Goku, and Yukimura and Sarutobi Sasuke.

There's the intense loyalty to friends and willingness to sacrifice for them, tempered by the knowledge that to risk one's self too frivolously is just as bad, because then one won't be around to protect said friends.

Sadly, poor Yukimura has no Tenpou - as megan and I have often said, he seems to have abandoned the idea of romance (the "why" is a spoiler: there's a wonderful two-issue flashback for him in vol. 11 that explains it), and is filling the gap with deep friendships and frequent liaisons with wine-shop girls (and boys, it's generally assumed).

[chomiji]

The latest SDK volume had some wonderful scenes for Yukimura ... including a dynamite sword fight with Kyo that had my very het husband saying "Ahh, they're just having sex in public!" No subtext, eh?   XD   I need to blog the whole thing, but there will be some spoilers, so you shouldn't go past the cut. Things are starting to happen hot and heavy in that series. In fact, that same "OMG OMG, how they're suffering, what's going to happen next EEEK!" that I had with The Maze is about what the last 6 or so volumes of SDK are like (I read them in scanslations, with sanada doing the translation part). Of course it's a mainstream T-rated shounen manga, so there isn't any of the weirder rape-type stuff ... although at one point Hishigi does walk over to a magically frozen-in-place Kyo and stroke his face and say "You still have such lovely eyes, Kyo ... ."

Now I'm obsessing over how, with the way that dice game works, one could make money as a professional gambler unless one was in on yakuza machinations involving it. The Mr. suggested maybe my SDK-era Gojyo should play Go or Shoji for money as well, since those are skills-based.

Plot would be basically, Gojyo in an inn some night, tight on cash, having trouble making it up through gambling, and then to add to the insult, his usual ploy with the girls isn't working because those kind of girls are already all over Yukimura (which is canon for him as well) ... but Yukimura decides Gojyo is more interesting than the girls, and has to figure out a way to get this across without hurting Gojyo's pride.

[0nolicious.livejournal.com]

Now I'm obsessing over how, with the way that dice game works, one could make money as a professional gambler unless one was in on yakuza machinations involving it.

In Zatoichi canon, at least, somehow between his blindness and his martial training, all of Ichi's other senses are abnormally acute; so he picks up on little cues of sound, smell, etc. that fly past normal people -- it seems like he can even hear which way the dice are going to fall. With Gojyo being only half-human, you could possibly hand-wave similar super-human keenness of perception giving him something of an edge...

[chomiji]

The Mr. was also suggesting that he might play Shogi or Go for money as well. Yukimura could have observed him having a bad evening with the dice game and challenged him to one of the other games (and then the prize/penalty actually turn out to be roughly the same thing ... XD  )

[0nolicious.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* Yeah, pretty much any sort of game or contest can be turned into an excuse for gambling, given the right sort of characters. Did you ever see Samurai Champloo? There's a funny bit where one of the characters gets obsessed with beetle sumo...

[chomiji]

No, I haven't read it. Remember you had to identify the costumes for me at Katsucon? So what's it like? It's got kind of a goofy name ... .

[chomiji]

Hmm, maybe I'll have to try that one. And the simpler visuals of the cartoon mad it easier for me to understand what was going on with the dice game too.

And now I understand why Mugen - who's featured in several of telophase's icons - looks so much like Spike!

(Thanks! And yeah, Samurai Mash-Up probably would have been a better-selling English title for it!)

[0nolicious.livejournal.com]

Mugen definitely has some of Spike's too-cool-for-school nihilistic attitude, although he's much much cruder and less haunted. I love both series but ultimately I think Champloo is more rewatchable, since Bebop plays out like a Greek tragedy while Champloo ends on a more hopeful sort of note. They do both have a bit of a similar vibe, with various colorful misfit/outlaw types coming to work together, reluctantly at first, but eventually forming a sort of grudging respect and affection for each other.

In Saiyuki terms, Mugen is a bit like the sort of character Gojyo tries to act like -- lewd and crude and not thinking of much beyond the next drink, fight, or screw; there's really not a lot of mush to this boy, although he does have a bit of a Gojyo-ish disdain for powerful bullies and unfair play that intensifies as the series goes on. Jin is a bit of a blend of Sanzo and Hakkai's darker sides -- cold and deadly, almost all sign of emotion kept fiercely in check, painfully introverted and a bit arrogant in his own superiority, with more than a hint of rage seething under the calm facade. And Fuu is in a lot of ways the Goku of the group, the stubborn, openly emotional, sometimes childish and sometimes wise beyond her years glue that holds the unlike band together. (She's even got a rather Goku-ish bottomless pit of an appetite, when they've managed to scrape up enough money to eat their fill for a rare change.)

[chomiji]

I'll have to keep an eye out for these ... Borders didn't have any this past Sunday when I went to get Furuba 18!

[chomiji]

Oh, shoot, I was assuming it was a manga too! You know about me and anime ... I still haven't managed to get through my Xmas Avatar!