“Peace reigns changeless as the pine,” wrote novelist Ihara Saikaku (1642-93) of the Edo Period (1603-1868) — and peace it was, after 400 years of on-and-off war, but a restless, feverish peace. “Lust reigns,” he might better have written — but lust is changeful; it made of Edo an ukiyo (floating world), stripped of the ancient Buddhist sense of sad, resigned evanescence. Evanescence, yes — life was a dream, a soap bubble — but neither sad nor resigned; quite the contrary: eager, grasping, heedless, reckless, rapturous unto death.
