Originally published in 1692, this is a biting and humorous look at the commoners and their New Year's resolutions.
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Customer Rating: Summary: Money changes everything Comment: What is power? Skill at combat? Family prestige? Social connections? Oh no, says Ihara Saikaku. Power is equal to only one thing, and that thing is money. Edo era Japan was a transitional period. Seeing the dissolution of the four classes and the political philosophies that had kept them in check, there was the rise of a new master, the golden Ryu and the silver Momme. Rich merchants, by definition the lowest of the social order, wielded much more actual influence than a poverty-stricken Daimyo.
"This Scheming World" is a sort of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book of cautionary tales for Japan's new era of money, written with those in mind who didn't realize the significance of their new lord. A slim volume, the sequence of twenty short stories highlight the joys of those who handle money well and the sorrows and destruction of those who don't. The stories are all anonymous, with no characters being named, and range from wealthy sons who inherit and then mismanage their father's fortune, to poor students who gather discarded pen nubs and weave them into curtains for a few coppers. Quite a few tales focus on debt-dodgers, trying to evade their creditors at the year's end when all bills must be paid.
No one knew the common people of the Edo era better than Saikaku, and he brings their hopes and fears alive with the same skill as his pleasure seekers and wastrels of the gay quarters in "Life of an Amorous Man" and "Five Women who Loved Love." An Osaka boy through and through, his writing is gruff and too the point, driving home his lessons from the point of view of know-how and common sense, rather than poetry. Clever and witty, often humorous, Saikaku still has an important lesson to teach.
In addition, his thoughts and observations on money are as true today as they were in Edo era Japan. The samurai and Daimyo may have fallen, but cash holds no less sway some 300 years after "This Scheming World" was written. Reading this has made me rethink more than one casual purchase, trying to avoid the same traps that befell his characters.
