Mistress Oriku: Stories from a Tokyo Teahouse

by Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Royall Tyler (Translator)

"Royall Tyler's translations are nothing short of superb—crisp, restrained, ably balancing the ribald and the profound."— Booklist

Sensitive, compassionate, and indomitable, Mistress Oriku has abandoned the pleasure trades of Tokyo to run an elegant teahouse on the city's outskirts. Despite her hopes for a quieter, less hectic life, she finds she can't escape her involvement in the city's creative, intellectual and political circles.

Oriku finds herself the subject of unanticipated attention, because along with her passion for music, theater and storytelling, she offers her own invaluable a vibrant appreciation of life, an unparalleled gift for hospitality, and the maturity and sensitivity necessary to instruct young people in the all-important arts of love. Her independent thinking and love of Tokyo's traditions offer a unique perspective on the surprising complexity and contradictions of the Japanese culture of the era.

Now available in English for the first time, Japan's beloved Mistress Oriku is filled with clear-eyed nostalgia for the vanished—and entirely captivating—world of old Tokyo.

"They say the pleasures you taste first in middle age are like rain that starts later in the day."

Genres: Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Historical Fiction, Short Stories, Tea, Asian Literature

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2007

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mistress Oriku always gets her man! This is a tongue-in-cheek story of a 40-ish woman who ran a fine restaurant in suburban Tokyo in the late 1800s. She tells us her story retrospectively from when she is about 70 and retired from the business.



Oriku had an interesting and fortunate life. (I’m not giving away plot – we know all this in the first chapter.) As a young girl she was sold by her family to a brothel owner to become a prostitute. But she was so pretty that the owner took her for his mistress. When his wife died a short time later, he married her and she became the ‘madam’ running the operation without ever having been one of the ‘girls.’

Her husband died soon after his wife, so she sold that business and started a restaurant in a scenic area a little distance from Tokyo where the trip out by rickshaw was part of the enjoyment of the experience. The restaurant became a fashionable place for the elite to dine - famous actors, musicians, high-level government officials and military men.

Just because Mistress Oriku was never one of ‘the girls’ doesn’t mean she doesn’t know that business. She’s a good-hearted person who likes her men and she develops what we might call a specialty. She takes on men who are virgins to teach them the ropes. She picks out some men to ‘help’ them herself. Fathers and uncles send her sons and nephews. Some men come to her of their own accord. She has an iron-clad rule though: one night only! Any talk of sex in the book is very tame.

She’s an astute businessperson. Anyone who runs a restaurant can learn a few things from her, so this story has aspects of a 'how to run a restaurant' manual. Her 30-or-so employees love her because she considers the business a team effort existing to benefit all. Oriku had many offers, but she consciously never married because she knew her first love would always be her restaurant.



Oriku is very interested in the Japanese arts, especially music. She is a talented singer and samisen player herself. Between performances she attends for enjoyment, and conversations with actors and musicians who visit her restaurant, we learn a lot about Japanese musical instruments, songs, styles of singing and dancing and types of plays. Fortunately there is a glossary. So we can learn about terms including samisen, kabuki, shinai, nagouta, kiyomoto, Noh, samosa, dodoitsu, etc.

There is some beautiful writing. As in many Japanese novels, there is an emphasis on a love of nature as in this passage about cherry blossoms:

“Looking up into them in the early morning, you would glimpse amid the swelling buds a few blossoms just beginning to open, wet with the morning mist and glittering in the light. The spectacle they offered was truly beautiful. Oriku rose before anyone else when the trees came into flower, at an hour when there was still no one to be seen along the embankment. It gave her an indescribable pleasure to walk alone beneath the silent blossoms, with only a pale light in the eastern sky and no curtains hanging yet in the teashop doorways. To the tunnel of fully opened flowers she preferred, as the most beautiful of all, the time when about a third remained in bud; for cherry blossoms start falling almost the moment they open, and that morning when they first unfold is like a dream. She walked as far a Kototoi, gazing up at the new blossoms heavy with dew. The faint light of dawn glimmered from the water of the river, and mist veiled the far bank. She sat down at a deserted teashop, had a smoke [a pipe], and tasted the good fortune of living at Mukojima. People began appearing here and there while she absently contemplated the water and the flowers. She was not the only sensitive soul to cherish cherry blossoms at dawn. Some others came strolling along with their sake in an old-fashioned gourd.” [Both areas mentioned are real places still known for their beauty that attracts tourists, but they are now surrounded by urban Tokyo.]

A good story with a lot of humor but a sad epilogue.



The author Matsutaro Kawaguchi (1899-1985) wrote only four novels but almost all of them were adapted into films or TV series. (This author should not be confused with Toshikazu Kawaguchi, becoming well-known for his Before the Coffee Gets Cold stories.) So mostly he was known as a script- and screenwriter in Japan.

[Edited 12/14/23]

[Marci carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

The setting is in the Meiji period in Japan. Mistress Oriku is reflecting on a series of short stories surrounding this time period and her life. Originally, she was a brothel house ( aka The Silver Flower) owners mistress. However, she was grateful , as otherwise, she would have been a geisha. He eventually marries her when his wife dies. Later, Her husband dies and she is left to run the Silver Flower herself. 15 yrs later, She gives the Silver Flower to her adopted daughter and her husband.
She is 40 yrs old when she moves to Mukojima and starts her new restaurant business called , The Shiguire Teahouse. She works very hard and ends up being successful with her business as she entertains many influential people and develops a signature dish People will travel to her restaurant to experience her delicacies.
Mistress Oriku is known for her gift of teaching the art of love. She has relationships that, I would anticipate spiraling out of control. However, her character is maintained as a strong independent woman who refuses to marry or stay in any long term relationship.
The setting of the Shiguire Teahouse is described beautifully! ( even though this is a fictional story. I even looked the Shiguire Teahouse up and there is actually a real restaurant in Japan with this name. ). The restaurant is in a very quiet remote location off the river with a beautiful garden. Most visitors would come to the Teahouse during cherry blossom season. I enjoyed learning about this!
This fictional story is set apart, because it does discuss a time period of history. The reader learns about many customs, plays, music, religion, and traditions. I found the writing beautiful and the story keeps you spell bound til the end.

[Jacquelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading this book, I found myself hoping that the world would stop changing. Kawaguchi recalls a lovely part of Japanese history, but it isn't the polished and ideal world we might expect. It is full of political and cultural manipulations, all set around a tea house that is owned and operated by Mistress Oriku. I came to admire her spirit and power, and loved hearing about her life. I felt like I was reading a cultural history instead of a novel. And then, of course, the world began to change as it always does.

[Yasmin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If one could stand up and give a resounding applause to a book it would be this one. Oriku is a woman who started out having nothing, then a sheltered protected "kept woman ", to running her own business on her own merits. She took lovers as she wished, regardless of age bracket, but kept her distance as a voyeur man would. However financially independent she was she never found love to keep. In the progress of time in Japan she lost more besides and yet never ceased to be who she was. It is a wonderful story and Oriku a very interesting and remarkable woman. Nothing was held back in the telling, although lesbianism was portrayed you could say as "unnatural", that virgin women who thought they were lesbians just needed to have sex with a man and then they were right again. And yet the girl still professed love for her. It was an amazing read, however, it may have been good to have had a tale of Oriku from her childhood before being sold into prostitution. Highly recommended.

[Nicki · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t so much DNF this one as that it was a downloaded library ebook that returned before I could finish it, and I wasn’t concerned enough about it to renew.
It was okay, nothing to dislike, but it wasn’t enthralling enough to keep me reading through it in the time I had it either. I got about quarter way through. I liked Orika, very strong and independent woman, particularly for the times this was set in. A little disjointed as a novel.

[Cynthia Glanzberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was perusing for a book to take on a tea trip to Japan with me, I came across Mistress Oriku and picked it up without a second thought. I innocently expected it to be about a woman in Meiji-era Tokyo and her teahouse, but this took a racy turn. Although tea was barely a topic, I definitely enjoyed the empowering stories of Mistress Oriku and her lovers. Especially in a Japanese setting, I enjoyed her brash self-loving attitude on life and the world around her. I'd also love to try her chazuke, it never ceased to be described so deliciously!

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mistress Oriku makes for a fun read. Like many books translated from their original language, the flow and pacing are a little 'off', but it almost adds more charm to this book.

Mistress Oriku was married to the owner of a brothel in turn of the century Japan. After his death she fulfilled her dream, opening a Teahouse. These are her stories.

I found it quite entertaining and a fun read.

[Winter Sophia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Book Of Beauty, Pleasure, Spirit & Power!

[Ernest Junius · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle “Stories From a Tokyo Teahouse” peered out to me from the piles in a bargain dump of a bookstore clearance. As a tea fan this title immediately caught my attention. Out of a dozen copies available I chose the one in perfect condition and bought it. It costed me IDR 8000 (about 60 cents) and truly, it was a steal for such a splendid book.

The setting was Tokyo, Meiji period (1868 - 1912), and the story is about Mistress Oriku, a proprietress of an elegant, sukiya-style teahouse (or a restaurant, really) called the Shigure Teahouse. It is built on the bank of Sumida river, which was, at that time, quite a long way journey from central Tokyo. But the reputation of the teahouse was so widespread that many people from Tokyo didn’t mind a bit going through the distance to taste Oriku’s clam chazuke, which she brought all the way from Kuwana:

The shigure clams, as big as your thumb, were served on freshly cooked rice, sprinkled with flaked nori seaweed. You could eat them just like that, or you could pour tea over them and turn the dish into a rich, clean-tasting chazuke.

The story about the life of Mistress Oriku and the Shigure Teahouse was divided to a few short stories. Each story tells a conflict, usually regarding actors, musicians, and some people of cultural influence from Tokyo (which at the time often called Edo). And in every story Oriku would appear as the key component in solving the conflict, usually with her tactful negotiation skills, charisma, and her skills in bed (Oriku has a reputation to “educate” young actors, who are green and haven’t had experience with women, by allowing them to stay a night with her to “test their brush”). Oriku has an unwritten rule of staying for only a night with each man she fell in love with. Her reasoning was that she can’t allow men to get in the way of her business—the survival of Shigure Teahouse. However in the story she actually did fall in love with many men and sleep with them more than once or twice, which showed her weakness for sexual pleasure and men. There can always be arguments whether Oriku really uses sex as a way to contribute to society (helping young green artist to be acquainted with women) or sex as an enjoyment (the contribution to the society is merely an effect that follows).

Oriku was bought when she was a little girl to become a prostitute. But the proprietor of the brothel fell for her and she became his mistress. Many years later he died and Oriku obtained the brothel (The SIlver Flower) and ran the business for 15 years before she gave it up to her daughter when she got married. At this point she retired to the outskirts of Tokyo and opened the Shigure Teahouse although The SIlver Flower was doing so well at that time. This she did because she felt something wrong about the nature of pleasure trades.

This book is 99% about taste and mannerism. Not that there is no story in it, but they are of typical stories with cheerful disposition and optimistic outlook, which you can almost always predict they would end happily—except the last chapter, A Cloud of Blossoms, which is mainly about the twilight of The Shigure Teahouse. At the end of the Meiji era Tokyo was undergoing many changes: factories were built, commercial complexes were erected. These things upset the ways of old Japan and The Shigure Teahouse was no exception—boat and shoe factories suddenly appeared beside the teahouse. The jarring electric neon of a certain cheap bathhouse suddenly appeared beside an ancient temple, which was used to be one of the beautiful views The Shigure Teahouse offered to its customers. Accepting silently and quietly, The Shigure Teahouse was slowly receding until it disappeared completely along with Oriku herself. The author explained in the epilogue that “little is known about what happened to Oriku after that. Rumor had her returning to her birthplace in Kozuke, but actually she went back to Hashiba, where she bought a house and quietly lived out the rest of her life.” Strangely, the author went so far to explain how she died:

She departed from this world in 1935, at age seventy one. Practically nobody knew her in her last years, and she died a solitary death. All in all, she came to life with the Shigure Teahouse and vanished with it. She was the quintessential Meiji woman.

Unusual for this kind of story: probably the author wanted to establish Mistress Oriku as a real person. She might be indomitable, charismatic, sexual, and beautiful—a quintessential Meiji woman—but above all, she was a real thing.

All in all this book was such a delicious treat. It is light and uplifting. Royall Tyler’s wonderful translation has brought out the understated elegance often found in many Japanese literature. During my period of reading, I was even convinced to try to cook my own chazuke, which is mentioned so often in the book. If the insinuation about sex put you off, don’t be. The author’s description of sex was never vulgar or detailed. In a way you’ll know that it isn’t testosterone speaking. In terms of subject matter, it is rare for a japanese literature work to be so hopeful and sanguine. And although it was published in 1969 there is not a slightest whiff about the World War II.


My own chazuke: it might not be close to Oriku's but it was OK, I guess

[Alice Little · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this before going to Japan and then left the last few chapters unread for 2 years! I enjoyed the stories, and learning about the culture and the history, but the translation was cumbersome in places, it would have benefitted from a better proof read for clumsy phrases.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oriku is an interesting heroine: a pretty girl born to a poor farming family who was sold to a brothel keeper in the Yoshiwara, was raped by him and made his mistress/unofficial second wife, then inherited and ran the brothel before getting out at the age of 40 to start and run her own business, a tea house and restaurant called the Shigurejaya along the Sumida River outside central Tokyo. She's intelligent, cultured, artistic, a very good businesswoman, independent, frankly sexual, warmhearted but tough-minded. The book is structured as a series of stories covering the early years of her business venture in her early and mid-40s, when the business is doing exceptionally well and has become a popular haunt for people in the arts, but before changes at the end of the Meiji period marked an end to the sort of life she's built for herself. The translation is occasionally a bit clunky and literal but this is a wonderful, likeable book about a wonderful character in a fascinating time and place.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn't what I thought it was going to be like. I had expected just random stories from a middle-aged woman's point of view, and while the point of view was correct, the stories weren't what I thought they'd be. They're hot! They're about the sexual conquests of this middle-aged restaurant owner. You'd think then that this was a cautionary tale about being ... easy, but it's more empowering. It's like, I'm going to do what I want and I don't care what people think of me. Plus people never thought ill of her either. It became a sort of horror to be bedded by the mistress of the Shigure Teahouse. Anyway, the stories were great, and I loved reading about the different art forms. My only problem was that it took me a while to get though...

[Dpruess · Rating 1 out of 5]

there were some interesting cultural things to learn in this book; and some poignant human moments in the stories. but ultimately none of this could redeem the atrocious writing. it was so slow and repetitive. maybe that itself is a cultural thing, but for me it came off as "just bad." find a different way to gain cultural knowledge of Meiji-era Japan.

[Marysia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Meiji-era Tokyo, this book recounts the experiences of a brothel manager turned teahouse owner. It was fun to read; the translation feels a little awkward but it's not too bad. The setting is lovely.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed reading this book. The little stories were amazing and as always reading has helped me get through a difficult period in my life at this moment and I am sure my mother will want me to keep reading and continue with the book I am working on.

[Jim]

Cathy read this and quite liked it. The setting is the intellectual/creative/political class of Meiji-era Tokyo.

[Bookmaniac70 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very charming story about Mistress Oriku, her business and her lovers.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love Japanese culture and food, skip Tales of a Geisha and go directly for this one....of course, written by a Japanese writer it is accurate, delicate, beautiful, and delicious!

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice read, I enjoyed the stories but found Oriku herself to be a rather unlikable character at times, especially during the last few chapters.

[Graziella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nostalgia of a bygone era where landscape was still not ruined by eyesores.

[Jasmine Desai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enchanting...