Documents

Oiwa Inari raiyu kakiage (1827), in Machikata kakiage, Yotsuya appendix: the title, the date of the rite, the lane and the signatures

Language

Japanese

Read from

NDL frames 36 (title), 37 (entry heading, left page), 40 (right page, columns 2 and 3), 47 (both pages) and 48 (both pages); each frame is a double page, right page first; columns count from the right

Reading

transcribed from the page image

Translation

ours

Retrieved

15 October 2026

町方書上 (Machikata kakiage, “reports from the town wards”) is the set of answers that Edo’s ward officers wrote down for the shogunate’s survey of the city’s places, shrines and customs in the Bunsei era. The volume here is [66] 四谷町方書上 附録 全 (“Yotsuya report, appendix, complete”), a manuscript copy in the NDL’s Old Shogunate Records collection (pid 2571547, 53 frames, rights marked public domain, internet; the shelf label on the cover reads 803-1). Its entry 於岩稲荷來由書上 (“report on the origin of the Oiwa Inari”) runs from frame 36 to the top of frame 48. The hand is a running manuscript hand. The lines below are the ones that could be read from the images; the middle of the entry (frames 38 to 46) tells the story of the Tamiya house and Oiwa, and only its names, dates and a few words could be read (see Notes).

Translation

1. Title. Report on the origin of the Oiwa Inari.

2. The entry. Item: the Oiwa Inari shrine. Note: the shrine is [one and a half ken wide?] and [nine shaku?] deep.

3. The household. […] [joined?] the group of Sakakibara Uneme, and in the Jōkyō years a dōshin of that same group, Tamiya Matazaemon (later changed his name to Izaemon), […]

4. The rites. […] memorial rites were held with great care at the same temple, and after that, of themselves, the curses [one or two written characters here are unclear] and the strange events stopped.

5. The Buddhist name. In the eighth month of the year of the cock, Bunsei 8, […] they asked Myōgyōji […] and it was given the name Tokushōin Myōnen Nisshō daishi, […]

6. The register. […] recorded in the same temple’s register of the dead […]

7. The lane. Item: the lane the locals call Oni-yokochō (“demon lane”). Note: it runs through the compound of the […] group from the east street to the west […] and it is a small alley. As for this, Oiwa, having become like a demon-woman, ran along this lane […] and so the locals have called it by that name.

8. The close. We have heard and checked the points above, and they are not mistaken. So we state. Bunsei 10, year of the boar, tenth month. Yotsuya Tenma-chō, ward headmen Magoemon and Mohachirō.

Notes

The reading is from the NDL page images (pid 2571547); every character I could not read is marked [ … ] or with a question mark. The NDL record calls the volume a manuscript copy (書写資料) and lists the stamps 編修地志備用典籍 and 旧幕府引継書.

What is certain. Frame 36 carries the title 於岩稲荷來由書上 alone on the left page. Frame 37 begins the entry 一 於岩稲荷社. Frame 48 closes with the date 文政十丁亥年十月 (the tenth month of Bunsei 10, 1827) and two signatures under 四谷傳馬町, which I read as 孫右衛門 and 茂八郎 (the post of the signatories is written small above the names and is the least certain part: I read 名主). Frame 47 gives 文政八乙酉年八月 (the eighth month of Bunsei 8, 1825) and the Buddhist name 得證院妙念日正大姉. The Japanese era-year of the date, Bunsei 8, is the year of Nanboku’s play; the report places this arrangement of a Buddhist name in the eighth month, the month after the play’s first performance in the seventh.

What I could not read. Frames 38 to 46 tell the story of the house and of Oiwa: I read the names Tamiya, Itō Kihei, Akiyama Chōemon, 山浦, the words 疱瘡 (smallpox), 離別, 離縁 and 離縁状 (divorce, letter of divorce) and the date 貞享四丁卯年七月十八日 (Jōkyō 4, 18th day of the seventh month, 1687) but not the sentences joining them, so nothing here says what the report claims happened to Oiwa on that day. In passage 3 the small inset 後ニ伊左衛門ト改名 (“later changed his name to Izaemon”; the second character could be read 右 or 左, and the second reader reads 左) sits beside the name Matazaemon; I read it that way but it needs a second reading, and it is not used in the article. 同寺 (“the same temple”) in passages 4 and 6 points back to a temple named in the lines I did not read; I take it to be Myōgyōji from passage 5, which is not certain. The sense of passage 5 between the marked gaps is not recovered.

The report is dated two years after the play. Whether the play shaped the report, or the report the play, is not something this copy settles, and we did not find a scholar’s argument on it in a source we could open.