Koikawa Harumachi and Sankyoden perform a crazy 31-syllable “fart.” The devilish Tagasode shows his true colors.

In the historical drama “Berabou,” there are many hilarious moments during Tsutaju’s conversations with the kyoka poets, and Koikawa Harumachi delivered one in episode 22. Personally, this was the funniest of all 22 episodes. First of all, Koikawa Harumachi’s mad name is interesting. A kyoka poet’s pseudonym is the pen name he uses as a writer. Many mad names are unique, and Koikawa Harumachi’s “Sake no Ue no Furachi” (Furachi the drunkard) is my favorite. Harumachi got completely drunk at the unveiling of Kitagawa Utamaro’s work in episode 21, and after accusing Sankyoden of “stealing my work” and calling him a thief, he ended up breaking his brush and declaring his retirement. Having made such a disgraceful display, he felt he had no choice but to back down and continued to turn down Tsutaju’s commissions. However, with encouragement from Utamaro and Kisanji, he came up with a groundbreaking idea. She then arrives at Koshodo with a piece of paper bearing a mysterious character written on it: the four kanji characters for her name (love, river, spring, and town) are used as radicals, with the kanji character “loss” as the side character. The kanji characters mean “regret” (love) and “loss” (river), “wither” (river), “miss” (spring) and “loss” (suddenly), “miss” (spring) and “miss” (suddenly), and “unpopular” (town). Upon hearing this, Tsutae proposes creating “Harumachi characters” based on Yoshiwara, and, using the character arrangement in the traffic document “※1 Ono no Takamura Utajizukushi” (Ono no Takamura Utajizukushi), she publishes the blue book of kanji games, “Sato no Bakamura Mudajizukushi (Kuruwa Gufu Jizukushi).” This brings Harumachi back from its rock bottom, but it does it again at the end of episode 22.

※1 What is “Ono no Takamura Utajizukushi”?

This is a huge bestseller and a terakoya (temple school) introductory book on cursive writing. Its clever mechanism of using waka poetry to memorize groups of kanji characters made the “song x character” learning style popular with the common people of the time. Incidentally, Ono no Takamura of the Heian period was a nobleman, but he is not the author of this work. He was a master of Chinese poetry and waka poetry, so Ono no Takamura was used in the book’s title to lend it authority. At the Shoukiyo-e Cafe Tsutaju, an authentic copy of “Ono no Takamura Utajizen,” published in 1784, is on display.

Next, at a year-end party hosted by Tsutaju for his coworkers, Tsutaju’s brother Jirobei plays the shamisen, attracting the attention of the guests. Harumachi, clad in a loincloth, appears. “I want everyone to at least have some laughs at the end of the year!” he exclaims, before dancing and farting. Furthermore, after he had exhausted all his farts, he performed a fart dance while making a “puu, puu” sound, bringing the laughter to a fever pitch. Many viewers were sure to erupt in laughter at this lewd party trick, truly worthy of the name “Drinking Insolence.” Also impressive this time was the devilish behavior of the courtesan, Daresode, who had been in love with Tsutae. In the previous episode, Daresode approached Ichi, the eldest son of the senior councilor Tanuma Okitsugu, who had infiltrated Yoshiwara to find evidence of the Matsumae clan’s smuggling, in order to confiscate Ezo from the Matsumae clan. He boldly became a spy himself, demanding that if he found evidence of the Matsumae clan’s smuggling, he would be willing to betray him instead. He then contacted Hirotoshi, the younger brother of the Matsumae clan’s head, who had come to Yoshiwara, and attempted to uncover evidence of smuggling. This was a quintessential Edo-period honey trap. Not only Tsutaju’s performance, but everyone else’s performances have become so exciting that we can’t take our eyes off them.