Baisaō spent almost 40 years as Gekkai Genshō. The Buddhist names were given to him when he became a monk at 11.
He was known by Gekkai, or Moon Ocean, to his fellow monks. Genshō was his true name, given to him by his teacher. It wasn’t used routinely.
When Gekkai Genshō resigned his Buddhist names, he called himself Kō Yūgai or Layman Yūgai. Kō is literally high, with high-minded understood. Yugai suggests some kind of search beyond.
Later he called himself Baisaō, a kind of nickname, pen name, stage name. I learned in a footnote that he was known as Kikusen, or Chrysanthemum Spring, as a child.
In reading Norman Waddell’s biography, I was struck by how differently a person’s identity was viewed in 18th-century Japan.
In addition to religious, secular and pen names, there were posthumous names. When their mother died, The Old Tea Seller and his sister began referring to her using a different name, reflecting a different relationship or a different way of relating.
The differences in the way people thought about identity go beyond naming. Age is part of identity. In The Old Tea Seller’s culture, a child was a year old at birth. (How else do you account for time in the womb?) The poems celebrating The Old Tea Seller’s 80th birthday were written when he was 79, in our way of reckoning.
The Western idea of a birthday did not become common in Japan until the 1950s. In The Old Tea Seller’s day, you — and everyone else — became a year older on New Year’s Day.
The year was common — the way the community reckoned time. Everyone gained an extra year at the same time.
• Source: Normal Waddell, The Old Tea Seller: Baisaō; Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2008.
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