Spring-Color Plum Calendar

Tamenaga Shunsui's Spring-Color Plum Calendar, despite its age, fits comfortably within the definitions of melodrama we've studied so far. The long work features love triangles, money struggles, and the reunion of long-lost siblings, all in a highly emotional tone. The straight-forward writing never holds back from expressing the extreme feelings of the characters, even when they cannot: "Her silence was sadder than any words she could have said." This sort of narration makes Plum Calendar a colorfully self-aware work, even featuring direct insertions of the narrator's thoughts on both the characters and the real world.

Perhaps because it is so aware of the female reading audience it was being marketed to, Spring-Color Plum Calendar features an incredible cast of female characters particularly remarkable for its time. The four primary characters are all women with distinct personalities, motivations, and styles. They all, however, learn to live independently of men by acquiring skills to get jobs with which they can support not only themselves, but also their loved ones. In contrast, the main male character is a weak, teary man whose primary redeeming characteristic is his romantic appeal. It practically requires suspension of disbelief that two such vibrant and talented women as Ochou and Yonehachi both love Tanjirou. Oyoshi, the leader of her own gang, particularly stood out to me as a surprising female character. Unlike many women in melodrama, she is not trapped by forces beyond her control, but is actually a power of her own and works as the savior of Ochou from the cruelties of society. She admits to generally unseemly characteristics for women, such as egoism, and wields authority without being looked down on by the narrative, despite its usual need to finish scenes with a reminder of the typically ideal traits for women.

Characteristic of melodrama's tendency to ideological contradiction, despite these incredible female characters, Tamenaga's narration betrays any hopes of finding a semblance of feminism in Spring-Color Plum Calendar. He expresses affection and appreciation for women, but only for the delineated paragon of female virtue, which he sees as faithfulness to men. Although the story solves issues primarily through relationships between women, the melodrama and idealized emotional pain is generally centered on the difficulties of Ochou and Yonehachi's faithful love for Tanjirou. Despite praising them for their faithfulness, the narrative does not at all present Tanjirou's effectively two-timing them as a negative thing. Tamenaga pauses to defend his female characters from accusations of being immoral for sleeping with Tanjirou, but never needs to stop and mention the romantic hero's own morals (or lack thereof). The narration even expresses this double standard, mentioning that "His love for her is as true as hers for him" of Tanjirou's love for Ochou during a romantic scene right after revealing how he is also in a relationship with Yonehachi. It is hard to imagine anyone being so kind to Yonehachi had she actually been sleeping with Konoito's lover as Tanjirou is sleeping with both her and Ochou. And yet, the women's love for Tanjirou is posited as being equal to his for them. While Spring-Colored Plum Calendar may surprise a modern reader with its self-sufficient female characters, it does not break free from the moral standards of its time so completely as it may initially seem.