but his native biographers pronounce him a failure in this respect also. In 1790 he married a woman of the harlot class. Notwithstanding what has been asserted by some English writers, such unions are regarded in Japan with marked disapproval, and his friends augured little good of Kiōden's choice. His wife, however, proved an exception to the general rule. She made an excellent housewife, and, the chief of virtues in a Japanese married woman, was unremitting in her dutiful attentions to her father-in-law. In short, she won respect from all Kiōden's acquaintances, and was spoken of by them as "the lotus-flower which has its roots in the mud." When she died he married another woman of the same class, who also made him a good wife.
Kiōden's place of business was near the Kiōbashi (a bridge) in the street called Temmachō. Hence the name by which he is known as an author, and which is composed of the first syllables of the names of these two places. His real name was Iwase Denzō, and he had half-a-dozen other appellations at various periods of his life and in various capacities. Kiōden sold smoking apparatus, such as pipes, tobacco-pouches, and the like, while he was also the inventor and compounder of a quack medicine, to which he gave the name of Doku-shogwan, or Reading Pills, the precise operation of which I have not been able to discover. He had the reputation of a shrewd and successful man of business, and was especially noted for his quickness at mental reckoning. He seldom bought books, but was always borrowing, and made it a rule when drinking with a friend that each should pay his own share, which, as we know from "Auld Lang Syne," was also the practice of Robert Burns. This became known as the Kiōden fashion.
