Yonosuke reached sixty. For fifty-four years he had followed the way of love to its very end. The vast fortune he had inherited from his parents was almost all spent.
Looking back on his life, Yonosuke said, "When I think of it, I have known every pleasure of love in this world. In Japan there is nothing left to see, no woman left to love. Nor do I mean to take up the Buddhist path and pray for the next life. Then let me go and see another world."
With what was left of his fortune, Yonosuke had a new ship built and named it the Koshokumaru. He loaded it with mountains of love tools, potency medicines, and all kinds of equipment for pleasure. Then he invited seven men, his regular companions in play, and they boarded the ship.
Their goal was the legendary Isle of Women, where only women were said to live. At the end of the tenth month of 1682, the Koshokumaru, with Yonosuke and his friends aboard, rowed out from Izu into the far southern sea. What became of them after that, no one knows.
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The Isle of Women was a legendary island said since ancient times to float in the southern sea, where only women lived and, according to the old tale, became pregnant when the south wind blew. Some said Hachijojima in Izu was that island.
In an age when tales often ended with Buddhist salvation or a moral lesson, Saikaku sent his hero sailing off into the unknown in search of the pleasures of love. This ending captures well the spirit of Saikaku's ukiyo-zoshi, affirming the pleasures of this world and depicting human desire as it is.