Women of the Pleasure Quarters

by Lesley Downer

  The female geisha were an instant success. Unlike the courtesans and prostitutes of the pleasure quarters, they were independent, smart women who made a living by their skills and their wit and who were not bound by traditions that forced them to behave in certain ways. They did not have to engage in endless formality and could take sexual partners as and when they pleased. They were women of the world. And although the geisha quarters were clustered in particular parts of town, they were not walled in. The women could come and go freely. They were not caged birds.

  While Shimabara quickly embraced the new trend, the Yoshiwara held out against it for a decade. At last, finding their business threatened by the popularity of this new breed of woman, the brothel-keepers there started to hire freelance female geisha to compete with the dancing girls, geisha, and geiko outside the gates. These geisha worked as entertainers, like the male geisha, in the Yoshiwara, on one condition: they were not allowed to steal the courtesans’ clients by sleeping with them. The geisha of the “hill places” had no such restrictions.

  The first geisha in the Yoshiwara was recorded in 1761. Called Kasen of the Ogiya house, she was a prostitute who had earned her freedom and set up in business as an entertainer. Thereafter the number of female geisha swelled until they completely overwhelmed the male geisha. In 1770 there were 16 female geisha in the Yoshiwara and 31 men; in 1775, 33 female geisha but still 31 men; and by 1800 there were 143 females as against 45 men. By that time the word “geisha” primarily meant a woman, not a man. As the last of the grand tayu courtesans disappeared, the geisha moved center stage. 6

  Times were changing. The peak of prosperity had passed, the Genroku period—when one commentator wrote of the pleasure quarters that “their splendor was by day like Paradise and by night like the Palace of the Dragon King”—was over. 7

  Two classes, in particular, suffered: the peasants, who were largely dependent on a single crop—rice; and the samurai, who received their fixed stipends in rice, which then had to be handed over to the merchants in exchange for pitiful amounts of cash. While the townsmen hoarded rice, the samurai declined into genteel poverty. The economic malaise was made all the more oppressive by a calamitous barrage of natural disasters. Fire leveled the flimsy wooden structures of Edo again and again. There were storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, and a string of bad harvests leading to devastating famines in which half a million peasants died. The mood of the country grew darker.

  The townsfolk, however, were not suffering at all. In fact, they were growing ever wealthier. Many profited from the misery by lending money and selling their goods at extortionate rates. Sporadically the shogunate tried to clamp down on ostentatious spending. There were regular edicts that “Townsmen and servants may not wear silk,” “Townsmen may not wear cloth mantles,” “Townsmen may not live extravagantly,” and “Townsmen may not give lavish entertainments.” Those who were too obviously prosperous also ran the risk of having their riches confiscated and redistributed into the shogun’s coffers. In any case, affluence was no longer a novelty. Many merchant families had enjoyed prosperity for several generations and no longer needed to flaunt it.

  The result was a new aesthetic of restraint. Townsfolk, nervous of having their fortunes impounded, took to wearing sober robes with a sumptuous lining, only visible when they flung off their jacket, and spent their money on tiny but inordinately expensive items such as intricately carved netsuke toggles of wood or ivory, tobacco pouches, and the like. They lived in homes with austere external walls concealing a sumptuous interior, like the beautiful Sumiya teahouse which stands to this day in Shimabara. By the mid-1700s, the courtesans of the pleasure quarters, in their showy kimonos, were beginning to seem rather passé. They continued to have their aficionados. But modern young men about town were starting to prefer the more understated attractions of the geisha.

  While the courtesans tied their obi in front, geisha tied theirs chastely at the back like ordinary townswomen. Instead of flamboyant multilayered kimonos, they sported plain monochrome ones with the narrow white collar of the under-kimono visible at the throat. Their coiffure was relatively simple, decorated with two or three hairpins and a single comb, rather than an armory of tortoiseshell pins, combs, ribbons, and dangling decorations like the courtesans wore. Some of the understatement which gave the geisha their special flavor was the result of official ordinances. They were forbidden to wear elaborate kimonos even if they wanted to.

  By now no one could deny that the geisha were a profession in their own right. The brothel-keepers of the Yoshiwara were becoming more and more worried by their success and popularity. In 1779 a man called Shoroku, the proprietor of the Daikokuya, one of the oldest establishments in the quarter, proposed setting up an inspection station, a kemban, to regulate and control them. With the backing of the other brothel-keepers, he promptly retired and appointed himself comptroller. Installed at the Great Gate of the Yoshiwara, he sold 100 permits to geisha. He had a staff of two inspectors and dozens of clerks who processed all requests that geisha be sent to entertain.

  The kemban took 30 to 50 percent of the geishas’ fees. They also kept an eye out to ensure that the geisha did not engage in prostitution and interfere with the business of the Yoshiwara. Wherever a geisha went, she was accompanied by a man who carried her shamisen. It was also his job to keep an eye on her and make sure she did not try to run away. As for Shoroku, he ended up a very rich man with an enviable collection of fine art and antiques.

  Shoroku established rules of conduct to distinguish geisha from courtesans and prostitutes and ensure that they did not steal their customers. Geisha were to be recruited from among the less beautiful women. They were to wear a severe kimono and simple hairstyle. They were to work in twos or threes, never alone, so as to discourage propositioning, and they were not to sit too close to guests. If a prostitute accused a geisha of interfering with her customers, there would be an inquiry. A geisha found contravening the regulations was liable to lose her license for several days or even permanently.

  Such constraints only applied to those who wished to work in the pleasure quarters. There was never any doubt that the geisha of Fukagawa, stylish and talented as they were, slept with whomever they liked, whenever they liked. But prostitutes were prostitutes and geisha were geisha. If a geisha chose to enter into a relationship with a client, that was legally classified as misconduct, not prostitution. And such activities were the free choice of the geisha. Prostitution was never something they were forced to engage in. 8

  The Stylish Geisha of Fukagawa

  The geisha of Tatsumi goes walking,

  Bare white feet in black lacquered clogs.

  In her haori jacket, she’s the pride of Great Edo.

  Ah, the Hachiman bell is ringing.

  Geisha song 9

  The Fukagawa geisha—also known as Tatsumi geisha, as in the song—were particularly famous for their sex appeal. Above their plain, understated kimonos they wore a haori, a loose, square-cut jacket with huge sleeves originally worn by men. This gave them a raffish air reminiscent of the kabuki actors who played women’s roles and who, on leaving the theater, would toss a jacket on over their women’s costume. The geisha never wore tabi (toed linen socks). Even in the dead of winter, they always went barefoot, their red-painted toenails framed against the black of their lacquer clogs peeping out from under the hem of their kimonos. The word for this casual, effortless chic was iki, which the Fukagawa geisha—more than any other—embodied.

  In those days Fukagawa was by the sea, though nowadays, after centuries of landfill, the sea has been pushed a long way away. Young blades who wanted to enjoy the company of geisha would take a roofed houseboat down the river and along the seashore. There were temptations even before they disembarked. There were boats owned by cut-price prostitutes known, in the slang of the time, as funa-manju (boat dumplings), ready to offer their services then and there on board. On land there were kekoro (literally “kicks”) and ma
ruta (logs) ready to waylay them, and right at the bottom yotaka (nighthawks) who carried out their work in the open air; as to exactly what these colloquialisms referred to, that has been lost in the mists of time and will have to be left to the imagination. In Fukagawa the lowest grade of prostitutes were called ahiru (ducks), perhaps because they lived near the water; Ahiru became the name of the quarter there.

  As the young man reached the Fukagawa area, he would be beguiled by the strumming of shamisen and the sound of singing from the restaurants and teahouses along the waterfront. The geisha were fine musicians who had spent years studying their art. Even though they might choose to augment their income with prostitution, they had a skill with which they could support themselves for the rest of their lives. In comparison with the chic, independent geisha, the courtesans of the pleasure quarters seemed stuck in a time warp.

  The young man who wanted to win himself one of these stylish modern women had to be a very cool character himself. While the ideal woman was iki, the equivalent for men was to be a tsu—a sophisticate, a connoisseur. The word arose around 1770 and quickly became an enormous fad. Being a tsu meant knowing one’s way around the demimonde, knowing the rules of the game so thoroughly that one was completely at ease. Every self-respecting Edo man wanted to be thought a tsu, certainly not a yabo (“boor,” the opposite) or a hanka-tsu (a half-baked tsu, a charlatan).

  As it happened, the typical yabo was likely to be a samurai, an uncouth provincial type who had no idea how to dress stylishly and talked in stiff outmoded language. A tsu, in contrast, had no need to be rich or to have high social status. If he looked good and had savoir faire, he was welcome. Thus the countercultural values of the demimonde, which focused obsessively on style, dress, and appearance, seeped through to permeate society at large.

  One of the most brilliant figures of the time was a man called Kyoden Santo (1761–1816). A poet and comic novelist, he was also a famous artist who worked under the name Masanobu Kitao and practically lived in the Yoshiwara. Both his wives were second-rank Yoshiwara courtesans. At twenty-four, he published a book called Romantic Embroilments Born in Edo (1785). Told cartoon-style in drawings, with the dialogue and narrative festooning every available space, this is the story of Enjiro, the spoiled son of wealthy parents.

  Enjiro fancies himself as a great lover (iro-otoko), and wants the whole world to know it. But sadly, being ugly, this is rather difficult for him to achieve. The best way to become truly famous is by committing love suicide with a courtesan. So he buys the freedom of a woman called Ukina, paying a lot of money to have a window in her brothel broken. The two scramble down a ladder, feigning elopement, though the brothel staff ruins the effect by cheerfully waving them off. Still, he sets off into the woods with her, having arranged for friends to arrive and stop them before they actually commit the act.

  Unfortunately at this stage two robbers turn up, waving swords and wearing the Japanese equivalent of balaclavas, sinister black scarves tied around their faces revealing only their eyes. They set upon the helpless pair and offer to help them die. “We didn’t mean to kill ourselves when we set off to commit suicide,” groans Enjiro.

  In the end the robbers make off with their clothes, leaving them naked but for their loincloths and an umbrella. Enjiro has become famous, though not in the way he intended.

  Kyoden’s story caused great hilarity and was hugely successful, with the scene of the pair walking along miserably, practically naked, reproduced on innumerable woodblock prints and paper fans. Clearly there were plenty of Enjiros to be found around Edo and in the pleasure quarters. 10

  The licensed and the unlicensed districts, the two worlds within and without the walls, frequently mingled. Whenever there was a clamp-down on illegal prostitution, the unfortunate women were shipped off and dumped in the nearest licensed quarter. Given that the walled cities were never allowed to expand a single yard, there must have been terrible overcrowding and considerable squalor. Moreover, each influx of untrained, unqualified prostitutes dragged standards in the quarters down another notch.

  Every now and then there was a devastating fire. In the hundred years following the first appearance of the geisha in 1760, the Yoshiwara burned to the ground ten times and there were several other fires which destroyed sections. When this happened, the brothel-keepers were permitted to relocate temporarily to one of the unlicensed areas until the walled city was rebuilt. The unlicensed quarters were by now so much more lively, popular, and accessible than the licensed that it was a great opportunity to advertise their wares and increase their profits.

  One such upheaval took place in 1787, when some brothel-keepers set up temporary houses in a fashionable riverfront zone called Nakasu Island after a fire. The area had been known as Three Forks in the heyday of the Yoshiwara, when a courtesan named Takao was murdered there by her disappointed suitor. After the shogunate instigated a program of landfill, it developed into the most sophisticated and exciting entertainment district in the country, packed with famous and exclusive restaurants and teahouses, with resident geisha to take care of guests.

  At its height there were 18 restaurants, some of which catered only to the deputies of the provincial lords, 93 teahouses, 14 boathouses, and at least 27 geisha, not to mention brothels, theaters, and assorted food stalls. The most famous restaurant of all, depicted in many woodblock prints, was the Shikian (Four Seasons Hermitage). Nakasu was an eighteenth-century equivalent of London’s Soho, within easy reach of the city center, with fun for ordinary folk too, where people could go for the day to enjoy sideshows, jugglers, freak shows, mimes, and street theater.

  For the women of the Yoshiwara who were transported to this lively environment, there was a far greater degree of freedom than usual. Here no one worried about formalities like the first and second meetings, where clients and courtesans exchanged cups of saké. Instead they could jump straight to consummation, which was supposed to be withheld until the third meeting. Likewise, there were fewer staff around who needed to be tipped, which made it easier on the customers. Conditions were so crowded inside the small temporary brothels that sometimes a girl’s feet touched someone else’s head and everyone could hear the noisy carousing of the drunken customers and the courtesans’ insincere declarations of eternal love to each and every one of them.

  Morality was not the only thing which was slipping. For while privileged debauchees sang, danced, and frittered away their time in the company of geisha and courtesans on Nakasu Island, the poor were starving to death. In 1787, after seven years of bad harvests and famine, rioting peasants broke into the shops and storehouses of the wealthy rice merchants, first in Osaka, then in Edo and Kyoto, wrecking, destroying, and making off with sacks of hoarded rice.

  Despite the economic woes of the rest of the country, it was still a golden age for pleasure. At the Yoshiwara and the other government-recognized licensed quarters (of which there were about two hundred throughout the country), the partying never stopped. For the man about town there was unlimited choice. He could trawl the unlicensed quarters with their edge of illegality, enjoy himself at the less risky licensed quarters, and take his pick among courtesans, geisha, and straightforward prostitutes.

  The Yoshiwara was still unquestionably the most famous pleasure quarter in Japan. Artists depicted its beautiful, languid women in woodblock prints which rolled off the presses to be snapped up by an eager populace. Guidebooks, like the fanzines of modern times, listed their attributes and special skills. Ambitious young men, eager to be recognized as tsu sophisticates, studied the manuals describing the latest fashions, desperately checking that they had the right undergarment, silver pipe, and tobacco pouch, could drop the right names, and could spot the most celebrated courtesans and geisha.

  They did not realize that their elaborately hedonistic lifestyle would soon be threatened. For cataclysmic events were about to overtake the precious world of Edo, the Yoshiwara, and Tokugawa Japan. And the women who would dominate the brave new wo
rld which was to follow would be the geisha, not the courtesans.

  chapter 5

  inside the pleasure quarters

  Becoming a Geisha

  I know she is light and faithless,

  But she has come back half-repentant

  And very pale and very sad.

  A butterfly needs somewhere to rest

  At evening.

  Geisha song 1

  The Professor of Hairstyling

  Whenever I had a spare moment I dropped into Professor Ishihara’s hairdressing salon to the north of Shijo Street, in the oldest part of Gion (his Japanese title is Ishihara Sensei, “Teacher Ishihara”). He knew everything one could ever want to know about geisha, maiko, their history, and their hair. His wife, I had heard, was from a family that ran a teahouse, though that was the one thing that he would never talk about.

  A laid-back, humorous, dapper man always dressed in an elegant pin-striped suit, he had penned three books on the history of maiko and tayu hairstyles and was working on a fourth. He was the only person left in Japan who knew how to create the ornate hairstyles of the tayu courtesans.

  “In Edo times you could tell everything about a person just by looking at their hair,” he told me one day. “In those days there was a different hairstyle for each class of person. You could tell from someone’s hairstyle what class they were, what kind of work they did, and what part of the country they came from. The geisha world is the only place where that still goes on. There are different hairstyles for each stage of the geisha’s career, different hairstyles for geisha in different parts of Japan, and different sorts of kimono.