Yoshiwara

• Established: 1618
• Dismantled:
• Japanese: 吉原 (Yoshiwara)

The Yoshiwara was the chief licensed pleasure district in Edo. As such, it was the center or subject of much popular culture, with many ukiyo-e prints depicting Yoshiwara subjects, many kabuki plays and popular literature set there, and many illustrated guidebooks to the district being published. Courtesans' fashions also had a strong influence upon women's fashions in Edo, and Tokugawa Japan more broadly.

History

The Yoshiwara burned down in the 1657 Great Meireki Fire, along with much of the rest of the city; afterwards, it was rebuilt further away from the city, past Asakusa to the northeast, where it remained throughout the rest of the Edo period. This "New Yoshiwara" (Shin-Yoshiwara) then came to be called simply the Yoshiwara, while the old site retroactively came to be referred to as the "former Yoshiwara" (Moto Yoshiwara).

The Yoshiwara was the only licensed district in Edo. The authorities attempted to control prostitution and other such unsavory activities by giving them somewhere legal to be, and limiting them to that space. From time to time, the shogunate would crack down on illegal prostitution operating elsewhere in the city. Sometimes, as in 1842 when over 4,000 prostitutes were arrested, they were simply relocated to the Yoshiwara; other times, of course, the penalties were harsher.

The district burned down frequently, including in 1784, 1866, but was always rebuilt, until X year, when it was abolished and dismantled. The Nihon-tsutsumi and Yoshiwara Ômon ("Great Gate") survive today as placenames, but beyond a replanted mikaeri yanagi and a few signs and plaques, there is little of the old district to see in that neighborhood today.