Yoshiwara

• Established: 1618
• Dismantled: 1958
• Japanese: 吉原 (Yoshiwara)

The Yoshiwara was the chief licensed pleasure district in Edo, and the largest/most prominent such district in Tokugawa Japan, followed by the Shimabara in Kyoto, and Furuichi in Ise. 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 got its start when Shôji Jin'uemon was granted license in 1617 by the shogunate to consolidate all the brothels in the city into a certain area, the Yoshiwara neighborhood. Following the execution of this process, the Yoshiwara first opened for business in 1626. At that time, courtesans' contracts were limited to ten years; however, they would later extend over much longer periods.

Within the first decades of its establishment, as with many other aspects of the Tokugawa realm, the shogunate made incremental attempts to control the activities of the district. Some of these policies were successful, and became standard policy; others were grossly ignored or otherwise did not last long. An example of the latter was a 1640 edict banning the Yoshiwara from operating at night. An example of the former, however, was an edict the following year banning the women of the Yoshiwara from leaving the district (except for particular circumstances, with authorization). Many of these policies carried over into the new Yoshiwara, rebuilt farther away from the city, past Asakusa to the northeast, just before the 1657 Great Meireki Fire which destroyed much of Edo. It remained in that new location through the rest of the period, and 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).

Despite its marginal status, the Yoshiwara managed to exercise some degree of political autonomy, and pressure on the shogunate, at times. In 1665, managers of the Yoshiwara managed to persuade the shogunate to forcibly shut down much of the Yoshiwara's competition, outside of the district. This also marked the end of the phenomenon of yuna, or bathhouse girls.

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. On one occasion, in 1639, eleven managers of bathhouses and other Yoshiwara operations were crucified outside the Great Gate of the district for illegal activities committed outside the quarter.

Not only a center of prostitution and related activities, the Yoshiwara was also a center of cultural production. While most novelists, artists, publishers and the like made their homes in the commercial districts closer to the center of the city, some lived in or just outside the Yoshiwara, taking the environment as a muse, and the Yoshiwara customers and residents as patrons. Tsutaya Jûzaburô, likely the most famous of Edo period publishers today, was born and raised in the district; he was the son of a brothel owner, and was adopted as a child by the owner of a teahouse. As an adult, he maintained his shop just outside the Yoshiwara's gates for ten years, from 1773-1783, after which he moved to Toriabura-chô, where most other publishers were located. The author Santô Kyôden (1761-1816) similarly lived much of his life in the Yoshiwara, running a tobacco shop there, and marrying two shinzô over the course of his lifetime.

Though quite prominent in the popular imagination throughout the period, the district was perhaps at its cultural height only for a brief time in the mid-18th century. It was not until 1741 that the famous sakura were planted along Nakanochô (the main avenue of the district), in hopes it would help attract tourists there to engage in hanami. By the 1760s, the district had already begun to decline; in 1761, the last tayû (top-ranking courtesan) of the Yoshiwara retired, and shinzô were first allowed to engage in sexual relations with clients. After this time, however, a new order established itself in the Yoshiwara, with the oiran as the top rank of courtesans, and low-ranking teahouse waitresses called sancha transforming into the middle-to-top-ranking chûsan courtesans.

The district burned down frequently, including in 1644, 1676, 1768, 1771, 1784, 1786, 1787, 1812, 1816, 1824, 1845, 1860, 1862, and 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.

In 1868, six other districts were made licensed, and in 1875, the Yoshiwara, and the brothels, teahouses, and prostitutes of a number of other areas came under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. By this time, the Yoshiwara was very much only a shadow of its former self, but it lingered on, and was not formally shut down by the government until 1958.

Operations

See Courtesans for more on this subject.

Partaking of what the Yoshiwara had to offer could be incredibly expensive. And it required more than just money to get in the door; one needed connections (networking, i.e. knowing people), and a reputation for cultural capital. At the time of the Yoshiwara's cultural height, prior to 1750 or so, only the most tsû, that is, those with the greatest reputation for familiarity with the Yoshiwara, its etiquette, and so forth, could secure an appointment with the top courtesans; even then, few could afford it, as the prices for a night with even a middling-ranking courtesan were quite expensive, serving as the source of income not only for the courtesan one was hiring, but for her entire entourage (i.e. attendants, younger courtesans-in-training) as well. A first visit could cost on average 10 ryô, including tips for the nakai and taikomochi (servants/assistants). Yet, some managed to afford not only this, but on occasion, a very few merchants are known to have even rented out the entire Yoshiwara for themselves for a night or two.

Getting to the Yoshiwara typically involved a river journey, on swiftboats called choki. One typically departed from Azuma-bashi, in Asakusa. Timon Screech has written on the journey as a liminal experience, and on the symbolic meanings of various sights along the way, as one made one's way from the metaphorical 'hell' of everyday life to the 'paradise' of the Yoshiwara.

References

• Segawa Seigle, Cecilia. Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.