Meshimori onna

• Japanese: 飯盛女 (meshimori onna)

Meshimori onna were serving girls employed at post-station inns, many of whom were indentured to the inn and served as prostitutes in addition to the more standard tasks of helping run the inn.

In the 1840s, there were around 1,000 such meshimori onna seen in official population registers for the areas immediately surrounding Edo.

References

• Amy Stanley, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan, UC Press (2012), 2.