What's new

The day the red lights went out in Japan

Tokis-Phoenix

先輩
23 Sep 2005
1,275
73
58
An interesting insight via old photo's into the final years of legal prostitution in Japan;

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/photospecials/graph/080331baishun/index.html


One thing i found interesting about a lot of these old photo's is that all of the prostitutes pictured do not attain the traditional image of the traditional Japanese prostitute- even the one's wearing kimono's, there is no obi tied in the front, no bare feet, no suggestive makeup, no loosely worn hikizuri/susohiki style kimono etc; all of the prostitutes, whether wearing kimono or not, just look like ordinary Japanese women living at the time.

Obviously despite the ban, Prostitution is Japan is just as alive as ever, only that it has been driven underground more since the ban.

Some info on prostitutes and courtesans of olden Japan;


The life of a high class Oiran/Tayu with a good reputation, could be a very glamorous life indeed- she could have more independence and personal wealth than what most ordinary women could dream to have.

But the life of the low class unfortunately unsung prostitute could be a miserable and depressing life indeed, she could have little hope of paying off her debts or wining and dining with the upper class gentry of her day or being able to afford the gorgeously beautiful kimono the Oiran/Tayu wore, day-to-day was often a struggle with little chance of hoping to find a decent wealthy reliable patron to treat her well etc.

In the days of legalized prostitution in Japan, it was big business and often benefited communities. A high ranking popular prostitute with good reputation would draw customers from far and wide (and not just for her body- high ranking traditional prostitutes were talented in music, conversation, dance and calligraphy; they were quite educated ladies with high standards).
Because of this she would bring in money to the tea houses where she entertained, she would buy things like wigs, kimono's, musical instruments, makeup, takeaway food and alcohol, pens/brushes for writing, fans for her dancing, soap for washing, she would go to hairdressers, theater's, tea houses etc and thus so inevitably end up supporting all of these businesses and more. So a high ranking popular prostitute with good reputation could be a very valuable asset economically to the community/area where she lived and did her business.

Prostitution was a mixed bag. It could have many both benefits and negative aspects for the prostitute herself.

On the plus side, in the past young girls were chosen for their looks and their intelligence- the courtesan did not care much for what her background was, because that was not important because it would play no more part in her future once she was chosen.

Life as a peasant in Japan was never an easy life, and girls brought up in such a class/life could expect little more than to toil the fields for years and look after her parents, then have an arranged marriage and have lots of children, and continue to work in her husbands fields and house until the day she died- she would have little hope of having an education, or being able to afford nice kimono's or good food or good medical care for herself etc- her purpose in life was to work, marry and have babies (preferably boys).

So if such a girl was chosen to work as a potential courtesan when she grew up and was bought by the okiya, it did offer her opportunities to break this cycle of hard physical labor, marriage and baby-making.

(continued in a mo)
As she was brought up in the Okiya, she would be taught the skills that could later make her success as a famous courtesan, like dance and learning to play musical instruments etc.

She would have an education, be taught to read and write and learn the poetries and histories of old and be taught to use her knowledge and skills in witty conversation etc to impress potential clients- a courtesan differed from a common prostitute, in that a prostitute would just be chosen for her looks and the sex she had to offer. A courtesan on the other hand would largely be chosen for her beauty and style, skills/talents and personality (and sex)- being a patron to a courtesan was not cheap and a man couldn't be seen to be dumping his courtesans regularly (if he did get such a reputation for such a thing then the courtesans would shun him, since they had the power to turn down men if they didn't like them etc), so relationships would often be long term- the guy was essentially buying a girlfriend.

The courtesan could be the dream woman the guy always wanted- in olden Japan, arranged marriages were the norm and dating between men and women was often pretty minimal.
But guys still had their needs- at a young age he could get stuck in a loveless unaffectionate relationship, and that would be pretty much his official life from there onwards. He would still crave love and affection though and want a woman he felt he had a connection with, a woman that would want to have passionate sex with him and spend long hours into the night avidly listening to him talk about his thoughts and feelings, he would want a woman who would make him spellbound with her beauty and grace and who he would never bore of, he would want a woman who understood him and cared about him etc.
And so this is where the courtesan (and often geisha) came in- they would have a sort of dating process before any sexual contact was made, if they both decided they liked each other after an intricate process of dating, then they would further their relationship together and he would become her official client. She would offer him all that he wanted in a woman, and in return he would pay her for her time, take her out places, pay various bills of hers and shower her with gifts etc.

If she was to ever pay of her debts to the okiya that raised her, then finding a good patron was a critical part of this (once she had payed off her debts she could have a lot more independence in her day-to-day life etc).

This is all what happened in the ideal world of the courtesan. The peasant girl who failed to make it famous and find a good caring patron etc, could often expect no better life than if she had stayed a peasant girl. A lot of girls who were bought by the red light districts had little choice in the matter of getting bought or not (they were probably too young to realize the significance of what was going on), in olden times children were considered to essentially be the property of their parents.
There are also a lot of stories though of high-ranking courtesans adopting orphan girls though. There are also stories of courtesans having their own children too (although the courtesan could never marry though as she would have to stop her work if she did this- if she wanted to marry then she had to stop working as a courtesan).

Although in olden Japan boys were generally favored over girls, in the red light districts it was the opposite- a girl could grow up to be a real money maker if she was successful, however a boy would often grow up to be a wig maker or hairdresser, or perhaps a kabuki actor if he was lucky etc. On the whole though, girls were more useful and had more potential to earn big money than boys, so they were valued highly and preferred in the red light districts, which is in major contrast to the rest of Japan where boys were almost always the favored and preferred gender.

Some parents certainly would have sold their little girls in the hope of giving them a chance at what they thought was a better life, but i am sure more than often they sold their girls in more desperate situations. With no decent birth control in olden times, peasant couple's could often end up having over a dozen children with more children on the way- selling off a useless girl or two could mean one less mouth to feed in a very hungry poor family. Sometimes the parents would be old and dying and could not care for their children anymore and had nowhere for their kids to go after they died, so sold them off to brothels etc.
 
Last edited:
It is an interesting thread, but it may be better if you'd carefully separate, the pre-modern (Edo), modern (Meiji/Taisho/early Showa), the post-war period, and the chaotic present.

The first peep show was introduced as "Frame-show" in which naked women posed as famous paintings such as "The Birth of Venus" under the name of post-war democracy in 1947.
And even just a kiss in movies had been a taboo in a movie before the end of the war.

WARNING
I think the following site offers you some interesting photos of the socio-cultural /historical study, but it contains photos of half-naked women.
Browse it at your own risk if your county does not allow the obscenity.
ttp://www.vanilla-gallery.com/gallery/yoshida/yoshida1.html
 
It is an interesting thread, but it may be better if you'd carefully separate, the pre-modern (Edo), modern (Meiji/Taisho/early Showa), the post-war period, and the chaotic present.


I did try to separate the initial post into separate ones but the post kept on merging together with the original one, meh.


I'm no expert on the world of courtesans, i'm more knowledgeable on geisha personally.
It is difficult though to separate the world of the courtesan into different era's, because for the large part it was a largely unchanging world. It had its peak in the early to mid Edo period, but geisha became increasingly popular during the Edo period as the wealth and power of the merchant class rose and people's tastes changed, as people started to turn away from the incredibly glamorous and almost over-the-top image and styles of the courtesans, to the more chic and iki image of the geisha with her more understated styles etc.

Courtesans continued to exist though despite the geisha's popularity because these two different classes of ladies attended to different types of clients, and of course, the courtesan also of course had a more sexual aspect to the nature of her work, while the geisha largely sold her company and nothing more etc. It will always be difficult though to really accurately know how much sex played a part of the geisha's life- geisha were certainly not prostitutes in that they never directly sold sex, but i guess it is possible that at times it was an unspoken part of the deal between the geisha and her patron. Either way though, if sex ever did go on much between geisha and their patrons, its certainly a thing of the past and we are unlikely to ever really know the truth due to the absolute secrecy that surrounds the private lives of geisha and the fact that if anything ever did go on, any geisha that did participate in such things are likely to be in their 70's or older now and probably quite a few have passed away from old age etc. Geisha today sell their talents/skills/arts/company and nothing more, a patron might have a more personal glimpse into his geisha's life and she is likely to involve him more in her private life, but nothing more.

Its certainly true though that during the war times, many women who had turned to prostitution (which unfortunately many did- desperate times call for desperate measures etc) posed as "geisha girls" when around US servicemen. These American men were obsessed with the mysteries of the orient and the Flower and Willow world, however they were very ignorant of such matters, and were often fooled into thinking that the low class common prostitutes they slept with were in fact real geisha.

Unfortunately these naive servicemen eventually came back home to their own families and friends in America, and still gullible as ever, told many stories to their friends of these beautiful, mysterious and sexually insatiable geisha they had met (when in fact all they had done was sleep with some low class prostitute and had been totally fooled by her geisha act after she had put on a kimono and a bit of white makeup). Of course these guys friends believed them, and for years afterwards these sorts of stories bred all kinds of rumors and incorrect information about geisha etc for decades.

The women that had to bear the brunt of this misinformation were of course the real Geisha, who had to embarrassingly turn down foreign men for years on end who seemed to think that they were offering a little more than just tea ceremony demonstrations and singing in their services etc.
This wasn't helped much by the novel and movie "Memoirs of a Geisha", which despite being a completely fictional (and often misinformed or overly assumptive with its writings) story written by an American man and set in the late Meiji to Taisho and early Showa period, many people believed the story and its info to be true and since its release apparently yet again geisha (particularly young Maiko) have been beset by foreign men who seem to have the wrong idea about their profession etc.

The first peep show was introduced as "Frame-show" in which naked women posed as famous paintings such as "The Birth of Venus" under the name of post-war democracy in 1947.
And even just a kiss in movies had been a taboo in a movie before the end of the war.
WARNING
I think the following site offers you some interesting photos of the socio-cultural /historical study, but it contains photos of half-naked women.
Browse it at your own risk if your county does not allow the obscenity.
ttp://www.vanilla-gallery.com/gallery/yoshida/yoshida1.html

The sight looks interesting but my computer cannot read Japanese symbols/letters (it just shows them up as question marks), do you know of a good translator i can use to translate this site?
 
There had been anti-licensed prostitute movements in Japan throughout Meiji to the early Showa periods, though the anti-prostitution law was effected after the war. But the post-war democratization created another red-light Leviathan as well.

*snip
This is not necessarily about the prostitution or courtesan (thank for you your input of a new word), but at a request from a Japanese art collector, Pierre-Auguste Renoir drew "Woman by Spring", and it is in Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama, now.
OHARA MUSEUM of ART | Museum of Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, which has a collection of modern and contemporary art center
また、ルノワールがこの絵について、「日本は検閲がうるさいそうだから、覆いをかけといて上げよう」といって、最初はなかった膝の上の白い布を描き足したといった話も伝わっています。
Considering the strict censorship policy in Japan then (in 1914), Renoir kindly added a piece of white cloth.
Just send your request to them for the English translation.
Inquiry form
ttp://www.vanilla-gallery.com/cgi/mail_form/mail2.html
お名前※
メールアドレス※
URL
メッセージ※
Name
E-mail address
URL (no need to fill out)
Message
And as you can see, they hold an exhibition in Paris this year.
For 6 months in 2008, from spring to fall,
The exhibition featuring 21 artists from the Vanilla Gallery will be open in Paris!

http://www.vanilla-gallery.com/gallery/paris/paris.html

Wondering what Renoir would think of the contemporary art museum...
 
The first peep show was introduced as "Frame-show" in which naked women posed as famous paintings such as "The Birth of Venus" under the name of post-war democracy in 1947.

That was a central part of Shusaku Endo's novel 窶ーテオ窶冕ナス邃「窶ーテカ窶冕ナス邃「. Quite a good book....if you can find it.
 
And even just a kiss in movies had been a taboo in a movie before the end of the war.

Funny thing, the only on-screen kiss in a Godzilla movie was in 1965 in Monster Zero between Nick Adams and Kumi Mizuno. I wonder if this old taboo had anything to do with it.
 
ツ債イツ々窶禿伉康
1946窶扼ツ、GHQ窶堙家鱈ニ湛ニ歎ツーニ停?懌?堙ー窶愿シ窶堙ェ窶堙ゥ窶堋ア窶堙??堙ーナ陳オ窶督ス窶堋ウ窶堙ェ窶堙?スB窶堙≫?堋スツ『窶堙坂?堋ス窶堋ソ窶堙個静つ春ツ』窶堙債、窶愿コ窶怒ツ鞘?ー窶堙姑鱈ニ湛ニ歎ツーニ停?懌?堋ェ窶徙ツ湘ェ窶堋キ窶堙ゥ窶ーf窶ーテヲ窶堙?静ゥ窶彖窶堋ウ窶堙ェツ(ナステ?ツ催帚?堙債静ャ窶懌?。窶悩ナスO窶堙個『窶凖??堋「窶堙や?凖??堙ュ窶堙ェ窶堙つ』ツ)窶佚・ニ智ニ鍛ニ暖ツ。窶「窶「ツ静倪?愿コ窶堙?ナ椎ス23窶愿コ窶堙債「ニ鱈ニ湛窶堙娯?愿コツ」窶堙俄?堙遺?堙≫?堋ス
佐々木康 - Wikipedia

In 1946, GHQ strictly ordered Yasushi Sasaki, a film director, to make the first kiss movie, 'Hatachi no Seishun'
The opening day, May 23, became "Kiss Day" in Japan.

I don't know what the GHQ staffs would think of the invasion of immoral shojo manga to their granddaughters in the US now. It is not our revenge, but just a boomerang effect started from some ultra-liberal American staffs in GHQ.

Back to the topic...
The following essay explains a brief history of anti-licensed prostitution movement after the Meiji well.
Freedom without slavery? The Case of the Maria Luz and the Question of Emancipation in Nineteenth Century Japan
Daniel Botsman
http://www.sal.tohoku.ac.jp/~kirihara/public_html/cgi-bin/shibusawa/Daniel_Botsman.pdf

Hopefully Chinese posters read this about the Maria Luz incident. The Japan-China relations had not always been war-related.
 
Back
Top Bottom