Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination Book 34)

by Stephen Mansfield

  The expansive, free-spending, devil-may-care nature of the townspeople is partly traceable to the conditions in which they lived. With more construction projects, the number of forced relocations and property confiscations grew. Flux and impermanence were permanent features of the city. Common people lived in squalor in warrens of badly ventilated alleys with little sunlight. Many were less than three feet wide, running between single-floored, shingle-roofed row house tenements facing open gutters blocked with raw sewage. Facing the alleys and back streets, housewives made makeshift kitchens where fires could be prepared for cooking. A common toilet could be found in the alley. An Inari fox god enshrined in the depths of the alley provided a degree of spiritual bonding between residents and helped to mitigate their squalor by cohabitation with the divine. As darkness fell, those who could afford to changed into night attire; others slept in their work clothes. Some employees without the means to afford their own accommodation were obliged to sleep on the plank floors of their workplace or spread rush mattresses there. These tiny houses of Edo, locked up and shuttered at night, with their inhabitants laid out beneath transparent mosquito nets made from hemp, cotton or silk, must have been insufferable during the humid summer months.

  The people of Edo, though, were a strong, resilient breed. The early Edo period saw the birth of the eponymous Edokko or “son of Edo” as he was better known. The received portrait of the Edokko is doubtless exaggerated, but most ukiyo-e depictions and literary accounts concur that he was a reckless type, devoted to gaiety and spectacle. Add to that the forgivable sin of being an inveterate spender, always in search of fineries he could ill afford. Quick to take offence, the male version of the Edokko comes across as a spirited soul whose rough exterior, tinged with vanity, barely conceals the yearnings of a soft-hearted urban dandy.

  The type was not universally liked. The writer Koa Jokanbo, in his curiously named Didactic Clumsy Sermons Continued (1753), wrote of what he perceived to be the congenital spite, bad manners and upstart views of the Edokko: “The people of Edo wish to be rude; showing respect seems to them a shame. The worst offenders are those of the lowest rank. Some Edo people even make malicious remarks that one mustn’t be afraid of samurai and lice.”

  The first recorded use of the word Edokko appears in a senryu, a comic verse published in 1771. By this time, a significant number of Edokko, with roots firmly attached to downtown areas like Kanda, Kyobashi, Ginza and Shiba, had accumulated great wealth in their role as agents and brokers for the government’s rice granary in the Asakusa Kuramae district, as dealers in lumber at Kiba, as receiving agents for commodities coming down to the city, or as managers of the thriving riverside fish markets. The downtown areas of Edo were the new market places where trade was conducted, ideas aired, innovation in the arts and the limits of official tolerance tested. Nihonbashi was the home of the newly rising townspeople, the transfer point where patronage of the arts passed from the exclusive domain of the aristocracy to commoners.

  Craving all manner of diversion and preferring to spend the little money they had on pleasures and aesthetically pleasing possessions than to save for an uncertain future, ordinary townspeople were brimming with the kind of vitality that is only possible during extended periods of relative peace and economic progress. There was nothing like democracy in the political meaning of the word, but an increasingly strong sense of culture descending to the people. Beneath the heavy machinery of Tokugawa polity could be heard the insistent sound of a restive, demographically ascendant sub-society.

  By the end of the seventeenth century, Edo had produced a significant body of merchants whose wealth far exceeded their social status. The wealthier townspeople, who in a very real sense were now Edo’s patrons of the arts, refused to give in to the menacing conditions in which even the affluent lived, making instead an aesthetic of it. Requisitioning the Buddhist concept of ukiyo, meaning in its pure form “this ephemeral world in which we all suffer,” they eliminated the word suffering, reworking the written character to give the more tantalizing reading “floating world”. The writer Asai Ryoi offers a useful definition of this attitude to life and art in his 1691 Tales of the Floating World:

  ... living for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves, singing songs drinking wine and diverting ourselves just in floating, caring not a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call ukiyo.

  Female beauties, androgynous youths, an atmosphere of pleasure and dalliance set against a consuming passion for culture as a source of gratification: such were the elements of this floating world, avidly supported by the rich, powerful and idly elegant.

  Beauty and Desire

  Using the argument that vice could be supervised and contained, Shoji Jinemon, a brothel-keeper, submitted a petition to the shogun to allow the creation of an authorized pleasure quarter. Five years later he was granted permission. The first Tokugawa shogun seems to have been swayed by the infallible logic, according to a later record of the times, which states:

  Virtuous men have said, both in poetry and classic works, that houses of debauch, for women of pleasure and for streetwalkers, are the wormeaten spots of cities and towns. But these are necessary evils, and if they are forcibly abolished, men of unrighteous principles will become like ravelled thread.

  The legions of unmarried men who moved to Edo from Kyoto, Osaka, Mie and Shiga prefectures to work and open stores created a male-dominated city. Prostitutes and brothel-owners had already moved their operations into the city from many of the older, more established pleasure quarters of Kyoto, Fushimi, Osaka and Nara, creating a flesh market that was free-wheeling and largely ungoverned. In giving their tacit approval to Jinemon’s scheme the authorities hoped to control and regulate the trade, concentrating all prostitutes into a single pleasure quarter, one that would help to close down other establishments, particularly the city’s public bathhouses, which featured the services of female bath attendants.

  Licensed prostitution had a long, if not particularly august, history in Japan. A pleasure quarter of sorts had existed in Kamakura in the thirteenth century, another in Kyoto during the Muromachi period (1333-1573). The shogun Hideyoshi had authorized a government-licensed quarter in Kyoto, which he modelled on the walled-in pleasure districts of Ming-dynasty China. The site set aside for Edo’s new pleasure quarter, a snake-infested bog that bred swarms of mosquitoes in the summer, was unpromising, but Jinemon was an enthusiastic promoter of his project and soon the marsh was filled in, moats dug and sturdy walls erected.

  The new quarter that appeared like an apparition above the swamp was named after the rushes and reeds that grew there: Yoshiwara, or Reed Moor. Although the entire complex, with the main streets and houses in place, was not completed until 1626, the Yoshiwara opened for business in the eleventh month of 1617 in an area to the east of Nihonbashi. Early conflagrations were contained and sections of the quarter swiftly rebuilt, but the great fire of 1657, the Furisode kaji or Long-Sleeved Fire, was a disaster of such proportions that the entire enterprise was relocated to outlying Nihonsutsumi, an area north of the Asakusa temple. By September of the same year, the new Yoshiwara was open for business.

  Situated in the middle of fields, the quarter could only be reached across a raised dyke. Many entered it in litters or on horseback. Because it was built of wood with paper panels and straw mat flooring, fire was a constant peril throughout the history of the Yoshiwara. Fearing that the name might suggest a place of desolation, some artful changes to the Chinese character that spelled out Reed Moor resulted in the more positive “Joyful Moor” or “Field of Good Fortune”. (The alteration still left the pronunciation of Yoshiwara intact.)

  Women of the floating world

  In what was known as the “Nightless City”, as many as 3,000 courtesans and prostitutes were supported by teahouse managers, s
ervants, cooks, traders, masseurs, musicians and even clowns. The district was surrounded by strong walls, creeks and drawbridges. The ditch surrounding the Yoshiwara was said to have turned black from all the tooth dye thrown into it. Guards kept watch over the gates to ensure that indentured prostitutes and customers reneging on their payments did not escape, and curfews were strictly observed. Although the pleasure quarters were closely watched, they were to a large extent self-administered special zones, useful to the authorities as safety valves for defusing potential social unrest. Social pedigree counted for little; it was how much cash you brought through the gates of the Yoshiwara that opened doors.

  At the entrance to the pleasure quarter were stores and drinking shops. In contrast to those who wished to parade their wealth and hence their ability to buy the services of the costliest courtesans, there were others who valued the way in which the Yoshiwara could conjure up an air of secrecy and discretion when called upon to do so. Among the shops that lined the entrance were those selling amigasa, broad-rimmed straw hats for visitors who wished to conceal their identity. Priests, monks and members of the samurai class, though expressly prohibited from doing so, appear to have been good customers.

  It was a city where the male population far exceeded that of women and where wives were largely relegated to the roles of matriarchs. Inside the gates of this otherworldly domain men were ruined, and double suicides among thwarted lovers were common, providing promising material for playwrights, painters and writers of illustrated books. It was an illusion of a voluptuous Nirvana. Here, the floating vision of the white-faced courtesan with her multi-layered kimonos, painted toenails and vermillion lips, her wigs ornamented with dazzling tortoise shell hairpins, was enough to ensnare even the most virtuous of men.

  Art itself set about the task of portraying a dream-like world that vanished each day with the first light of dawn. The walls and ceilings of teahouses where the most exalted courtesans presided were decorated with paintings by some of the most famous artists of the day. Among sumptuous colours with gold and silver leaf accents, fixtures and fittings were covered in gold-decorated lacquer. For a country that emphasized the virtues of modesty and understatement, the exotic, escapist pleasure palace of the Yoshiwara and its imitators could not have provided a greater, or more subversive, contrast with daily life.

  Swords were required to be left at the entrance to the Yoshiwara salons. Besides avoiding the drunken rampages of frustrated violence samurai were occasionally responsible for, it had the unintended effect of levelling class and rank. A. B. Mitford, visiting the quarter in a later age, suggested a further reason for the restriction on swords when he wrote in Tales of Old Japan (1871) that “it is known that some of the women inside so loathed their existence that they would put an end to it, could they but get hold of a weapon.”

  For these women, art and ritual provided a small portal for viewing the outside world. With the first signs of spring, the townspeople began to emerge from their cold winter homes and foul alleys into a city fresh with the reviving scent of blossom. For the women of the pleasure districts, however, there was no such freedom to move around the city, unless, in rare cases, under an escort that would ensure their return. The poet Buson captured the courtesan’s sad, vicarious engagement with spring when he wrote:

  The plum trees bloom

  and pleasure women buy new sashes

  in a brothel room.

  From the silk divans of the most expensive courtesans to the soiled cribs of the lower order of prostitutes, the quarter offered something for almost every male visitor. In many cases it was the merchants of Edo who could afford the former, the increasingly impecunious samurai who were obliged to use the services of the latter. The authorities were beginning to experience the disquieting realization that money talks.

  The highest fees were paid for the services of the tayu. Their beauty and skills in music and dance - comparable in many cases to that later phenomenon, the geisha - together with the sheer celebrity of these grandes dames, who symbolized for both men and women a magnificently idealized sexuality, explained their pride and price. The koshi were next in rank, followed by the less experienced and physically endowed tsubone and hashi. Lowest in the pecking order were the sancha class of semi-professionals, taken from the street or bathhouses.

  A great deal of time and money was spent by proprietors on grooming promising courtesans, who were schooled in painting, calligraphy, tea ceremony, poetry, flower arranging and even arts like incense appreciation and sand painting, practices that were normally reserved for the aristocracy. Instruction manuals were studied and training received from senior courtesans and the proprietress of the house. A new client was expected to wait in a reception room normally reserved for guests and servants before being introduced to a courtesan. She would then appear in resplendent attire, seating herself in the best position in the room, in front of the main pillar. A ritual of drinking sake then took place between courtesan and guest, the former reserving the right to reject the latter if he was not to her taste by refusing the proffered cup. Pampered and bred to be arrogant, the upper tier of courtesans nevertheless lived within a rigid system of confinement that made them virtual captives.

  Figments of Pleasure

  Those who could afford the services of the high-ranking courtesans proceeded to the more regal houses of assignation. The more threadbare visitors to the Yoshiwara made, without the tantalizing preliminaries that characterized the more refined sexual rituals of the tayu, straight for the bordellos where lower ranking women were displayed behind latticed screens. The tayu were known not simply for their beauty and sumptuous dress. They were expected to be accomplished in a number of disciplines, including the tea ceremony, flute and shamisen playing, singing, dancing and board games. As witty conversationalists, they were expected to engage in risqué dialogue with customers and also to show mastery of the subtler double entendre and innuendo. Tayu were also known for fortune telling and the composition of haiku poems.

  The epoch of the tayu witnessed Edo’s development as a place sui generis with a culture quite distinct from the rest of the country. At its centre was the Yoshiwara, fixated on its own rituals, enforcing strict standards of deportment and a complex protocol, showering itself with festivals and commemorative events. As wealth seeped into the pleasure quarters, attracting the attention of artists and writers, commerce and art transformed the more costly prostitutes into great ladies and the more discriminating brothels into salons. With the patronage of the chonin, the Yoshiwara became the seedbed where much of the culture of Edo was nourished and brought to life. Guidebooks were published providing “reviews” of courtesans and explaining the protocol involved in visiting the pleasure quarters. Profiles of the tayu and their particular attributes were published in directories. The guides, called Yoshiwara saiken, proved so popular that they were published annually and sold on the streets of Edo.

  Men knew that the floating world was essentially an illusion, but this only increased its allure. Assignations with wealthy clients were preceded by the sumptuous procession of a tayu. The sight of these women, idols of the Edo age decked out in lavish robes of damask silk, white makeup, hair held in an extravagant crown of combs and ornamental hairpins, must have been remarkable. The writer Ihara Saikaku described one such procession in 1689:

  The courtesan arranges her clothing so that her red crepe de chine undergarment will flap open to reveal a flash of white ankle, sometimes as high as her calf or thigh. When men witness such a sight, they go insane and spend money they are entrusted with, even if it means literally losing their heads the next day.

  Other writers, the popular novelist Shozan among them, became giddy with their own descriptions of the courtesans. Knowing full well that theatricality was a large part of their appeal, he devotes great attention to the costume of one such beauty: “Her dress consists of a long robe of richly embroidered silk brocade. Her head is ornamented by a dazzling glory of hairpins made of the f
inest tortoise-shell, which glitter around her head like the lambent aureole of a saint.”

  Expensive, over-ritualized, its formalities flattering the vanities of the client but also testing his patience, tayu culture entered into a period of slow decline at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but not before another incarnation of beauty and desire appeared. In the 1750s the rank of tayu was replaced by that of the equally illustrious oiran, a no less intoxicating species of beauty celebrated by writers and artists like Utagawa Toyoharu. The increasingly ostentatious appearance of the oiran eventually led to a decadence that ushered in the geisha.

  Oiran wore towering clogs and applied white powder called oshiroi, not only to the face, but the nape of the neck, throat, chest, hands and feet. Lips were decorated with rouge made from the juice of the safflower. Oshiroi was derived from a mixture of rice flour, white soil and a liquid extracted from the seeds of the jalap plant. Later on, a facial base powder made from white lead and mercury chloride was used until, in the 1870s, it was found to be toxic. The acme of fashion at one time was to paint the lower lip with iridescent green rouge, a striking effect when seen against blackened teeth. The powder used for blackening teeth was made through a process of oxidization involving a mix of nails and iron filings soaked in sake and tea. Some oiran painted their toenails.

  A code of sexualized symbols existed that almost all the inhabitants of Edo would have instinctively understood. Red, symbolizing the transition to womanhood, was considered an erotic colour. A glimpse of bare feet against a line of crimson silk undergarment was considered electrifying. The willow tree, seen growing outside and within the gates of the Yoshiwara, was a symbol of prostitution.