By Lisa Hix
—
March 23rd, 2015
It’s difficult to get a window into the world of
Edo-Period Japanese prostitutes without the gauzy romantic filter of the
male gaze. The artworks in the new San Francisco Asian Art Museum exhibition, “Seduction: Japan’s Floating World,”
were made by men for men, the patrons of the Yoshiwara pleasure
district outside of Edo, which is now known as Tokyo. Every little
detail of Yoshiwara—from the décor and fashion, to the delicacies served
at teahouses, to the talents of courtesans, both sexual and
intellectual—was engineered to sate a warlord’s every whim.
“To look at it from a woman’s perspective, the day-to-day reality of living in the Yoshiwara must have been very harsh.”
We’re left with the client-commissioned pretty-girl scroll paintings
by masters like Hishikawa Moronobu and Katsukawa Shunshō, as well as woodblock prints
and guidebooks by commercial artists meant to lure repeat visitors
through the red-light district gates. These often lush and colorful
artworks are rife with romantic longing, from the images of
interchangeable beauties with inscrutable expressions, to the layers of
richly patterned textiles they wore, and the highly symbolic haiku
poetry written about them. The showstopper of the exhibition is
Moronobu’s nearly 58-foot-long handscroll painting “A Visit to the
Yoshiwara,” which takes viewers on a tour of the pleasure district from
the street vendors and the food being prepared to the high-ranking
courtesans on parade and a couple cuddling under the covers in a
teahouse.
The Yoshiwara pleasure district was just part of what the Japanese
referred to as “ukiyo” or “the floating world,” which also included the
Kabuki theaters of Edo. Originally, the Buddhist term “ukiyo” referred
to the sorrow and grief caused by desire, which was seen as an
impediment to enlightenment.
Top:
A courtesan holds a peony, a symbol of female sexuality, in a detail
from the hanging scroll “Beauty of the Kanbun Era,” circa 1660-1680.
Above: A detail from Hishikawa Moronobu’s 58-foot-long handscroll “A
Visit to the Yoshiwara,” from the late 1680s, shows two couples in beds
with kimono-shaped covers. (From the John C. Weber Collection, images ©
John Bigelow Taylor)
“In the Buddhist context, ‘ukiyo’ was written with characters that
meant ‘suffering world,’ which is the concept that desire leads to
suffering and that’s the root of all the problems in the world,”
explains Laura W. Allen, the curator of Japanese art at the Asian Art
Museum who originated “Seduction.” “In the 17th century, that term was
turned on its head and the term ‘ukiyo’ was written with new characters
to mean ‘floating world.’ The concept of the floating world was ignoring
the problems that might have existed in a very strictly regulated
society and abandoning yourself, bobbing along on the current of
pleasure. Then it became associated with two particular sites in Edo,
one of which was the Kabuki theater district, the other the Yoshiwara
pleasure quarter. The art of the floating worlds ‘ukiyo-e,’ which means
‘floating world pictures,’ usually depicts those two subjects.”
But, of course, by and large, this free-floating sensation belonged
to men. Allen suggests that we, as viewers, resist indulging in the
fantasies of Yoshiwara prostitutes presented in the artworks, and
instead, consider the real lives of the women portrayed. Unfortunately,
no true records of the Edo-Period prostitutes’ personal thoughts and
experiences exists—and with good reason. Publicizing the dark side of
the pleasure district would have been bad for business.
“Don’t take these paintings at face value,” Allen says. “It’s easy to
say, ‘Oh, yes, it’s a picture of a beautiful woman, wearing beautiful
clothing.’ But it’s not a photograph. It’s some artist’s rendition, made
to promote this particular world, which was driven by economics. The
profiteers urged the production of more paintings, which continued to
feed the frenzy for the Yoshiwara.
Is
this courtesan in a patchwork kimono surreptitiously reading a letter
from a lover? A detail from Tsukioka Settei’s hanging scroll “Reading by
Lantern Light,” circa 1776-1786, indulges in that fantasy. (From the
John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
“The artwork is very much glamorized and idealized,” she continues.
“I haven’t been to 17th-century Japan so I don’t know what it was
actually like, and the women didn’t write about it, so we don’t have
their firsthand accounts. To imagine it from a woman’s perspective, it
must have been a very harsh reality. There’s been some modern
scholarship that promotes the idea that the women working as prostitutes
had an economic power that they might not have otherwise had. But I
think the day-to-day reality of living in the Yoshiwara could not have
been pleasant.”
“You really want to spend time with these
women, but at the same time, you need to be on your guard, which makes
it all the sexier.”
For one thing, most of the women involved didn’t have a choice about
their occupation. Born into impoverished farming or fishing villages,
they were sold to brothels by desperate parents around the ages of 7 or
8. This tradition was rationalized by Confucian ideals that allowed the
children to work out of a duty to their parents, who usually brokered
10-year contracts with the brothel owners that their girls would have to
work off. The little girls would do daily chores at the brothels and
tended to their “sister” courtesans, cleaning and delivering messages.
In those early years, they’d learn the tricks of the trade, how to speak
using manipulative language, to write “love letters,” and to fake tears
with a bit of alum hidden in their collars.
If a child attendant proved she was gifted by age 11 or 12, she would
be chosen for elite courtesan training, where she would learn etiquette
and refined arts from masters, including how to play flute or a
three-stringed instrument called a samisen, to sing, to paint, to write
haiku, to write in calligraphy, to dance, to perform a tea ceremony, and how to play games like go, backgammon,
and kickball. She would be well-read and literate in order to engage in
stimulating conversation. While these are pleasurable activities and
such talents would be a source of pride, these women weren’t encouraged
to pursue them for their own fulfillment, but to make themselves more
attractive to men.
“They would be trained in the very polite, cultural accomplishments
of the type that aristocratic women would have,” Allen says. “The idea
was that they were comparable to the wife of a daimyo [feudal lord] or a
high-ranking samurai [warrior] in terms of their level of
accomplishment. The elite courtesans were supposed to know all of the
lady-like skills, and their skill level was keyed to how much space they
would have in a brothel and how lavish their clothing was. It was a
very carefully calibrated hierarchy.”
The
water theme of this silk-crepe summer robe with a cormorant-fishing
design would have been thought to have a cooling effect. (From the John
C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
On the occasion of being accepted for courtesan training, the girl’s
virginity would be sold to a client for a hefty sum. As a young teenage
courtesan, her job would be to entertain patrons while they waited to
meet with an elite courtesan. Her debt to the brothel would only
increase as she rose through the ranks, as her luxurious and
ever-changing wardrobe, which required as many as four or five layers of
kimonos
worn at a time, and the tips and fees for her attendants were her
financial burden, too. Forced to work long hours even when they were
sick or having their periods, the women of Yoshiwara had to make a daily
quota, or they would be fined. The quotas would double on so-called
holidays known as “monbi.”
“It was very difficult for them to buy out their contract because
they were kept in debt the whole time, because they had to pay for all
sorts of things.” Allen says. “They were very rarely able to escape
unless they were basically ransomed by a man who wanted to take them out
of that world.”
Competition for clients, ranking, and celebrity status was fierce
among the “sister” courtesans, who could be cruel to one another, not to
speak of the abuse they suffered from their clients. After being
abandoned by their families of origin, the girls lived with mistreatment
by their new “families.” That said, it’s also true that prostitutes in
some ways had a better life than the people in their farming villages
back home—they had regular meals, clean clothes, access to education,
and an opportunity to become a star.
A
young couple cuddles near a peony in a vase, which symbolizes their
sexual connection, in a panel from Katsukawa Shunshō’s “Secret Games in
the Spring Palace,” from the late 1770s. (From the John C. Weber
Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
In the medieval period, Japanese Buddhist traditions, particularly
among the lower classes, embraced casual sex and promiscuity. Even the
myth of Japan’s creation involved two gods making love, which became
part of the justification for selling girls into prostitution. Male
promiscuity often extended to sex with other men, which was considered
normal.
“The graveyard at Jōganji in Edo contains
the remains of 21,056 prostitutes—many of them in their twenties—who had
no one to cover the cost of their funerals.”
During the Edo Period (1603-1868), the military dictatorship known as
the Tokugawa shogunate imposed the moralistic tenets of Confucianism on
the populace, which bound every citizen with duty to their families and
the great society. But the culture of sexual indulgence among men was
entrenched, and brothels were lucrative businesses. One wily brothel
owner, hoping to gain a monopoly on the female sex-work trade, proposed
that if the shogunate gave him a tract of land near their new
headquarters in Edo, the government could regulate prostitution and reap
the benefit of taxing the profession. In 1617, new laws restricted
brothels to pleasure quarters—including his newly established Yoshiwara,
the Shimabara in Kyoto, and the Shinmachi in Osaka—which bloomed into
isolated neighborhoods also offering fine dining and wine, singing and
dancing performances, and parlor games. In 1642, one count estimates 987
prostitutes lived in Yoshiwara.
In Stanford professor Melinda Takeuchi’s essay in the “Seduction”
catalog, she writes, “The lack of reticence on the part of Edo-Period
Japanese men about the use of aphrodisiacs, and an unconcealed
preoccupation with erotic pictures, merited mention in the diary of an
early eighteenth-century Korean diplomat, who found these habits
surprising. Apparently the Confucian-oriented, decorous culture of
upper-class Koreans favored keeping private matters private.”
In
a detail from Utagawa Toyokuni’s hanging scroll, “Courtesan in Her
Boudoir,” a woman puts herself back together after having sex. (From the
John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
The ruling class of the Tokugawa shogunate was made up of roughly 200
feudal lords known as daimyo, who were required to maintain residence
in Edo. Duty-bound samurai warriors, who had traditionally been hired to
protect daimyo land, were military nobility who became the bureaucrats
and administrators of Edo. As the city population exploded to a million
by 1700—with twice as many men as women—so did the wealth of the
merchant class. To serve the military elite and the rising merchant
class, a new type of prostitute emerged, one that would give the trade a
veneer of ritualistic respectability and high-class refinement—the
elite courtesan.
After the Great Edo Fire of 1657, a new, larger Yoshiwara, both
walled off and surrounded by a moat, was rebuilt two miles outside of
the city. To get to Yoshiwara after 1657, a patron had to travel by
foot, by boat, or if he were extremely wealthy, be carried by others on a
posh palanquin. This trek could only serve to heighten his
anticipation. While it was considered improper for samurais, who made up
a large part of Edo’s population, to solicit prostitutes, they viewed
the floating world as means of escaping the humdrum of their highly
regulated lives. They, too, made the journey to Yoshiwara, hiding their
faces with big straw sedge hats.
The new Edo middle class developed a taste for fast fashion and
ribald and wild stories—and devoured woodblock prints advertising both
Yoshiwara and Kabuki performances. By 1800, densely populated Yoshiwara
was home to more than 4,000 prostitutes as well as kitchen workers,
maids, and other service people. The biggest brothels would have as many
as 50 prostitutes. Leading ukiyo scholar Asano Shūgō estimated
Yoshiwara’s daily income at about $877,200 in today’s U.S. dollars.
A
kimono with a willow tree and Chinese characters from the 18th century.
(From the John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
Women, however, didn’t benefit from Japan’s libertine attitude toward
sex. The wives of the daimyo and high-ranking samurai, following
Confucian ideals, were expected to dress modestly and served their
husbands, while the feudal lords looked to courtesans to find passion
and love. The clients wanted to believe that their favorite courtesans
were in love with them, and they were sold as such. But the women
working at these brothels weren’t expressing their own sexual desires or
autonomy.
“The courtesans were very rarely able to escape, unless they were basically ransomed by a man.”
The pretty-girl hanging scroll art of the period often presents a
courtesan pining for a lover, whereas guidebooks warn of “femme-fatale”
courtesans faking pleasure or attraction, deceiving a hopeful heart. The
art-and-poetry-infused 1660 guide book “Mirror of the Yoshiwara”
pretends to be interviews with courtesans revealing how they fake
orgasms or deal with unpleasant men, but they’re complete fiction—once
again, they’re prostitutes stories filtered through a man’s perspective.
“That was the way men were led to think about the women, that they
were these tricky femme fatales who could trap you,” Allen says. “They
could pretend to be in love with you but not really be in love with you.
‘Mirror of the Yoshiwara’ is fascinating to the extent that it creates
an image of women who were very alluring. You really want to spend time
with them, but at the same time, you need to be on your guard, which
makes it all the sexier. Those sorts of stories were repeated again and
again in books over the course of the centuries, passed down as being
firsthand accounts. When you actually look into it, they’re far from
that. They’re just received wisdom about what it’s like in the pleasure
quarter.”
This
detail of Katsukawa Shunshō’s “Beauty Reading a Letter,” circa
1783-1784, shows a provocative glimpse of a courtesan’s red
undergarments as she gets absorbed in a letter from a lover. (From the
John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
In reality, the high-ranking courtesans and low-ranking prostitutes
all suffered from venereal disease and the hardships of bearing unwanted
children. The courtesans in particular wore toxic lead makeup to whiten
their faces, necks, hands, and feet. Many prostitutes died by age 20.
“The graveyard at Jōganji in Edo contains the remains of 21,056 muen
(‘without connection’) prostitutes—many of them in their twenties—who
had no one to cover the cost of their funerals,” Takeuchi explains in
the “Seduction” catalog. “An illustration from [the 1672 guide book]
‘The Yoshiwara Stripped Bare’ shows a weeping prostitute giving money to
a priest for a memorial service. It may well have been for two of her
‘sisters.’”
Brothel owners ranked the women in Yoshiwara in a rigid hierarchical
schema, the quick and inexpensive moat-side prostitutes being the
lowest, with the elite courtesans at the top. These courtesans, who were
celebrities, had the most comfortable lives of all the prostitutes—they
had luxurious garments and bedding and enviable education. Most
Yoshiwara prostitutes weren’t so fortunate. In 1642, Yoshiwara is
recorded as having 106 courtesans of the upper tiers, and 881
prostitutes on the lower tiers.
Hishikawa
Moronobu’s 58-foot-long handscroll “A Visit to the Yoshiwara” shows
courtesans on display through lattice walls that resemble cages at a
zoo. (From the John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
Before 1761, the lowest-ranking and most numerous prostitutes were
the “hashi,” or common prostitute, who did their best to appear elegant,
despite living in the worst conditions, relegated to brothels on the
outer edges of Yoshiwara. They were a step below the “tsubone”
prostitutes, who could be observed through latticed partitions that
resembled cages, congregating and playing music on the samisen. On the
next level were the teahouse waitresses called “sancha,” or “powdered
tea girls,” who were known to never refuse the attention of a paying
client. Above the sancha were the “kōshi” courtesans, who were also
visible to flirt with through the lattice walls, but they would be
distinguished by their more aristocratic appearance, wearing lush
kimonos, their skin whitened. They whispered among themselves in a
coquettish manner in well-appointed parlors as men gawked and discussed
their attributes.
“Japanese men’s preoccupation with erotic pictures merited mention in the diary of an 18th-century Korean diplomat.”
The highest of level of all the prostitutes were the “tayū”
courtesans, who were revered as fashion plates and celebrities. The
tayū lived in the refined “ageya” or “house of assignation,” whose
interiors resembled the most upscale Edo homes, with hanging scroll art, shelves displaying pricey curios,
alcoves for studying, and lovely gardens. The courtesans here could not
be approached directly. Instead, a man had to ask an intermediary to
set up a series of interviews with the courtesan, where he would
entertain her and her attendants.
On the first introduction, the courtesan would ignore the wealthy
patron and refuse his offers of food and drink. On the second meeting,
she might sit closer to him, but still turn down any refreshments.
Finally, at the third meeting, she would be willing to engage him in
conversation and partake in the food set out for her. She and the client
would engage in a sake-drinking ceremony that required they each take
three sips from three different cups, totally nine sips, before they had
sex. After the brothel proprietors hosting these parties tallied up
their expenses on food, alcohol, and sex work, they often charged a
hefty sum: as much as $13,000, only a tenth of which went toward paying
off the courtesan’s debt.
Katsushika
Hokuun’s hanging scroll “Courtesan Promenading Under Cherry Blossom,”
circa 1815-1819, shows an oiran performing her twisting steps with her
wooden clogs, showing off the lush layers of her kimonos, her child
attendants following her. (From the John C. Weber Collection, image ©
John Bigelow Taylor)
If a tayū gained the favor of an affluent client, he would provide
her with the latest fashions four times a year. These included kimonos
made of luxurious fabrics like silk satin, brocade, velvet, and
open-weave ramie. They’d feature patterns such as floral and water
motifs and breathtaking landscapes made with dyes and embroidery using
silk and metallic threads. The tayū advertised their services with a
daily procession through Yoshiwara, walking slow, exaggerated,
figure-eight steps in tall wooden clogs. Their faces whitened and hair
done up in the latest sculptural style, the courtesans would flaunt
their fancy duds, which telegraphed their status, as well as the wealth
of their patrons.
In addition to the clothing, a well-heeled patron would give a
courtesan a futon and sumptuous bed covers as a way of asserting his
relationship with her was unique. This bedding would only be used when
he visited. In the early Edo period, the linens would usually include
kimono-shaped covers called yogi, which resembled large sleeping bags,
made of silk or cotton and filled with removable wadding.
“The house of assignation would display the yogi given the courtesans
to show off the wealth of their patrons and to entice other people to
act similarly,” Allen says. “For the brothel owners, it was a way of
amping up the excitement and generating potential income.”
A
yogi, like this one dyed and painted with a phoenix, is a kimono-shaped
bed cover. (From the John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow
Taylor)
The last of the tayū died in the mid-1700s, taking their ways with
them. They were replaced by a new type of elite courtesan known as
“oiran.” When a young prostitute achieved this status, she would receive
a lacquered chest, mirror stand, and cosmetic
boxes—the
same sort of items that would be purchased for the marriage of an
aristocratic woman. At this point, the courtesans were such fashion
influencers that wives of upper-class men started visiting Yoshiwara
just to watch the oiran’s procession.
The most adored courtesans achieved an image of youthful perfection,
which is some ways, mirror our contemporary celebrity culture. They had
no moles or blemishes, for example, and often the body ideal was slender
(although during the 1780s, Takeuchi points out, a “cute dumpling body”
was held up as perfection in art). In other ways, the men describing
the ideal courtesan have very specific requirements, down to the shape
of a woman’s ears, that would seem foreign to Hollywood: In modern
America, women are getting collagen injected into their lips to make
them bigger; Edo-Period men admired a small mouth. Today, we expect
celebrities to have gaunt, razor-sharp cheeks; the Japanese preferred
round, soft faces. Where we pluck our eyebrows into thin lines, these
women would blacken and thicken the look of their brows. Large breasts
and cleavage are not eroticized in these Japanese artworks—instead a
tiny, bare foot or a flash of a red undergarment peeping out of her
outer robe provides the erotic charge. The skin that courtesans did show
was whitened with makeup to distance the women from the peasants who
worked all day in the sun.
This
Edo-Period mirror stand decorated with wisteria would have been
belonged to an aristocrat’s wife. Courtesans had similar mirror stands,
but they were usually plain black. (From the John C. Weber Collection,
image © John Bigelow Taylor)
The layers of kimonos, like caftans, would serve to both obscure and reveal the woman’s figure, while an obi, like a corset,
would emphasize the smallness of her waist. Initially, a woman only
wore her obi tied in the front to indicate she was offering sex for
sale, but at some point, courtesans became such style icons that
high-ranking military wives also wore their obis tied in front as a
fashion statement. Much of the men’s desire for courtesans was based on
what wasn’t seen, what could only be viewed behind closed doors. The
parading courtesans walked in a way to flaunt the beauty of their layers
and to tantalize potential clients with a flash of a calf.
While the Edo-period artists did make graphic behind-the-scenes
artworks showing naked samurai and courtesans engaging in various sexual
acts, many of hanging scroll painting depicted courtesans fully dressed
with mere hints of their occupation. “They have suggestions of intimacy
by showing the back of their necks or their hands or feet sticking out,
a titillating detail that you wouldn’t see in a painting of an
aristocratic woman—that wouldn’t be allowed,” Allen says.
Kubo
Shunman’s hanging scroll, “Courtesans Promenading Under Blossoming
Cherry,” 1781-1789, shows two courtesans with lantern-lock hairdos and
“cute dumpling bodies” on parade with their attendants. (From the John
C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
Men, particularly those from the Kabuki theater, were even more
idealized than women. The Kabuki tradition began early in the Edo Period
at brothels, where female prostitutes would put on bawdy musicals for
drunk and war-weary samurai—which were also a way to pick up new
clients. But these events created too much trouble for the shogunate,
who found the way Kabuki brought social classes together distasteful.
Inebriated soldiers were quick to get into fights in these crowded
theaters where women played men, men played women,
and underworld denizens like gamblers and pimps were celebrated. Another
form of Kabuki featured young boys as actors, who were also offered as
prostitutes.
“The concept of the floating world was abandoning yourself, bobbing along on the current of pleasure.”
By the mid-1600s, the shogunate had clamped down on the theater,
banning both women and boys from performing. After that, all roles were
played by adult men—but the shogunate could not prevent them from
engaging in prostitution. Boys that were apprentices to the actors would
also provide sexual services at special teahouses. Boy prostitutes,
like their female counterparts, were ranked, and some cost more than the
most elite courtesans.
The Edo middle class loved gender-bending performances and tales
revolving around disguise, secret identities, and latent agendas.
Stories and mythology around courtesans often involved duplicity on the
part of the courtesan or demons, monks, or deities in disguise. Because a
woman was seen as less of a person than a man, the women depicted in
“floating world” paintings have indistinct faces, while the men of the
theater, particularly those known for female impersonation, are painted
with unique, individualized expressions. “If you look at the paintings
of Katsukawa Shunsho, all of his female beauties look more or less
exactly the same,” Allen says.
In
Katsukawa Shunshō’s hanging scroll, “Three Beauties,” one courtesan
appears disheveled, as if returning from having sex with a client, while
another sings from a songbook. A geisha, identified by her swept-back
hairdo and subdued clothing, accompanies the singing on samisen. (From
the John C. Weber Collection, image © John Bigelow Taylor)
By the turn of the 18th century, courtesans had become more
specialized in their skills, so brothels would provide other
entertainers, men known as geishas, to amuse patrons waiting to see
top-ranked courtesans with dancing, singing, and playing instruments.
Late in the century, brothels started to hire trained female
entertainers. These geishas were prohibited from selling sex, so as not
to compete with the oiran. Instead, geishas flourished in other
traditional courtesan skills including the refined arts and intellectual
conversation. Geishas were also required to wear less flashy clothing
and hairstyles than the oiran—a pared-down look that eventually became
considered more modern and chic. Like young courtesans in training, the
virginity of a “maiko,” or geisha in training, would be auctioned off to
the highest bidder before she could become a full geisha, but this was
not considered an act of prostitution.
Geishas grew more and more popular in the 19th century, surpassing
the status of elite courtesans. It says something about Japan’s
obsession with the bittersweet sorrow of unconsummated desire that a
large part of the geisha’s appeal rested in the fact that they would
flirt and entertain their clients while remaining sexually unavailable
to them. Farmers and fishers still sold their daughters into a decade or
more of work obligation, but the ones considered more attractive became
geishas; those considered less attractive prostitutes. Like the
courtesans before them, geishas were ranked. They, too, had to buy
expensive wardrobes and were educated for etiquette, conversation, and
high art. Geisha houses were usually owned and run by women.
A
fan painting of ink, colors, and gold on silk, showing the courtesan
Hanaogi of the Ōgiya brothel, 1794–1795, by Kitagawa Utamaro. (From the
John C. Weber Collection. Image © John Bigelow Taylor.)
Above all, image reigned in Yoshiwara. As Takeuchi explains in the
“Seduction” catalog, “Photographs of the physical Yoshiwara in the late
nineteenth century make it look small, shabby, and sordid. The crowded
narrow streets were probably muddy in the rainy season and dusty when
the weather was dry. The water in the moat must have attracted
mosquitoes.” But the paintings, woodblock prints, and guidebooks in
“Seduction” depicted the pleasure quarter as “a kind of escapist theme
park where a client could be ‘lord for a day,’ a ‘master of the revels.’
It was a theatrical stage set where clients could, for a short time,
become leading actors. It was home to coteries of poets, intellectuals,
wits, actors, other urban celebrities, and the occasional daimyo. It
celebrated luxury and excess in a society where moderation was extolled,
and luxury and excess could be punished severely.”
For this escape into the “floating world,” it was the women who paid the price.
“From my perspective, there was a very elaborate mechanism for
promoting this idealized vision of the world the courtesans and
prostitutes lived in which didn’t necessarily in any way match up with
the reality of it for them,” Allen says. “They had no one speaking for
them. Very few images of Yoshiwara actually spoke the truth as they saw
it.”
(
“Seduction: Japan’s Floating World,” from the John C. Weber Collection, and the concurrent exhibition, “The Printer’s Eye: Ukiyo-e from the Grabhorn Collection,”
are on display through May 10, 2015, at the Asian Art Museum, 200
Larkin St., San Francisco. To find more information on the exhibitions. For further reading, pick up Cecilia Segawa Seigle’s book, “Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan,” and Samuel L. Leiter’s book, “A Kabuki Reader: History and Perfomance,” or check out online resources such as The Samurai Archives and Immortal Geisha.)
