Courtesans and Geisha

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Ian Buruma says "Never in the history of mankind have prostitutes played such a prominent and important part in the culture of a nation as the courtesans of Edo." This applies to the Edo period after Hideyoshi moved prostitution into restricted areas, most famously the Yoshiwara district in Edo (now Tokyo).

This was a time where Edo expanded hugely, from a fishing village to the world's largest city in less than a century. Colossal amounts of money were sloshing around, and there were enormous numbers of samurai with little to do, and merchants with the lowest of castes but huge wealth. This could be confiscated at will by the shogunate, so there was every incentive to spend wildly: thus the hedonistic 'floating world', and the central position of courtesans.

From the 17th Century, books called joro hyabanko were produced. These were guidebooks to the various pleasure quarters, including reviews of the prostitutes. They were written in the style of Heian court literature (Genji etc.). Some have claimed this was with satirical intent, but in fact the way the courtesans appeared and acted was in very much a classical Heian style, so form and content were well matched. (These days, there are TV shows performing exactly the same function, reviewing bath houses, the modern brothels.)

Courtesans and Tayu

The courtesans who most closely followed this ancient (8th-12th centuries) style, who were also the most highly regarded and expensive, were known as tayu. They would paint their faces white with reddened lips, shaved eyebrows and black smudges higher up the forehead, and colour their teeth black (this practice continued widely until 1873, when under Western influence, the empress gave it up, and it vanished quickly). They would wear perhaps a dozen kimonos, carefully sized and arranged to give glimpses of all of them at the hem and collar. Hair was very long and straight - there are accounts of it dragging on the ground as they walked - but tayu replaced this later with the kind of elaborate coiffures that you see in courtesan prints. Tayu were expected to be highly cultured and accomplished - poetry, calligraphy and other classical Heian arts, as well as dance and music. Tayu seem to have vanished in the late 18th Century, but there are recreations by actresses now. They are thought of as the predecessors of the more famous geisha.

The most famous tayu was probably Yoshino (1606-1643): even now, tributes are placed on her grave on her birthday. She was said to be the lover of the great warrior Musashi Miyamoto. She was indentured at the age of six (this was standard) and a tayu at the extraordinarily early age of 14, and continued until her debts were bought out by a millionaire whom she married at age 26.

Money

The indenturing system was the standard until the 20th century. Pretty girls were bought from their families at age six or so, and worked as maids and trainees, eventually becoming attendants to popular courtesans. Somewhere around age 14, their virginity would be sold at a high price in an elaborate ceremony. They could never pay off their debts - the initial purchase price would be increased by charges for room and board, and having to buy classy clothes, especially for special occasions such as their deflowering. The only way out was to find a man keen enough to buy out their debts - often there would be a contract signed, marking the terms and conditions the woman agreed to, exchanging one kind of lack of freedom for another. Marrying a client after retirement (normally at 27) was common - but first the woman had to find an older man to adopt her, to confer the kind of respectability necessary before marrying.

Prices: sex with a tayu would run to 90 silver nuggets, equivalent to around £500 or $1000 today. Other teahouse (a euphemism for brothel in those days) courtesans would go for 60 or 30 nuggets, while streets prostitutes would sometimes be as cheap as 1 nugget, around £5.

Geisha

The first people to be described as geisha were men: taikomochi, male entertainers at the teahouses. Geisha means something like 'artiste' - these men were singers, dancers and/or jesters. That last type retained the term taikomochi, while the dancers and singers became geisha. The term was not taken up by women until the 18th Century, in a bid to claim status as artistes as opposed to prostitutes; this does not at all imply that they were not sexually available for money. A key difference between geisha and courtesans, more than this artistic emphasis, was that geisha were not generally indentured, were not virtual captives and slaves.

Sada or Sadayakko (1872-1946) was a very famous geisha. She became the official mistress (complete with a contract) of Prime Minister Hirobumi Ito, and was one of the most famous faces in Japan. She then fell in love with and married an actor/impressario called Otojiro Kawakami. In the wake of Japonisme and Gilbert & Sullivan's Mikado and Madame Butterfly, geisha became an international curiosity. A tour of actors to the US was planned. For centuries, there had been no such thing as an actress, but it was accepted that the US and Europe wanted something resembling the real thing, not a man playing a geisha. Sada was chosen as modern Japan's first actress. She became an international star, performing for President McKinley and at Buckingham Palace, and she was painted by Picasso (the painting is rather fanciful and entirely Spanish in style). Back in Japan she performed on stage for years, playing a number of Shakespearean roles - Desdemona, Ophelia, Portia.

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