Listening to Scent - by Lesley Downer

The Tale of Genji, Chapter 34

Catching the scent 

of orange trees that wait to bloom
until the fifth month
I recall from long ago
the scented sleeves of one now gone
Kokinshu poem number 139 (published 915 AD)

Of all the senses, perhaps smell has the greatest power to evoke and transport, to bring sudden sharp memories flooding back of a person or place once beloved and long forgotten.

A thousand years ago in Japan, while on another small island on the other side of the world Beowulf was fighting Grendel, the Wanderer was sitting desolately by the seashore bewailing his fate and monks were putting together the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Japanese poets were examining their senses and probing their feelings in a way that would not be unfamiliar today.

In the Heian period, around the eleventh century, one of the most highly appreciated artistic skills among the noble class was the art of blending perfumes. While we developed oil-based perfumes, Japanese perfected the art of heating the woods which formed the basis of their scents so that they produced no smoke, only fragrance. 

Wakamurasaki, Tale of Genji, Chapter 5

In this society - depicted in the world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji - noblewomen lived hidden away in their palaces, occasionally allowing a brocade sleeve to waft its scent from a carriage window as a hint of their beauty. Noblemen would exchange poems with them, decide on the strength of their poetic skills and the beauty of their calligraphy if they were worthy of pursuit, then creep in to visit them at dead of night. No matter how dark it was the ladies always knew exactly who the visitor was by his distinctive perfume. 

In the perfume competition chapter in The Tale of  Genji the judge, Prince Hotaru, complains that it’s so smoky that he finds it very hard to judge the perfumes properly. The author, the court lady know as Murasaki Shikibu, describes one of the perfumes as ‘a calm, elegant scent,’ another as ‘full and nostalgic’, one as ‘bright and up-to-date with a slightly pungent touch’ and another as having ‘a gentle aroma and rather touching tenderness.’ 

The exquisite world of the Heian nobles was as fragile as the scent of orange blossom. It faded away but the tradition of creating and appreciating scent lived on. 

Kimono laid over rack above censer to scent

Till the mid-nineteenth century women scented their kimonos overnight, laying them on a wooden framework over an incense burner, and draped their glossy long black hair over incense burners to scent it. 

A woodblock print at the Tokyo National Museum shows a courtesan reclining languidly, her kimono suggestively parted at hem and neck, with an incense burner between her feet. We can imagine the perfume coiling up through her clothes and emerging from the loose folds of her kimono at her breast. 

Young men about town, geisha and courtesans carried pieces of scented wood in their sleeves and rubbed powdered scent onto their hands and neck. 

When I lived in Japan I once went to the great city of Kanazawa on the Japan Sea coast. A friend had put me in touch with a celebrated master of the Noh theatre. Japanese tend to be rather formal around each other, especially if they are famous as this gentlemen was. But they relish the chance to relax with foreigners who are not such sticklers for the proper Japanese ways of behaviour. 

Preparing for incense guessing game

He introduced me to the incense ceremony. It’s somewhat more recherché than tea ceremony and while tea ceremony ends with a cup of tea, the incense ceremony is more like a game. In fact it’s a bit like wine tasting.

There’s a whole connoisseurship of the different incenses, much like wines. To the novice they may seem similar but to the trained nose they’re quite different. Some are musky, some more like sandalwood or pine or plum blossom. The most exquisite and expensive scent of all is kyara. Imported from Vietnam, it’s an ancient wood that takes thousands of years to develop and, so I’m told, costs many times more than the equivalent weight of gold.

As with tea ceremony, the implements are works of art. There is an ash smoother, chopsticks to handle small incense pieces, an answer sheet holder and tweezers. The central piece of equipment is the incense censer which holds hot ashes on top of which you put a tiny fragment of incense.

Listening to incense

In a game there are five or six scents to choose from. Players kneel in a row or a square and pass the censer around, holding it in the prescribed fashion. You take turns to inhale long and slow and guess which of the scents it is. The referee writes down your guess. Then you go on to the next. The person who gets the most right is the winner.

It’s a social activity yet also peaceful and contemplative. Instead of guessing you can just sit back and ‘listen’ to the incense as they say in Japanese or compose a poem or talk about the scent.

The fragrance -
more alluring than the colour -
whose scented sleeves have brushed
the blossoms in my garden?
Kokinshu

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, is an epic and fragrant tale set in nineteenth century Japan and is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

Top 2 images: The Tale of Genji chapter 34 (18th century Japanese painting, Honolulu Museum of Art) 

Wakamurasaki, traditionally credited to Tosa Mitsuoki (1617 - 1691),part of the Burke Albums, property of Mary Griggs Burke

Both courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Other images mine.

Japanese jugglers, acrobats and top spinners in Victorian London - by Lesley Downer

Japanese acrobats at the Paris Expo 1867

When Phileas Fogg arrives in Japan, the first thing he does is to go to an ‘acrobatic performance’. There he sees the ‘butterfly trick’, where the performers make origami butterflies fly across the stage just by waving their fans. Another performer juggles lighted candles while one sends tops spinning along ‘pipe stems, sabres, wires and even hairs’ as if they have a life of their own. He watches ‘astonishing performances of acrobats and gymnasts turning on ladders, poles, balls, barrels, etc., all executed with wonderful precision.’ And he finally tracks down his lost servant, young Passepartout, underneath an entire human pyramid.

All of this makes perfect sense. In 1872, when Jules Verne was writing his Around the World in Eighty Days, westerners’ image of Japan was as a land of acrobats. Before the arrival of Japonisme the first Japanese to tickle westerners’ fancy were top-spinners, jugglers, acrobats and other performers and when westerners thought of Japanese they thought of acrobats.

'The Japanese at St Martin's Hall'

This year is the 250th anniversary of the birth of circus - in April 5th 1768, when Philip Astley opened his Amphitheatre in Surrey Road, London. To celebrate I’ve been looking into the jugglers, acrobats and other performers who were the first Japanese to arrive in Victorian Britain.

For 250 years Japan had been closed to the west and Japanese had been prohibited from leaving the country under pain of death. It was only in 1866 that the prohibition was lifted and the first ‘passports’ - actually ‘letters of request’ - were issued. The idea was to enable diplomats, government officials, merchants and students to travel abroad to help develop Japan and its economy. But entertainers were also eager to apply.

'Matsui Gensui Troop of Top Spinners' 1865

Among the very first was a legendary top-spinner called Matsui Gensui. He was 43 years old and had been wowing crowds with his amazing feats for decades in Edo (now Tokyo)’s East End, around the famous Asakusa Sensoji Temple. In the traditional way the illustrious name of Matsui Gensui was handed down through the generations. He was the thirteenth to bear it. 

On December 2 1866 the Gensui troupe - seven men, two women, two boys and a girl - set sail on the British steamer Nepaul. They landed in Southampton on February 2nd 1867. On February 11th they made their debut to a packed house at St Martin’s Hall, just behind the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.

The arrival of the Japanese acrobats led to one of the first Japanese crazes of the nineteenth century. Audiences filled theatres to capacity and newspapers reported extensively on their performances and daily activities.

Hayatake Torakichi performs
the ladder trick

The Times reported that ‘a company of acrobats, conjurors and jugglers have established themselves at St. Martin’s-hall where, richly habited in their native costume, they go through a set of feats. ... The children are whirled around in huge humming tops. The others walk on the slack rope and do the famous butterfly trick.’ 

The Era reported on May 5 1867 that the tight rope walker, ‘Kosakichi, in common with the rest of the Japanese does not seem to know the meaning of the word nervousness. ... He carries an umbrella in one hand and a fan in the other and grasps the rope between the first and second toe, after the manner of monkeys in general. Kosakichi rests for a time and, sitting on the rope, smiles amiably at the public while he fans himself. He recovers his position without touching the rope, and never for a moment dispenses with the umbrella.’ Then, to the shock of the audience, the cord snapped, sending Kosakichi to the ground, where he landed gracefully and dexterously on his feet. 

The troupe also performed the ladder trick, in which a man lying on his back balanced a vertical ladder on his feet. The Brighton Gazette described it: ‘A child with the greatest ease ascends to the top of the upright ladder, where he stands upon his head and again upon his feet, and with an intrepid air and serene aspect clasps his hands, amidst the greatest applause; he then continues his journey along the horizontal ladder where again his flexible manoeuvres and gyrations, at a very lofty elevation, are as surprising as they are wonderful.’

Hayatake Torakichi spinning tops

The troupe went on to tour England and performed for the royal family at Windsor Castle. Then, on May 27 1867, they left from Liverpool for the Paris Exhibition. Here they took on the new and grand title of ‘The Tycoon’s Japanese Troupe’. They must have known they’d be crossing paths - and swords - with some old friends and rivals ­- the so called ‘Japan Imperial Artistes’ Company’, fresh from the newly United States.

In 1864, when westerners were allowed in to Japan but Japanese were not yet allowed to leave, the shogun’s government gave permission for the self-styled ‘Professor’ Richard Risley and his American circus troupe to perform in Yokohama. He arrived with ten artists and eight horses. Their performances were a sensation. Many Japanese balancing artistes, jugglers, contortionists, top spinners, and conjurers came to watch and to show off their own expertise.

Amazed at what he saw, Risley had the idea of taking Japanese-style acrobatics abroad. He assembled several groups of Japanese entertainers including Hamaikari Sadakichi’s troupe, who performed tricks with their feet, Sumidagawa Namigoro’s troupe of jugglers and conjurers and Matsui Kijujiro’s top-spinning specialists. Three days after Matsui and his troupe left for London, on 5 December 1866, they set sail for San Francisco. Under the name ‘The Japan Imperial Artistes’ Company’, they performed there for several months in early 1867, then went on to New York where they performed until July, when they left for Paris.

The tumbling tubs trick - Japanese Imperial Troupe in Paris

The most celebrated member of the company was a little boy called Hamaikari Nagakichi, the only child athlete to appear abroad. The first time he performed in San Francisco, he fell from the slack wire. The audience rose to their feet, gasping in horror. The boy picked himself up and shouted, ‘Little All Right,’ which became his nickname thereafter. He was hugely popular.

The greatest acrobat of all was Hayatake Torakichi, celebrated as the last superstar ringmaster of the Edo period. He was based in Osaka but thrilled crowds across the country. Torakichi’s specialty was an act called kyokuzashi, in which he balanced long bamboo poles on his shoulders or feet while other members of the troupe performed juggling tricks or quick-change acts on top. He too was lured to San Francisco and performed there in 1867.

Frog acrobats by
Kawanabe Kyosai

Jostling for public acclaim, all these different troupe members unexpectedly found themselves in each other’s company. In New York it transpired that Hamaikari Sadakichi, the popular young leader of one of the three troupes in The Japan Imperial Artistes’ Company, had had a secret love affair with a lady shamisen player named Tou, who was part of the Sumidagawa group, another of the three. She found herself pregnant and eventually had her baby in London. The Times reported that this was the first Japanese ever to be born abroad. 

Thus it was that Japan’s first representatives on the world stage were its acrobats and stage performers.

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale set in nineteenth century Japan, is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Deconstructing Love - by Lesley Downer

Valentine’s Day comes round again and we spend a day or two thinking about love. But what exactly is it? Is it a feeling as specific as hunger or pain, common to people the world over?

‘Love - whatever that means.’

In Japan until the late nineteenth century, there was no word that matched our western conception of love. There was koshoku, meaning ‘desire’, ‘lust’, ‘passionate physical love’, the madness that sweeps you off your feet when you’re least expecting it. But there was no word for romantic love - the love that inspired a gentleman to woo a lady then drop to one knee and propose marriage, that sent couples fleeing to Gretna Green in defiance of their parents’ wishes. Love and marriage didn’t go together like a horse and carriage.

Nor was there anything akin to the courtly love of the troubadours, the pure love of chivalrous knights who put a lady on a pedestal, suffered torments of undeclared passion, rode into battle with her scented glove tucked into his breast plate and would never have dreamt of sullying her with anything as vile as carnal thoughts.

Manami as a geisha

Love and marriage

Falling in love wasn’t something you wistfully hoped would happen. No one expected to meet the perfect person and live happily ever after.

Once they reached adolescence, boys and girls seldom met. The only men a young woman of good family would ever meet would be her brothers and other family members. People assumed their parents would arrange a marriage for them and trusted them to find a suitable husband or wife.

'Wives dressed demurely'
Ex-geisha Manami, now a wife

Once married, love was not something a man expected to feel for his wife. That would have been disrespectful (though sometimes couples who had had an arranged marriage did fall in love.)

Wives did not expect to enjoy sex. That was for procreation and it pretty much stopped once the requisite number of children were born. Respectable women dressed demurely in sombre colours. The women depicted in woodblock prints in flamboyant kimonos, their hair studded with hairpins, are ladies of the night, not respectable women.

It was not that Japanese didn’t fall head over heels in love. But when they did, they knew it was all too likely to end in disaster. And that made it all the more fatally attractive. Love was the forbidden fruit.

Love in the pleasure quarters

In Japan under the shoguns there was a place for everything and everything had its place. The place for love was the pleasure quarters. That was where a man went in search of the love and romance that was missing from his marriage. That was where he went to enjoy recreational, not procreational, sex.

A dream of romance:
tea ceremony in the pleasure quarters

To the government of the day, love was so tempestuous a force that it needed to be kept tightly under control. The pleasure quarters were walled cities of pleasure which grew into centres of culture, where a man could go and enjoy an afternoon of refined entertainment, tea ceremony and so on, before moving on to the more colourful activities of the evening.

There were women for all pockets, tastes and levels of society, from prostitutes who flaunted their wares through the bars of latticed rooms to celebrity courtesans who held salons. A man would have had to be very rich, very interesting and very persistent to have even a chance of bedding one of those, added to which the courtesans often exercised their prerogative of saying ‘No’, which sent their price into the stratosphere. 

And all this took place in a fabulous setting, hung with brocades and kimonos, surrounded by exquisite artefacts .

For men it offered a dream of romance with no strings attached. The pleasure quarters were diametrically opposed in every way to the everyday world of work and family. Courtesans and geisha didn’t cook or clean or do anything that would pollute them with the ‘stink of domesticity’. It was a sort of never never land, where a man could say and do pretty much anything he liked and it would be washed clean the next day.

'Lavish clothes':
Actress dressed as Edo courtesan

The courtesan’s job was to make the customer fall in love with her so that he would visit more and more frequently and spend more and more money. They were beautiful, witty, brilliant, accomplished. They wore lavish clothes. 

They danced, sang, chatted, talked intelligently about politics if the man so wanted. They flattered and flirted, and, if the man ever got the chance to find out, he’d discover they were brilliant in bed - all things that decent women like his wife never did. He would have been horrified if his wife had behaved like that. 

In fact the courtesan was completely out of his league, were it not for the fact he was paying for it. Money would buy this extraordinary woman, her smiles, her caresses, her swooning interest in everything he said. This gorgeous creature would persuade him he was brilliant, handsome, that she was madly in love with him. What man wouldn’t go for that?

Everything was there to enhance a man’s pleasure. The pleasure quarters were where you went to find aphrodisiacs - charred newt, eel, lotus root, dried rings of sea slug to fit over the penis. Grilled viper was also an aphrodisiac, as was the toasted fin of the fugu, the famous blowfish whose liver, kidneys, ovaries and eyes are deadly poisonous. There was always a titillating link between sex and death.

Fugu by Kawahara Keiga (1786-1860)

Courtesans wrote beautiful love letters. Some would offer a lock of their hair or a finger nail as proof of her love. And when the customer left the pleasure quarters in the morning she would escort him to the gates and be wiping away tears as he turned at the Looking Back Willow to feast his eyes one last time.

The key rule for women: never fall in love

The women of course were working. For them the difficult tightrope they had to walk was between playing at love without ever falling in love. But sometimes they did fall in love and it was invariably a disaster. It was always the wrong man, not the rich client who’d become a woman's patron and support her but a poor young clerk or a son whose father had marriage plans for him and who would disown him and disinherit him if he disgraced the family by running away with a courtesan.

When that happened many couples decided that the only way out was to die together, to commit ‘love suicide’, still to this day considered the ultimate demonstration of love. 

Lesley Downer’s latest novel, The Shogun’s Queen, an epic tale set in nineteenth century Japan, is out now in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

Picture at top: 'Lovers walking in Snow' by Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770), courtesy of wikipedia commons. Fugu: courtesy of wikipedia commons. All other pictures by me. 

The Spell of Glamour by Debra Daley

Henry Norman. The ladies promenading in the Yoshiwara, 1890.
Cambridge University Library.

English journalist Sir Henry Norman travelled to Japan in 1890 to write a series of essays, which he illustrated with his own photographs.  Of the courtesans whom he discovered processing in the Yoshiwara, Tōkyō’s officially licensed pleasure district, he writes, ‘It is difficult to give in words an adequate notion of the extraordinary effect of this procession. The costly and gorgeous clothes… the exaggerated bow of her obi tied in front (the courtesan is obliged by law to distinguish herself in this way), the pyramidal coiffure, the face as white as snow… women servants walking solemnly behind… her slow and painful hachimonji [figure-of-eight walking]; her stony gaze straight before her, half contemptuous and half timid; the dense and silent crowd ­–– all these go to make a spectacle apart from anything one has ever seen…’ 

In fin-de-siècle Japan, these glamorous figures still generated a powerful mystique in spite of Yoshiwara’s decline from its heyday, when it was the shimmering essence  of that arty, sensuous, extravagant urban lifestyle known as “ukiyo” or the “floating world”. By the time Henry Norman arrived at Yoshiwara, the floating world was sagging under the weight of its implausibility – but that a trace of the old magic still lingered is a testament to the forcefulness of the concept.

The Yoshiwara was an irresistible subject for Edo-era writers and artists, who flocked to record every aspect of its demi-monde. Gorgeous woodblock prints amplified the enclave’s appeal and turned the most prestigious courtesans into celebrities. Songs and poems wove webs of allusion that wrapped the reality of the Yoshiwara’s business – women trafficked and enslaved as sexual commodities – in elegant evasions. “Last night a peach was wetted by the rain” sounds rather more charming than “last night a fifteen-year-old’s virginity was sold to the highest bidder”.

Utagawa Kunisada. The courtesan Mayuzumi in the
Yoshiwara of Edo, c.1830.

The presentation of the pleasure district in poems and pictures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the very expression of determined glamour. Images and literary musings that took the Yoshiwara as their subject created a transcendent world, distant yet alluring, populated by unknowable beauties. They project the kind of dazzling glamour that causes things to appear other than they actually are.

Yoshiwara was constructed in 1617 as an enclave of 394 teahouses and 153 bordellos on a marshy plain two miles outside of the city of Edo (as Tōkyō was known then). In the first decade of the seventeenth century, the Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu had eyed with suspicion the kinds of loose establishments – tea houses and unruly houses of ill-repute – that might harbour political agitators and threaten his power. When a brothel owner petitioned authorities for a tract of land with the aim of securing a monopoly on sex-work, it occurred to the Shōgun’s government to establish a designated pleasure district, where brothels could be monitored and taxed. A restricted quarter of this kind would make it easier for the government’s taxation service to obtain revenues from prostitution and for secret police and informants, on whom the shogunate relied to keep political threats in check, to go about their eavesdropping work – since brothels and tea houses had always been a reliable source of intelligence about adversaries and criminals.

The business of the Yoshiwara was highly regulated fantasy, with sex as the consumable product. Even the quarter's name involved some dissembling in order to make it more attractive to customers. Yoshiwara meant “Rush Moor” or, equally prosaically, “Sedge Plain”. But a convenient switch to another kanji (character) transformed the meaning into something more felicitous – the “Moor of Good Luck”.  The term "ukiyo" had got a makeover, too. Its original Buddhist meaning was "suffering world" – a place where chasing after desire inevitably results in sorrow. "Uki" was interpreted as "sad, gloomy" from the Chinese yuu, but in the upbeat, thrusting Edo period, "uki" was repurposed as the Chinese fu, which gave the sense of floating and cheerfulness and drifting on a pleasant current. Even in the matter of timekeeping, Yoshiwara was not exactly commensurate with reality. City regulations required bordellos to close at ten o’clock in the evening, but Yoshiwara’s brothelkeepers got around this inconvenience by calling midnight ten o’clock and having the night watchmen – who struck the hours with wooden clappers – alter the count.

Okumura Masanobu. Nakanochō in the Yoshiwara, c.1710-20.
Art Institute Chicago.

The pleasure district covered twenty acres of gridded streets. It was surrounded by a moat and barred by an imposing Great Gate. Booths outside the gate sold cheap straw hats that could be pulled down low to hide the wearer’s identity. The individuals sporting hats in the print above are probably samurai, who were technically forbidden to visit the Yoshiwara, but as the district grew in prestige, this regulation lapsed. A notice posted on the Great Gate prohibited persons other than doctors from entering in a palanquin or sedan chair, and long weapons were forbidden. Even the most illustrious of visitors must go unarmed and on foot into the Yoshiwara. He understood straight away that the conventions of ordinary society no longer prevailed and that the only mark of distinction a man might have, after passing through the Great Gate, lay in the amount of money he was prepared to pay for services. A representative of the lowly merchant class who managed to secure an assignation with a ranking courtesan might fancy himself a prince of the city – at least for twenty-four hours.

Utagawa Hiroshima. Cherry blossom time, Yoshiwara Nakanochō, c.1839-42.
Honolulu Museum of Art.

Yoshiwara was all about first impressions. From the outset it presented a beguiling face to the visitor. In spring hundreds of cherry trees planted in tubs along the wide central boulevard of Nakanochō offered a breathtaking display. The main thoroughfare was flanked by two-storied tea houses and “green houses” (the term comes from the Chinese custom of painting brothels green). Shops in the side streets sold sex aids, aphrodisiacs and love potions, and food and drink. The banners fluttering from tall bamboo poles, the sound of music everywhere, the countless flickering lanterns that lit this “nightless city" after dusk, and the sumptuous style of its denizens all contributed to an excited atmosphere, while strict rules of comportment added an air of refinement that justified Yoshiwara’s high prices.

Kitagawa Utamaro. Cherry blossoms at Yoshiwara, c.1793.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Chōbunsei Eishi. Courtesans at the Great Gate of the Yoshiwara: (right)
Utaura with kamuro Hanaki and Chidori; (centre) Misayama with kamuro
Wakaba and Teriha; (left) Shinowara with kamuro Takeno and Sasano, c.1792,
Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

In the morning hours the courtesans exercised a semblance of liberty as they strolled the streets attended by young female pages, known as kamuro. When they turned thirteen or fourteen, kamuro might begin training to become prostitutes themselves, or shift into the role of servant or office administrator. Clerical work abounded. Transactions of the Yoshiwara were recorded in detail and encounters charged in time units measured by incense sticks. A ledger recorded the brothel’s sales based on the number of sticks burned for each transaction. Accounts were then made up for customers.

Japanese timekeeper with incense sticks and name tags.
National Science Museum, Tōkyō.

Yoshiwara was a sophisticated bureaucratic enterprise that prospered on finely honed time-and-efficiency principles. Every hour of the courtesan’s life was accounted for – she worked whether she was ill or menstruating. At twilight, as a tolling bell announced the evening display, crowds of sightseers gathered to watch the women take up seats in a latticed room at the front of the bordello. Higher ranked courtesans were not exhibited in this way, but they were in the minority. Potential customers might have consulted one of the many directories available, which contained practical information about the brothels, the women in their employ and a price list of services. Tea house girls arranged meetings with customers, who could buy company for a whole or half day or for periods of time known as “cuts” or “flowers”. High-class courtesans were generally listed at a day-rate basis only, while lower-ranking women were available for shorter sessions. It was assumed that the customer, while waiting a response from a woman of the first echelon, would spend generously on sake and entertainment. It was a drawn-out and expensive business masquerading as idealised courtship.

Okumura Masanobu. Courtesans in the Yoshiwara, c. 1710-20.
Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Most women in the Yoshiwara had been sold to brothelkeepers at a young age by poverty-stricken peasant families. News of natural disasters sent procurers rushing to the afflicted region, where desperate people could be persuaded to sign away their daughters. Every expense from then on, food, clothes, servants, and accommodation, was loaded on to the girl’s contract and indebted her for years to the brothel owner. The reality of her life was one of indenture with little hope of escape. No woman could leave the Yoshiwara without a police pass and even then she must be accompanied by a male attendant. Any attempt to flee was met with severe penalties.

Henry Norman gives an insight into the process of indenture in his dispatches to the Pall Mall Gazette. He recounts a visit in 1890 to Tōkyō’s Department of Police, where the Bureau of Prostitution allows him to watch the application process for a girl to become a licensed yujo, or “lady of pleasure” at the Yoshiwara. “Three persons appear in front of the officials,” Norman writes, “the girl, her parent or guardian, and the brothelkeeper. The girl is questioned, she replies automatically with downcast eyes; the parent is questioned, he replies apologetically, with many explanations; the keeper is questioned, he replies profusely, with practised fluency. The official makes many entries in an elaborately ruled ledger before him. Then the three retire, in a moment the sliding doors open again to admit another trio, and so on without variation, without emotion, formally and relentlessly the stream of victims is rolled on. I could not help being reminded of the automatic pig-killing at the stockyards of Chicago. Some of the girls are no longer young, but coarse in person and brazen in manner. Others are delicate and pretty and very frightened. Some look little more than children, bewildered.”

Once the girl signed her contract, the brothelkeeper would advance the parents the sum of money agreed – in 1890 that was somewhere between twenty and fifty dollars – and the girl was bonded to the keeper’s brothel until he had recouped his investment from her earnings. In fact the ever-expanding debt made it nearly impossible for the girl to leave the Yoshiwara unless a patron bought out her contract.

Postcard. Yoshiwara prostitutes, c.1910.

There was nothing very ideal about day to day life in the pleasure quarter. The mosquitos that thrived in the moat must have been a hellish nuisance in summer and when it rained the streets would have churned to mud. Typhoid broke out from time to time. Many lives were lost to fires – over a period of two hundred years Yoshiwara was burned down at least thirty times. At least a third of Yoshiwara’s women were dead by their early twenties of infectious diseases or from complications of childbirth. Others were slowly poisoned by the toxic lead makeup they painted on their faces and necks. The majority of them passed into death as anonymously as they had lived, their bodies wrapped in straw and dumped at the gates of the Jokanji temple ­– the Throw-Away temple, as it became known. A total of 25,000 prostitutes met this fate.

As the hour of the dragon arrived, and dawn began to break, Yoshiwara's customers came to the end of their sessions. In typically euphemistic style, this departure at dawn was termed “the parting of the robes”, an echo of the courtly language used to describe the poignant separation of two lovers. The morning bell sounded and the Great Gate was pushed open – but not for the women within.