Women of the Pleasure Quarters by Lesley Downer Page A

created with whole-hearted government approval.
    Confucianism required unquestioning obedience to authority. Within the state, this was the shogun, acting in the name of the emperor. Within the household, it was the father, who was to be accorded as much loyalty and respect as one would give the ruler of the country. The basic unit of society was not the individual but the family, which had to be preserved and protected at all costs. A woman had to obey her father, then, after she was married, her husband, and finally, if her husband predeceased her, her son.
    Marriage was a political matter, nothing to do with love. It was an alliance between families which was arranged by the head of the household with the help of a go-between, far too important a matter to be left to the will of the individuals concerned. Rather than marrying the man, a woman married into the household. She became a
yome,
which means “daughter-in-law” as well as “bride,” and moved into her husband’s house with her in-laws, where she was more like a glorified domestic servant than our concept of a wife.
    As for conjugal sex, the only function was to produce a male heir who would ensure the continuance of the household and carry out the ritual respects due to the ancestors. Apart from that, sexual gratification was not supposed to take place within marriage. In other words, a husband was not supposed to love his wife, enjoy sex with her, or give her sexual pleasure. That was the theory; though in reality many a Japanese mother provided her daughter with a “pillow book” of sexual techniques to try and lure her husband away from the sirens of the pleasure quarters and the manifold other temptations available to him.
    Just so long as a man did his duty by his wife, supported her financially and produced an heir, he was at liberty to amuse himself in any way he pleased. As François Caron, who was in Japan with the Dutch East India Company in 1639, observed, “One Man hath but one Wife, though as many Concubines as he can keep; and if that Wife do not please him, he may put her away, provided he dismiss her in a civil and honorable way. Any Man may lie with a Whore, or common Woman, although he be married, with impunitie; but the Wife may not so much as speak in private with another Man, without hazarding her life.” 7
    Besides enjoying oneself with the wife and concubines, there was no disgrace in visiting the “bad places.” And the options were not limited to the pleasure quarters or the female sex. In fact, a man who chose to stay home with his wife and children would have seemed a bit of a wet-blanket goody goody, probably tight-fisted, and certainly far from a stylish man about town.
    The Lusty Lady of Izumo
    One of the most urgent tasks for the new shogunate was to clamp down on vice, which had increased enormously over the years of civil war. Kyoto had become a center of prostitution, with women who had lost their menfolk, itinerant nuns, and unemployed shrine maidens wandering the streets. There were also thousands of prostitutes servicing travelers along the rivers and roads, at ports, and in front of shrines and temples where pilgrims gathered. The problem came to a head not long after Ieyasu Tokugawa established peace.
    The cause of all the trouble was a woman named Izumo no Okuni (Okuni of Izumo). Okuni claimed to be a shrine maiden and shamaness from the Grand Shrine at Izumo (from where she took her name) though this may have just been an invention to give her an air of mystery. She was, in any case, a dazzling dancer and by definition a prostitute; in those days, the two were one and the same.
    Around 1603, when peace had barely been established, she set up an open-air stage in the dry riverbed of the Kamo and, with her troupe of wandering female entertainers, began to dance. Those who saw her were electrified. After two centuries of civil war, people were hungry for pleasure, diversion, and beautiful women in silk kimonos. It