Women of the Pleasure Quarters by Lesley Downer Page B

was from Okuni and her dancing that the geisha, with their irresistible combination of charm, entertainment, and eroticism, were to develop.
    As word spread, crowds descended on the riverbed to watch Okuni perform. Artists of the time portrayed her dancing wildly, accompanied by singers, a flute-player, and people beating hand drums before an eager audience of top-knotted samurai and robed women and children, sheltered by huge red parasols, with the townsfolk jam-packed in front of the stage.
    Some of her dances were adapted from ancient folk dances. One of these was the Buddhist prayer dance, for which she dressed in priest’s robes, sporting a conical black hat and baggy black trousers and carrying a bell which she struck with a small hammer. Sometimes she dressed as a Shinto priest and at other times she mimicked a Christian one, wearing a large golden rosary.
    But the most thrilling part of her show was when she played a man. Audiences cheered, applauded, and roared with laughter when she sauntered out wearing brocade trousers and an animal skin jacket. With a painted mustache like a dashing young man about town, she would mime chatting up a teahouse woman, wooing a courtesan, or having an assignation in a bathhouse. Okuni’s dancing was not just brilliant but cheerfully erotic. It was so extraordinary that a new word had to be coined:
kabuki,
from the verb
kabuku,
meaning “to frolic” or “to be wild and outrageous.” Okuni’s sexy dancing was the seed of the kabuki theater and also of the floating world of the courtesans and geisha.
    Okuni’s fame spread all over the country. In 1607 she and her all-women troupe went on tour to Edo and gave a public performance at the shogun’s castle there. Soon there were imitators—troupes of prostitutes and courtesans performing erotic dances and bedroom farces throughout the great cities. It was showbiz; the actresses were stars. But, while the court ladies and townswomen imitated their stylish ways, men were more interested in their bodies. A contemporary wrote, “Men threw away their wealth, some forgot their fathers and mothers, others did not care if the mothers of their children were jealous . . .”
    There was nothing wrong with eroticism. But the shogunate could not risk anything that threatened public order. When men started fighting over the actresses, it was time to put a stop to it. In 1628, after a major brawl, the authorities banned women from performing in public. It was a law that was extremely difficult to enforce. It had to be passed again in 1629, 1630, 1640, 1645, 1646, and 1647. Finally the manager of the last offending theater was thrown into prison and women disappeared from the public stage, not to reappear for another 250 years.
    Banned from public performance, some of the women dancers took up work as prostitutes, licensed or unlicensed. Others found positions in samurai households where they gave private performances or set themselves up as teachers of music and dance. These were the sort of women who a century later were to become known as geisha. 8
    The authorities had banned women’s kabuki. But they had said nothing about kabuki performed by young men, which now became hugely popular. The young men incorporated acrobatics and juggling into their kabuki and the most beautiful took on female roles.
    Alas for the efforts of the authorities, these beautiful young men too were prostitutes. Those who played women dressed the part off stage as well as on. They lived in little shacks near the riverbanks, notably in the area of Kyoto called Miyagawa-cho, now one of the geisha districts, and used their performances to attract customers. Most of them were under fifteen, the age of adulthood, which probably made them all the more attractive.
    For Buddhist priests who had abjured the company of women it was perfectly acceptable thus to work off their frustrations with a clean conscience. The youths also appealed to samurai, among whom homosexuality