@Byshop:
For the parents, sending a child off to the pleasure quarters was nothing out of the ordinary, it is still done to this day in Asia. Apart from the much-needed money and the brutal necessity of reducing the number of mouths to be fed, they probably felt they were giving their daughter a chance in life. Going to Kyoto to eat fine food, wear fine clothes, meet fine people and be educated offered far more hope than staying in the countryside hoeing the soil for the rest of her life. As for the child, according to the Confucian code it was her filial duty to put the well-being of her family ahead of her own. Girls who were sold to the pleasure quarters were considered virtuous and admirable for having sacrificed themselves for their family.
Most were recruited when they were six or seven and had only the haziest memories of life outside the walls of the pleasure quarter. While peasants were lucky if they had millet, the children in Shimabara ate white rice, wore beautiful kimonos and learnt to walk, talk and comport themselves in the exaggeratedly feminine style of the quarter.
Initially the children worked as maids. When they were older, if they showed promise they became kamuro (child attendants to a courtesan). The courtesan taught them how to behave and ensured that they were trained in accomplishments such as calligraphy, tea ceremony and music. There were many little secrets to be absorbed: how to lure men, how to wind them around their little fingers with tears or protestations of undying love, how to write love letters, how to hold men off long enough to drive them mad with desire, how to pleasure them in the bedchamber and how to fake an orgasm while conserving one’s energy for the next customer. The key rule was to play at love but never, never to allow oneself to feel it. That way lay disaster.
At the very pinnacle of the hierarchy of prostitutes and courtesans were the tayu. If a man wanted to enjoy the company of one, the first step was to go to an ageya, a house of assignation (the precursor of the teahouses of the geisha districts) to apply for a meeting. If he was a sophisticate, he would ask for one of the tayu by name; some were so popular that it might take months before a day became free in their calendar. The owner of the ageya would write a letter to the bordello where the courtesan lived, roll it up and give it to a messenger. While the customer was waiting, he would enjoy the services of jesters and dancing girls and ply them with food and drink, all of which, of course, would be added to his bill. Hours later, the tayu would sweep in, dressed in layer upon layer of gorgeous kimonos and accompanied by a flotilla of child attendants and dancing girls, having progressed at snail’s pace along the boulevard with her entourage. They would while away the evening playing music, dancing, exchanging poems, enjoying tea ceremony and incense ceremony — exactly as if they were ladies and gentlemen of the Heian court. Sex did not automatically follow. After all, it would lower the courtesan’s worth if she were too easily available. A proprietor who owned a beautiful tayu would want to increase the value of his or her investment by making her as exclusive as possible. If the man wanted to spend the night with the courtesan, he would have to engage in a long and very expensive courtship. The earliest that one could hope to experience her luxurious silk bedding was at the third visit. And even then, if the tayu was not satisfied with the man’s performance, she could decline to sleep with him. If she did agree to spend the night with him, the cost was 90 silver nuggets (momme) which equalled 1½ gold nuggets (ryo), in modern currency about £420.[12] It was costly but, for a wealthy man, the only sort of person whom a tayu would consider, hardly prohibitive.
They probably accepted the hardships with stoicism. That was the way it was in the floating world and, in any case, any other life would have had its hardships too. Within the narrow confines of their gilded cage they were queens. The one chance of escape — if they wanted it — was to find someone prepared to buy out their contract and make them his wife or mistress. As the old saying went, the courtesan’s favourite lie was ‘I love you’, the customer’s ‘I will marry you’.
The names and rankings changed over the centuries but everyone agreed that the greatest courtesans of all time were the tayu of seventeenth-century Shimabara. Tayu were also known as keisei (castle topplers) because, it was said, they could overthrow a castle with a single flutter of their eyelashes or, like Helen of Troy, bring an entire kingdom to ruin. Their looks fitted the canons of beauty of the day and they were accomplished and gracious paragons of every virtue (except, of course, chastity). They were superstars, celebrated in woodblock prints and written about endlessly in guidebooks to the pleasure quarters. The most famous of all the castle-toppling courtesans was the peerless Yoshino.
Geisha: The Remarkable Truth Behind The Fiction -
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