In the 10th episode of the NHK Taiga drama " UNBOUND (Berabou) " (General TV, Sunday 8pm and others), starring actor Ryusei Yokohama , entitled "The Dreams of the 'Blue Chamber Beauty'" (broadcast on March 9th), Yokohama's character Tsutaju had a popular illustrator draw everyday images of Segawa ( Fuka Koshiba) and the other oiran (courtesans) to coincide with her "final journey as a courtesan" after she has been bought out, and completed a gorgeous nishiki-e book.
This nishiki-e book is titled "Seiro Bijin Awase Sugata Kagami" and consists of three volumes. The courtesans are depicted along with the scenery of the four seasons. The first page of the first volume features four courtesans from Matsubaya. One courtesan is sitting at a writing desk, brush in hand, and the other two are talking, while Segawa is standing a little distance away, with a book open and looking thoughtful.
◇ Promotion that rivals Tsutaju: Shogunate to strengthen regulations on "oshikatsu"
About eight years before "Blue Chamber Beauty Mirror" was released, an "amateur idol" made a big break with nishiki-e. Artist Suzuki Harunobu painted a portrait of a beautiful woman, an 18-year-old girl named "Osen" who worked at the teahouse and locksmith in the grounds of Kasamori Inari Shrine near Tennoji Temple in Yanaka (Taito Ward, Tokyo), and it sold very well. Unlike courtesans, who were out of reach for the common people, Osen was easy to visit. Yanaka was bustling with men eager to see Osen. There is a senryu poem that goes, "The face of a girl from the teahouse makes my stomach churn," so there were probably many customers who ordered multiple cups of tea in the hope that Osen would remember their face.
"Osen character goods" such as dolls, hand towels, and sugoroku games were also sold. She was the subject of plays, joruri, and kibyoshi novels, and promotions were developed that would put Tsutaju to shame. She was truly the originator of oshikatsu. However, Osen's charm at the teahouse lasted only about two years. She married a samurai retainer who worked at Edo Castle. It was unusual for the daughter of a teahouse owner to marry a samurai retainer, but for a "popular idol," differences in social status were irrelevant.
Capitalizing on Osen's popularity, the number of teahouses that hired beautiful women to be their poster girls increased, and teahouses competed for business with their poster girls rather than the taste of the tea. The going rate for tea was 6 mon (about 120 yen in today's value), but teahouses that had poster girls charged 10 times that amount. There is a haiku that goes like this: "Be amiable before you leave the tea money." It seems that if you didn't give a generous tip, the poster girls would look sullen.
Nishiki-e prints of poster girls also appeared one after another. Kitagawa Utamaro, who teamed up with Tsutaju, also depicted poster girls of tea houses in Asakusa and Ryogoku alongside geisha of Yoshiwara in his masterpiece "The Three Beauties of the Time" (Kansei Era Three Beauties). However, at the same time, tea houses offering questionable services also emerged. For this reason, the shogunate tried to calm the tea house idol boom by restricting the women who could work at tea houses to under 13 or over 40, and forbade the names of poster girls to be written on Nishiki-e prints, preventing them from being promoted.
◇ Monks disguise themselves and hang out in red-light districts, and engage in cosplay and fetish marketing.
There was a pleasure quarter called "Iroha Chaya" close to Kagiya where Osen worked. The fact that people could enjoy both their favorite idols and visiting the pleasure quarters made Yanaka a popular spot. Iroha Chaya was established in 1703 in front of the Tennoji Temple gate in Yanaka. Initially it only served tea to pilgrims, but it eventually became a pleasure quarter. There is a haiku poem from that time that goes, "Samurai don't like Iroha Chaya, townspeople don't like it." Priests were a regular customer of the tea quarters.
Since monks were punished for having relations with women, they disguised themselves and frequented the pleasure quarters. In Edo, there were many small town doctors who shaved their heads and made house calls wearing haori coats. Monks also wore haori coats and frequented the pleasure quarters. However, rumors were heard by the magistrate's office, and in August 1796 they launched a simultaneous crackdown on the major brothels, including Iroha Chaya. Over 70 monks were arrested and put on public display in Nihonbashi for three days.
The Edo sex industry had a wide base. "Cosplay," where women dressed in nuns' clothes and shaved their heads to provide services to customers, also became popular. Called "Bikuni," there were 78 Bikuni in Edo, with Akasaka being the busiest. It is said that Oishi Kuranosuke from Chushingura was also addicted to the Bikuni in Akasaka and visited them frequently. Another popular spot was the entertainment facility where people could shoot arrows at targets (Yokyujo). The original job of the Yaba-onna who worked there was to retrieve the arrows that customers had shot, but they would stick out their buttocks toward the customers and tempt the men to shoot arrows at their buttocks.
According to Mitamura Engyo (1870-1952), a researcher of Edo culture and customs, some stores had brush shop daughters who would lick the tips of brushes before selling them to male customers, and these were called "name-fude" (name brushes). The idea was that one could have an indirect kiss through the brush. There was also a type of "dashi-geta" (a pair of geta worn by women wearing geta with their kimono exposed), in which a risqué part was revealed from the bottom of the kimono when a customer tried on a pair of geta. Businesses that appealed to this fetish psychology were born one after another.
◇ A local samurai who was ripped off finally had enough
There was also a brothel that targeted naive men and ripped them off. One such brothel was in Azabu Yabushita (around Tokyo Metro Azabu-Juban Station). The area was home to many feudal lords' residences (Edo domain residences). Many samurai who came to live alone in the residences lived there for up to a year as escorts for the feudal lords who traveled to and from Edo on alternate attendance days. Whenever they had free time, they would go sightseeing in Edo. The brothel in Azabu Yabushita catered to local samurai who were ignorant of the ways of the world.
"Okabasho Ko," a record of the reputations of Edo pleasure quarters, criticizes Azabu Yabushita, saying that it had a "bad reputation and vulgar prostitutes." It had a bad reputation for aggressive soliciting, rip-offs, and poor service. Local samurai who had been ripped off were afraid of being found out for having spent all their money in shady places, and put up with it in silence. But eventually, their patience ran out. Over 50 samurai from the Kurume Domain (Fukuoka Prefecture) clan residence ganged up and stormed into the brothel, destroying the building. The magistrate's office ruled that Azabu Yabushita was out of business. This was in April 1839.
There were about 3,000 prostitutes in Yoshiwara, but if you include brothels, it is estimated that there were more than 10,000 in Edo, which had a population of 1 million. (Text by Kenichi Komatsu)
◇Profile
Kenichi Komatsu Born in Osaka in 1958. Joined the Mainichi Shimbun in 1983. In charge of crime and administration in the Osaka and Tokyo social affairs departments. After that, he served as the head of the Bangkok branch, editor-in-chief of the evening edition, general manager of the North American bureau, and editorial committee member, before retiring in 2022. While he was an editorial committee member, he wrote the serial article "Walking with Onihei" for over a year, which overlapped the world of the historical novel "Onihei Hankacho" (written by Shotaro Ikenami, Bunshun Bunko) with the historical fact of Heizo Hasegawa and the society and customs of Edo. Based on that, he published "Tokyo in the 21st Century as Seen in Onihei Hankacho - A Reporter Goes with an Old Map in Hand" (CCC Media House). He is currently a lecturer at the Yomiuri/Nippon Television Cultural Center on learning about Edo from Onihei Hankacho.
