Yoshiwara
Yoshiwara ( Japanese 吉 原 , German "auspicious meadow") was in the 17th – 19th Century during the Edo period the only licensed brothel district in the then Edo Japanese capital Tokyo and one of 25 in Japan as a whole (next to, for example, Shimbara in Kyoto and Shinmachi in Osaka ). In the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the name "Yoshiwara" was used by western sailors and tourists as a synonym for every Japanese brothel.
history
Beginnings
As early as 1590, Tokugawa Ieyasu had relocated its headquarters to the small, insignificant fishing village of Edo in the Musashi province in eastern Japan. After taking power and being appointed Shogun in 1603, Ieyasu Edo decided to expand into the country's future seat of government. The place quickly grew into a city and for the samurai staying in the city from all over the empire on government affairs , the need for entertainment and sexual pleasure arose from the beginning. Shōji Jinemon, Rōnin and brothel owner, submitted the first request for a licensed brothel district in Edo to the State Council in 1605 on behalf of himself and other owners of entertainment establishments. The request was denied because the neo-Confucian virtue and order government did not want an entertainment area near Edo Castle. However, more and more girls from the entertainment guild poured into the city and the law enforcement authorities did not succeed in deporting them. Around 1610 there were nearly 50 brothels in several parts of Edo. In 1612, Jinemon renewed the request, referring, among other things, to the 20 national precedents of permitted brothel quarters. In the hope of getting women and criminal excesses under control through a closed neighborhood, the State Council finally issued a license in 1617 subject to conditions: the brothel operation was limited to the assigned neighborhood, guests were not allowed to stay in the neighborhood for more than 24 hours, Gold and silver were not allowed to be used for the clothing of the prostitutes, luxurious buildings and furnishings were forbidden, criminals and suspects were to be detained and handed over to the authorities, and the entrance gate was to be closed from 9 p.m.
The brothel owners were assigned by the state the two Chō (about two hectares) extensive " Rush Field " ( 葦 原 , "Yoshiwara"). It was in Fukiyamachi, today's Nihonbashi-Ningyōchō district, and was just 1.5 km east of Edo Castle. At the same time, Jinemon was appointed first head of the brothel district ( Keiseimachi Nanushi ). The first businesses opened in 1618 and the quarter was completed in 1626. For the opening ceremony, the character for rushes ( 葦 ) was replaced by the same character for “auspiciousness” ( 吉 ) and the quarter was henceforth called Yoshiwara ( 吉 原 ), “the auspicious meadow”.
Relocation to Shin-Yoshiwara
The rapid growth of Edo meant that the district, originally on the outskirts of the city, was in the center of the city after just a few decades. In 1656, the government issued an order to relocate the Yoshiwara. Since the new location in Asakusa was supposed to be about five kilometers north of the previous one and thus far outside the actual city area, the owners tried to oppose the move. However unsuccessful, in return they were able to negotiate various benefits: The area of the quarter was expanded to three Chō, the official curfew was extended to 11 p.m., the gentlemen were exempted from municipal official duties, received a relocation allowance of 10,055 Ryō in gold and the Pledge to close the city's nearly 200 bathhouses, where illegal prostitution flourished. In addition to eliminating competition, the last-mentioned point had the advantage for the brothel owners that the prostitutes arrested in the subsequent raids were handed over to them by the authorities, so that the "question of the next generation" did not have to worry about the expanded business operations. In 1668 a large-scale raid took place in Edo, during which 512 illegal prostitutes were arrested and handed over to the operators of the Yoshiwara. In order to accommodate the unwilling newcomers, new accommodations were built on the existing site and the women distributed over it.
The move to the new location, Shin-Yoshiwara ( 新 吉 原 , "New Yoshiwara"), took place in 1657 after the devastating Meireki fire destroyed a large part of downtown Edo and probably killed 100,000 people. The neighborhood was called Shin-Yoshiwara for a short time. In parlance and literature it was still mostly referred to simply as Yoshiwara.
Fires and reconstruction
Between 1676 and 1866, the Yoshiwara burned down completely 18 times. For the period of the reconstruction, the authorities approved the operation in the surrounding quarters, which were closer to the city center and were less difficult to reach. These transition times of 300 days, called karitaku , turned out to be very lucrative for the brothel owners because of the associated increased turnover. Some companies escaped certain ruin in this way. After the earthquake of 1855, operations were relocated to the Fukagawa district on the eastern bank of the Sumidagawa, for example . The brothel owners obtained an extension of the karitaku to 700 days from the authorities . As if by chance, the Yoshiwara burned down four times in the following years, always shortly after the end of the now extended transition period and only a short-term operation at the original location.
Meiji and modern times
Shortly before the end of the Edo period, a hospital was built on the site of the Yoshiwara in 1867, where prostitutes had to be examined regularly and treated if necessary.
In 1872 the Yoshiwara lost its unique position. In five other quarters of Tokyo (Nezu, Shinagawa, Shinjuku, Itabashi and Senju) brothel facilities were licensed and all together in 1875 placed under the supervision of the police authorities. However, Yoshiwara remained the most famous and popular.
With the reforms of the Meiji period , the restrictions that previously prohibited brothels from having more than a total of two floors no longer existed. In the Yoshiwara, magnificent and elegant buildings in European style made of stone were built. From the mid-1880s, prostitutes began to dress in Western style. European beds were introduced to make US and European guests more comfortable.
Yoshiwara was badly damaged by both the great fire of 1913 and the Kantō earthquake of 1923 , but was rebuilt in the following years and experienced its last heyday until the outbreak of the Second World War in Japan. It deteriorated during the war and ended up being just a quarter of many where prostitution flourished.
With the legal ban on prostitution in Japan on February 28, 1958 (which came into force on April 1, 1958), the lights in Yoshiwara seemed to go out forever, but to this day, Yoshiwara has the highest concentration of soaplands in all of Japan. The location of Yoshiwara roughly corresponds to today's Senzoku district in the Taitō district of Tokyo Prefecture .
Art and literature
Scenes from Yoshiwara, as published around 1683 by Hishikawa Moronobu in his book Pleasures of Love ( Koi no Tanoshimi ), were, like other suggestive subjects, often the subject of contemporary Japanese woodblock prints . Yoshiwara is also the name of a wicked establishment in the book and film Metropolis . Two years after Metropolis , Teinosuke Kinugasa's silent film Im Schatten von Yoshiwara (Japanese: Jūjiro ) had its German premiere in Berlin cinemas . It impressed German critics with its atmospheric night shots from the brothel district.
literature
- JE de Becker: The sexual Life of Japan being an Exhaustive Study of the Nightless City ( 不 夜 域 ) or the "History of the Yoshiwara Yukwaku". OO, undated (1st edition 1899, 3rd edition 1905?). Digitized edition in the Cornell University Library database, accessed January 9, 2012.
- Stephan Longstreet, Ethel Longstreet: Yoshiwara. In the realm of the geishas. von Schröder, Hamburg / Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-547-79869-8
- Friedrich B. Schwan: Handbook Japanese Woodcut. Backgrounds, techniques, themes and motifs . Academium, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-89129-749-1 .
- Michael Stein: Japan's courtesans. A cultural history of the Japanese masters of entertainment and eroticism from twelve centuries . Academium, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-89129-314-3 .
- Tresmin-Trémolières: Yoshiwara, the love city of the Japanese. In: Iwan Bloch (Ed.): Sexualpsychologische Bibliothek, Volume 4. Louis Marcus Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin undated, approx. 1910.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stein, p. 350
- ↑ Longstreet, p. 12
- ↑ Schwab, p. 32
- ↑ Becker, p. 1 f.
- ↑ Becker, p. 5
- ↑ Stein, p. 360
- ↑ Becker, p. 5
- ↑ Stein, p. 359 f.
- ↑ Stein, p. 362
- ↑ Becker, p. 13
- ↑ Schwab, p. 471
- ↑ Schwan, p. 512
- ↑ Stein, p. 406
- ↑ Becker, p. 163
- ↑ Stein, p. 480
- ↑ Becker, p. 85
- ^ Longstreet, p. 223
- ↑ Stein, p. 504