Continuing our very important study of hookehs, let’s talk about the main types of
female adult entertainers in early medieval Japan, specifically the Kamakura Period.
Previously, people in the Heian Period saw the seks business as pretty cool. There were people
who thought it led to societal problems, but no one wanted to hang out with those people anyways.
In the Kamakura Period, things flipped and we started seeing more negativity towards
seks workers, so we’ll talk about this too.
First off… shirabyōshi 白拍子. This new type of adult entertainer took Japan by storm.
It became more popular than other forms of entertainment such as songs, reading poetry,
and cutting off your enemy’s head and watching it roll down a hill.
Previous seks entertainers would sing for their guests, maybe songs with some type of story,
before slipping in between the sheets. Like porn with a good plot before the action.
The shirabyōshi added a new, revolutionary ingredient to the whole thing:
dancing.
They danced to the beat of a drum, and maybe a gong. They also sang.
The hyōshi 拍子 part means “rhythm.”
Shira 白 could’ve meant “white,” which would’ve made it an oxymoron.
Or it could have meant “plain,” for “plain rhythm” because they danced to music that was really simple:
just an easy drum beat.
These women danced wearing men’s clothing, a hat, a sword, and a fan, all things worn by men.
They later ditched the hat and sword.
Dressing as men may have been the sexiest thing about them to their audience.
I’m guessing it’s similar to how women can wear suits and give off a tomboyish vibe that looks good to some people.
Or it’s because men can get off to anything.
It’s also possible that the dressing-as-men thing was only how writers liked to portray them,
and they actually wore both men’s and women’s clothing at different times.
We do see art of shirabyōshi that show them wearing women’s clothing,
but those were created in later periods when shirabyōshi were no longer a thing.
These women danced for powerful men, so many had powerful friends.
Shirabyōshi received court titles. Also, when you sleep with someone, you’re always in danger of catching feelings.
You gotta be careful. Sometimes these men slipped and made shirabyōshi their concubines or wives.
These ladies had children from elite men,
and some really influential people were sons of shirabyōshi.
Retired Emperor Gotoba was a big shirabyōshi simp, and even made them his concubines.
His simping once helped start a war. He gave a lot of gifts to his dancers.
One day, he must have received one mind-blowing dance because according to the historical texts,
he gave one of his dancers land that belonged to warriors of the shogunate.
This was like giving your hookeh a house.
That belonged to that actor who played The Mountain in Game of Thrones.
The shogunate was like, “Uh no” and it caused some bad blood, eventually leading to war.
The art of shirabyōshi died at around the end of the Kamakura Period.
So Retired Emperor Gotoba tried to give entire plots of land to his woman,
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Next up, kugutsu 傀儡. These ladies were puppeteer adult entertainers.
They would sleep with you while doing a whole puppet show on your naked body. They were very talented.
No, just kidding. They didn’t do that.
Kugutsu were these nomadic groups of both men and women that hunted for food instead of farmed.
They were expert mounted archers.
They seemed like gypsies or traveling circuses because they did tricks like juggling 7 balls, twirling swords,
magic, and puppetry.
They were famous for their puppet shows.
Besides that, the women in these groups also offered seks to their customers.
So they were indeed expert ball jugglers.
Women from these kugutsu groups were also called kugutsu.
Unlike other sexertainers, who used song and dance to seduce their clients, kugutsu got straight to the point.
They used innovative techniques like makeup and their bodies to lure men.
Writers had some colorful words about kugutsu.
“The women paint narrow curved eyebrows on their faces,
use powder to make false teardrops on their cheeks,
saunter in a flirtatious manner.”
Kugutsu groups lived free lives. Landowners paid taxes,
but since kugutsu usually didn’t own land, they didn’t pay taxes either.
They had a reputation for being outlaws. People called them wanderers.
They wandered the countryside, but also wandered from relationship to relationship,
opting for the shorter, more physical connections.
By the end of the Heian, kugutsu groups started settling down. There were cases of them owning land.
Kugutsu women stayed at ports and inns to entertain customers, but from time to time they did get together
into troupes of men and women, and traveled around to perform like they used to.
Next we have asobi 遊女.
These women also stayed at inns, but were most known for making port towns fun places to hang out.
They rowed out into the waters and filled the river or the sea with their songs.
Sometimes a fisherman or a traveler would fall for their voices and enter their boats.
I talk a lot more about asobi in the previous video.
These days, we like to put things in separate buckets, but history is messy.
The lines between these adult performers were fuzzy.
Sometimes people used the word asobi, but they were talking about shirabyōshi or kugutsu.
The word shirabyōshi was sometimes used for any performer who sang and danced, and even meant prostitute.
In the Kamakura Period, the meaning of asobi also broadened.
Instead of a specific seks worker that sang certain types of songs, asobi came to mean any kind of seks worker,
even those who just sold seks, without singing or dancing. So asobi came to mean basically “prostitute.”
Now let’s talk about a group of seks workers we’re all familiar with.
The straight up prostitute.
Someone who just had seks for money. None of that nonsense singing or dancing or playing with puppets, just seks.
They had a few names for these women.
It was still a time when the concept of a seks worker only dealing in seks
and not in other forms of entertainment was new.
People used the word asobi for them, they also used this fun word keisei 傾城.
Keisei means literally “castle-toppler.” Like a woman who distracted men from
important duties such as protecting your castle from enemies, resulting in your castle toppling.
It wasn’t a nice word. Not something your mom would approve of. But appropriate for the time.
The negativity against female entertainers was starting.
At the same time, the seks business grew bigger.
Individual women entered the industry. They weren’t professionals,
so they didn’t do much of the singing and dancing, they just provided the seks.
This was when matchmakers slid into the scene.
Traditionally, matchmakers were people who matched couples with each other.
You have a daughter? Call a matchmaker to find her a dream husband who ignores her but increases the family’s status.
In the mid-Kamakura Period, some matchmakers did more than that.
Instead of matching men with potential wives,
they matched men with hookers. Amateur seks workers used these matchmakers to find clients.
They helped professionals find clients too,
but it was their work with amateurs that irritated the people in power.
You see, a lot of these non-professional ladies came from high-status, elite families,
and they were servicing men of lower status or commoners.
The class-cucking was real.
Maybe their families fell on hard times, maybe they wanted to make a little extra income,
or maybe they just wanted some fun.
It was an underground seks industry outside of the usual entertainers at inns and ports.
Matchmakers were also shady people, often linked with criminals.
Over time, entertainer groups or “families” popped up.
The leaders of these groups were called mothers and the members were daughters,
it’s a little weird.
A lot of mothers probably started as matchmakers.
These groups grew into larger organizations, like how blacksmiths or other professions had guilds.
And like other guilds, they started staying in physical communities, often separate from other people.
It was only after the Kamakura Period that brothels became popular
and red-light areas formed with clever names like Hell’s Corner and P-ssy Alley.
Look, that was the name okay? I’m just letting you know. For learning.
We started seeing laws regulating the seks trade. Now Japan was still tolerant of the seks business,
it wasn’t banned or anything, not even close.
We just saw more writings saying seks workers were distracting people from their work
instead of writings praising their divine vulvas.
There was an imperial order to arrest matchmakers in the capital.
The wording of the order was quite rude towards the matchmakers, calling them “lower-class women,”
saying they “join thoughtlessly with criminals” and they “make a living solely by captivating men’s hearts.”
There was also this line: “They lure women of refinement to cohabit with men of mean status.”
You could read this as: they match high-status women with low status men for marriage.
But what it more likely means is: they pimp out high-status women to low status men.
An edict from the shogunate banned “kugutsu, shirabyōshi, and all women of base origin”
from keeping land given to them by their husbands, after a divorce.
Meaning after divorce, they had to give the land back.
The reasoning was that they seduced their husbands into giving them the land, it didn’t count.
The edict also called them women of base origin,
so you could see how attitudes changed from the more seks-positive Heian Period.
And there were a number of smaller regulations against ladies of the night.
The spread of Buddhism in the Kamakura Period may have boosted these negative attitudes.
Buddhist temples blamed seks workers for distracting men and their own monks from
the righteous path.
Sexual desire, like all desires, blocked your path to Buddhahood.
Again, Japan was still tolerant of the seks business. They probably thought of it like gambling.
Gambling can cause you to neglect your job and family, and ruin your life, but it wasn’t taboo.
Prostitution wasn’t seen as inherently immoral.
Alright, for more seks talk, check out this video. I’ll see you there.
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