Two roads diverged in a Japanese
daughter’s life, and she,
she took the one her family told her to.
Put yourself in the kimono of a daughter living in Edo Period Japan.
As a woman, your role in society has a lot to do
with what happens between your thighs.
In front of you are two yellowing brick roads.
One leads to the life of an obedient wife,
the other to a brothel.
You might think, “Well that’s easy, I’d choose ‘I do!’”
But hold up, I never said you could choose.
Let’s take a tour of the two sides of
female secksuality in Edo Period Japan (1603 - 1868)
and how women were forced to walk these paths,
and then how women found ways to escape.
Now I’m not saying women couldn’t do other things, like being a nun,
but in the context of secksuality, the default context of this channel it seems,
there were two main choices.
First up, Wife Street, the path most traveled.
A wife’s job was to pop out bebes like a pez dispenser,
to create an heir so the household could prosper.
Her secksuality was more like a duty to the household.
An ideal wife was humble, modest, and full of self-control.
Now Fornication Freeway, on the other hand, was the opposite.
A prostitute’s job was to spread pleasure so her brothel could prosper.
An ideal prostitute was charming, refined, smart, and had enough secks appeal
to tank your credit rating.
The two roles seem totally opposed, but they were actually
two sides of the same pair of tiddies.
Like yin and yang, wives and courtesans were opposites but together,
people thought, worked to lubricate the fingers of society.
They were both important.
People said that at home, a man performed his duty to his wife and household.
Their bond was one of family.
But when he wanted excitement, a way to release stress from his body vigorously,
he went to a prostitute.
A wife’s job was not necessarily to blow her husband’s mind in bed.
At the same time, although a husband could dip his toes from time to time
in the soapy waters of the pleasure district, it wasn’t a permanent swim.
Afterwards he was expected to wash off and come home to where he belonged.
Let’s talk about the Way of the Wife.
The most common path for a woman was to find a guy she liked,
hang out with him a bit to make sure he’s the right man,
then forget about him when her parents arranged
a marriage for her with someone else.
Marriage was mainly for the benefit of the house, not the happiness of the daughter.
She could make a fuss about it if she thought
her future husband was as appealing as a blowfish,
but arguing with your parents about marriage
is like arguing with your online girlfriend.
It’s a lot of stress, a lot of heartache, and at the end of the day,
there’s a good chance you’ll still end up with a guy.
Also, this is crazy, but back then they had this idea that
children owed a debt of gratitude to their parents,
and part of being a moral person was to show respect to them
and be a good, obedient son or daughter.
One of the ways to do this was to put on your big girl kimono,
down a bottle of sake, and say konnichi wa to the rest of your life,
whose name is Tenji.
When a daughter entered another household, her parents back home expected her to be
loyal and obedient to her husband and her new family,
even over the family that raised her.
Being a good daughter meant being a good wife.
“You’re not spending New Years with us, honey?"
"I’m so proud.”
Pushing out bebes like a 3D printer of meat was important,
but one quality in a wife was even more important:
obedience.
Even if her womb was as barren as her husband’s morals,
he wouldn’t immediately kick her out.
No, he could always take a concubine or adopt a son to be an heir.
But if a wife cared more for her old family,
or if she was all stubborn and junk,
she might have found herself taking a ride back home on the divorce carriage.
With the growing Edo economy, more women were stepping into the job market,
boosting the labor force and improving economic conditions for everyone,
causing everyone to lose their s--t.
Unmarried women working outside the house?
Buddha save us!
If they didn’t have strong morals, someone would take advantage of them
or they might go all crazy jumping on the first guy that handed them a love poem.
They might even hop the wall to the other side and become a prostitute.
That’s why lifestyle manuals and morality guides
started hitting the Edo Times Best Sellers list.
They told girls and young women how to act like one.
Like how to prepare for married life and how to not be a shameless ho.
Obedience was the highest virtue.
One book said that a wife should see her husband as her lord or maybe as heaven.
She should obey him and never joke at his expense.
She must control herself when she’s angry.
Her expressions and way of speaking should be
submissive, polite, and humble.
Don’t act or dress too extra.
People thought a wife who talked too much risked talking herself out the door.
Now if we hop over the wall,
we land on the Way of the Courtesan.
A courtesan was a high-ranking prostitute.
Since we’re talking about ideals here, it makes sense to talk about courtesans,
the ideal ladies of pleasure,
but many of these also applied to vanilla secks workers.
In the glittering world of the courtesan,
being physically attractive was not enough,
and secksual talent was but one among many
She had to know how to please men with her artistic skills and charm,
and had to have the alcohol tolerance of a sake barrel.
A good courtesan was a pro at conversation.
She was engaging, confident, and playful, and able to flirt like a fox.
But the one thing that she absolutely wasn’t supposed to do,
the one thing that brothel owners warned her against,
and everyone was on the lookout for,
was falling in love.
There was a well-known story about this.
A courtesan named Mikasa falls head over sandals in love with Yonosuke,
a romantic man who’s a prolific enjoyer of women.
She spends time with him at no charge, and her brothel owner is very understanding
of how much money he could lose.
The owner demotes her to kitchen girl,
forcing her to wear simple, boring clothing,
and sends her to do embarrassing chores like buying tofu, gods forbid.
He says, “This trifle can be put to rest
if you merely withdraw your affections for this man.”
Mikasa says, “This is nothing!
For his sake, I could bear far more.”
And he says, “Bear this, you foxy philanderess.”
And he ties her to a willow tree in the snow, without pants.
“Drop the love act or freeze on a tree.”
Mikasa picks the tree, and stands there for a week freezing but not faltering.
Yonosuke hears about his girl being turned into a popsicle
and threatens the brothel owner.
The threat?
Yonosuke would kill himself to die with Mikasa,
and they would haunt the owner for the rest of his life.
Ghosts are bad for the owner’s anxiety, so he lets her go.
You can see how brothel owners hated love.
They were always on the lookout for any of their girls
spending her free time with a man.
Courtesans with crushes might skip entertaining other men,
and runaway prostitutes made little revenue.
A skilled courtesan was able to convince her clients she loved them,
but love had no place in her heart.
Clients knew this, but played along with the game,
even trying to get her to prove her love.
Even so, games in the pleasure district were serious business.
Literally. Businesses ran on it.
It was a different world with its own culture and rituals.
The restrictions on a courtesan’s life were
tighter than her clients’ pants when they entered her room.
Even clients had to follow the brothelific rules,
like a client was actually supposed to stay monogamous with a courtesan.
They were exclusive until he officially decided to leave her for another.
If he was caught cheating,
his lady and her friends might humiliate the adulterer publicly
by making him wear women’s clothing or something.
They might even do the unthinkable,
and snip off his topknot.
However, I’m not sure how strictly they followed this rule
because there were barbers who specialized in fixing topknots that were cut,
so it couldn’t have been that rare.
The values of modesty and self-control made sense for wives,
because Edo society needed her to stay with her family and make bebes.
For courtesans, it was the values of glamor and attraction.
Like how a wife was seen as a good daughter for serving her new family,
a courtesan was a good daughter for serving her brothel.
Most courtesans came from poverty.
Poor families sold their girls off, and it was her duty
as a good daughter to finish out her contract.
One joking poem went:
“Seeing your parents ill, it is your filial duty to enter a commoner’s palanquin.”
Pleasure houses sent palanquins to carry sold women from their homes.
The government wanted to keep these female roles separate,
even physically.
The pleasure district was walled off from the rest of the city.
Secks workers had to live there, they couldn’t leave.
Authorities treated the secks trade like gambling or drunkenness.
Banning it would be like trying to
catch all the cherry blossom petals in a spring breeze.
Instead, they contained the vice in one place, controlling it.
The tax money wasn’t bad either.
Women were not always stuck in these two paths though.
They could escape.
A wife could leave by divorce.
Now only the husband could initiate a divorce,
so you might think that women were
stuck in miserable marriages even if they wanted out,
but no, she just needed to get creative.
If she really wanted to leave, all she had to do was to crank her bish dial to 11,
making the household a hellhold,
give her in-laws a ride on the struggle cart,
where the brakes are located in divorce papers.
If this didn’t work, women could just skippity hop out of there.
Some Buddhist temples welcomed runaway wives
and helped convince their husbands to write divorce papers.
Women of pleasure also had escape options.
Convince a man you love him and you might earn a get-out-of-brothel-free card,
because he might buy out your contract from the owner and make you his wife.
This is why they had a saying,
“The standard lie of the prostitute is ‘I love you.’
The standard lie of the client is, ‘I will marry you.’”
A courtesan’s contract cost her remaining debt plus fees.
The pylon fee usually ran pretty high, that’s the fee for
how much bulls--t the owner can pile on.
A high ranking lady would burn a huge hole in your money pouch,
but hopefully fill that hole in your heart.
If she couldn’t find a convenient husband, she could try to run away.
This wasn’t the best choice because even if she escaped,
how would she survive?
The best she could do was to assume another identity
and have a man lined up to take her in.
But really, what she needed was to seduce a rich client with words like hot butter,
smooth and dripping,
and convince him of her love.
A courtesan had many ways to show that she loved a man,
some of them extreme.
Check out how she did it by clicking here.
Okay we have a new Emperor on Patreon today:
Lilly, of the Whispering Lake. Welcome.
We also have some regular patrons:
Mattias Carlsted, dallas hodgson, Yijia, and Snow & Fox.
Thank you so much you guys.
Alright I love you, and spread the knowledge!