Today’s subject is hookehs.
Specifically the ones in Heian Period Japan. You know you wanna hear about it.
Early on, there was a type of adult entertainer who specialized in singing,
called asobi 遊女.
Some you can find on busy roads, but most lived near ports.
They were most famous for riding out on little boats
and serenading the fishermen and travelers out in the waters.
Men would get lost in their voices, then hop on over to get lost in their chambers.
Sometimes women would as well, they didn’t discriminate.
They welcomed breast connoisseurs of all types, from commoners to elite men, even emperors.
Now the Japanese back then saw prostitution differently from today.
Seks and entertainment were linked.
The singing, the conversation, and the seks was part of a package deal.
It was more like a girlfriend experience, or a pop idol girlfriend experience.
Here’s a good way to look at it. Nowadays, there are massage therapists,
and then there are massage therapists who offer more intimate services.
We call them prostitutes and think of the massage thing as a front to hide the real service.
If we thought like the Japanese did back then, the massage would be as important as the seks.
In Heian Japan, they paid for the singing as much as the humping.
There were different types of entertainers.
You had the biggest group, the singers on boats called asobi 遊女,
but you also had puppeteers called kugutsu 傀儡, and dancers called shirabyōshi 白拍子.
We would call all these people prostitutes, but did you know that at first
they didn’t have a concept of prostitutes?
They may not even have had a general name for people who sold seks.
It’s a bit hard to explain, so let’s make an analogy with people who are similar to prostitutes:
YouTubers.
Nowadays you have your political YouTubers, your anime YouTubers, your cursed VTubers, all kinds of degenerates. They all have different ways of making money,
but most of them use sponsorships to some degree.
But we don’t have a name specifically for YouTubers who make money through sponsorships.
We don’t categorize them as SponsorTubers, because it’s just not an important category.
Similarly, Japan had different types of entertainers who offered seks on the menu, but
they didn’t categorize them as prostitutes. They didn’t invent a name for them like sexertainers
or something. They called them by their specific jobs: asobi, kugutsu, or shirabyōshi.
Later on, this would change. After the Heian Period, seks workers would be a recognized group.
Hookehs were hard to categorize, maybe because people at the time were just
super kinky. [Link: Life of heian women] I have some videos on the naughty debauchery
that went on behind closed doors in the Heian Period if you wanna check them out.
People slept around, a lot. Everyone was in an open relationship. Men had a bunch of lovers,
women had a bunch of lovers, men slept with other men. So basically heaven, with poems.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell who was a seks worker and who was a normal woman.
If a woman slept with a lot of men and the men paid her, was she a prostitute,
or was she a woman who had many lovers, and expected gifts in return? Was there even
a difference? Hard to tell. Well she may not be a hooker, but she certainly a hoe.
There were professionals like asobi that did mostly fit our definition of
prostitutes though. These ladies were not seen mainly as seks providers,
but as skilled entertainers. Like how one would admire the skill of an expert flute player,
one would also admire how these women played with your flute.
A night of work for these asobi looked like this. They hung around places with a lot of travelers,
like roads, but the most common areas were around ports next to the sea or rivers.
They would row their boats up and down the river and sing for people in other boats passing by.
Older women steered with a pole and carried a parasol
if it was daytime. Younger women wore elegant dresses and sang,
their sultry voices enticing men to hop on over. Even women enjoyed their performances.
Poets and writers wrote glowing reviews
about their heavenly voices and their other heavenly qualities.
“A tryst in a boat on the waves equals a life-time of delightful encounters.”
And I love this next one. You will too once I explain it.
“Her knowledge of all the seksual positions, the merits of her lute strings and buds of wheat, and
her mastery of the dragon’s flutter and tiger’s tread techniques — all are beyond compare.”
So lute strings here means a particular lady part,
and so does buds of wheat. Can you guess which parts they are in the comments?
The dragon’s flutter and tiger’s tread are two different seks positions. Let
me know what you think these are too. Use your imagination.
The boats of these ladies were many, and the night carried their voices across the waters. Boats of
thirsty fishermen and travelers lined up on the river to listen. Merchants sold their wares.
Once in a while, a man would hop onto the boat of a singer
and into her chambers. Even women were known to join the fun.
Where did the fun take place? Well, obviously on the boat, but people also
went to the asobi’s home. She could have ventured to the customer’s boat or home,
if needed. An inn was also a popular option. Brothels were not yet a thing.
Once a customer was alone with her, they probably had a little conversation.
Guests would call these ladies by their stage names. Like how today’s ladies of the pole
have stage names, and they’re all named after some type of shiny rock like Ruby or Emerald,
asobi had their own stage names, and they often had to do with Buddhism, like names of Buddhist
gods. I guess some people had a god fetish. Nothing like having Buddha take you for a ride.
in medieval Japan, normally women were not called by their personal names, but by their jobs
or they were called as someone’s daughter, like “Hark, there goes Bob-unaga’s Daughter.” The fact
that people called female entertainers by their own names, even if not by their personal names,
suggests that they had a special position outside of the normal social hierarchy for women.
These ladies spent time with the Heian elites, something commoners almost
never did. Some even gained the right to freely approach men of high status, a rare honor.
Some of these ports became famous pleasure spots, and people traveled from far away to
experience the fun, kind of like Vegas, the Netherlands red light district,
or the Linfamy YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell.
Some asobi became famous adult stars, and high ranking people in the government would travel
far to see them because what else are you gonna do with money? The asobi sang imayō 今様, a genre
of singing that was trending in the Heian court, and it attracted many of the elites.
Sometimes these noblemen got caught in the love trap and married the ladies,
or made them concubines. Even emperors did this.
How did these women get paid? By lots of things. Japan was mostly a gift or barter economy,
with rice and cloth being commonly traded items. They did have coins, but it wasn’t widespread.
People paid in rice, clothing, wine, silk, fabric, coins, even land. In one account,
a dude offered his singer two fans, which c’mon man, show some respect. To be fair,
the man was ahead of his time, paying girls by onlyfans has become popular these days.
In another account, a group of asobi were paid 40 rolls of silk
and 60 koku of rice. One koku equals enough rice to last one person one year.
A female entertainer could be independent or part of an organization. If part of an organization,
the ladies had to divide their earnings. They would cut fabric into smaller pieces,
or split rice into smaller containers.
One source says that the women often fought with each other over how to divide the loot,
and it could get vicious. This gives us a rare peek behind the veil. In public they
acted elegant, but behind the scenes they could be greedy and will cut a bish for some cloth.
About the ladies themselves, their ages were all over the place. You had girls who started
soon after puberty, like around 14. They may also stay in the business
for a long time. There were women in their 50s or higher. Good for them.
Most came from the common population, but there were also women who served as ladies-in-waiting
for great lords. These were ladies who supplemented their income by becoming adult stars,
women who needed a little extra rice money because the luxury bamboo Shaneru handbags were on sale.
Many of the women had husbands and families, who were generally fine with it.
One source said that the only time a husband would yell at his wife was if she had too
few customers, and that fathers were proud if their daughters had many
customers. Somehow, this sounds like an exaggeration, but it does suggest that
their families did not have problems with them being in the seks business.
Asobi organizations were formed by the ladies themselves,
with the heads of these groups coming from among their ranks.
There’s not much info on how these worked and how much control they had over their members though.
There was an interesting link between seks
and religion. Pleasure and worship went together like pizza and pineapple
don’t. What I mean is it seems weird to us, but people liked to have seks around temples.
Back then, people went on pilgrimages to shrines and temples to get their worship on. For some
reason they also thought, Well I’m on the road, I’m away from family, time to find some hoes.
That’s why entertainment hubs formed near popular shrines and temples, and adult entertainers
tended to gather near popular pilgrimage routes. One source says that the powerful Fujiwara no
Michinaga spent time with an asobi while on pilgrimage, and so did Retired Emperor Gosanjō.
Elites on pilgrimages liked to flaunt their wealth and power, so they would let it rain on the
ladies of pleasure they encountered on the way. Whenever a powerful lord went on a pilgrimage,
an orgy of asobi would line up and battle for his attention by doing the Heian Japan equivalent
of lifting their tops, which was to sing or maybe reveal a clavicle or something. Ooh scandalous.
Buddhism frowned upon seks at the time, like it did with all categories of fun,
so sometimes people did this weird rationalization
where they refused to share a bed with a courtesan on the way to the temple or shrine,
fearing that it would render them impure or unworthy. But on the way back, it was open season.
In the Heian Period, adult entertainers didn’t really have a stigma attached to
them. Many people saw them positively. They could leave the profession if they wanted
and go do other jobs and take other positions. Those that entertained elite men probably had
long-term connections and relationships with the powerful, giving them many opportunities.
After the Heian Period though, this positive view started to shift.
We saw more people blame adult entertainers for distracting people from their jobs, wasting money,
enticing people to leave their families, steering people away from Buddhahood.
You know, the same things people say about this channel.
They also passed some laws that hurt seks workers.
The seks business was never totally acceptable. Even during the Heian Period,
there were people who blamed the seks trade for societal problems.
Now, the sources that we have about these women were written mostly by educated men in the aristocracy.
They may have painted a rosy picture, like an idealized version of adult stars,
making them more glamorous than they were.
These women mingled with the elites, but they were rarely part of the elites.
Were there women who sold their bodies without entertainment?
There must have been, especially among women whose customers were commoners,
but we can’t be sure how many there were compared to the singers and dancers.
We do know of cases where elite men slept with prostitutes without any mention of entertainment.
Okay, today’s quiz question is this: Which retired emperor started the Jōkyū War?
Let me know in the comments. I’ll choose a winner tomorrow from among the correct answers.
Winner gets one of these babies. Good luck!
Alright, we have a new patron this week, Philip Lam the Laminator. Thanks so much.
Hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving. I love you, and spread the knowledge!