Unexpected

something I wish I had the money for

Most people in North America, myself included, when I was younger and even prettier, have a set of associations that come to mind when someone mentions Japan.

Anime.

Bullet trains.

Sushi.

Pokémon.

Mount Fuji.

And geisha.

Photo by National Museum of Denmark on Unsplash

The characters for geisha are lovely: 藝者, meaning a person of the arts.

Geisha are professionally trained entertainers with developed musical talents and brilliant conversational skills.

Geisha are not and never were prostitutes. During the Edo Period, when prostitution was legal in Japan, there was a hierarchy within the officially sanctioned pleasure quarters (and there were several in Edo (the old name of Tōkyō), including one in a location that, after prostitution was outlawed in the years leading up to the 1960 Tōkyō Olympics, and especially during the late 1960s and early 1970s, transitioned into Tōkyō’s largest gayborhood, Shinjuku Ni-chōme).

Women working within the pleasure quarters were known not as baishun (売春, a vulgar word for prostitute that means the selling of springtime) but as yūjo (遊女), a pleasure woman.

At some point in the early eighteenth century, the classification ranking of yūjo went from three levels to eight. At the top were tayū (太夫, literally great spouse but deriving from the highest rank of actor with Noh theatre), sometimes referred to as oiran (花魁, a highly poetic term that could be translated as proceeding before the flowers), but from the third rank, sancha (散茶, literally meaning scattered tea, a reference to low-grade tea dust used to make cheap tea) on down, the rank names connoted lower quality. The lowest rank, nikabu jorō (二株女郎, a two-buck maid), referred strictly to the price customers paid. (The primary unit of currency in Edo Japan was a gold coin called a ryō, a kabu (株) was valued at one-sixteenth of a ryō, and two of those kabu were the lowest price a yūjo of the lowest rank could command.)

Working women within the pleasure quarters could be found at establishments known as ageya (揚屋). Fun fact: the 揚 part of 揚屋 is from the verb ageru, which has multiple meanings, including to offer high praise and to fry in oil.

The pleasure quarters were also home to establishments with the very poetic name kagema chaya (蔭間茶屋, the tea house in between the shadows). The young men who worked in such places were called iroko (色子, children of allure) and made themselves available to customers of any gender. There was a premium on willowy sylphlike appearance, and the younger the iroko looked, the more appealing they were to customers.

The 蔭間 part of 蔭間茶屋 is also the term for a young kabuki apprentice. Kabuki began when a troupe of shrine maidens came to Kyōto from Izumo (a city on the Sea of Japan coast in what is now known as Shimane Prefecture) to perform dances and skits during the first decade of the 1600s. By 1629, however, a shogunate decree had banned women from performing (the reason? men in the audience grew increasingly violent when they realized that their parasocial (and sometimes directly social and compensated) connections with the performers were not exclusive). Kabuki became the all-male domain it remains today.

That didn’t stop the violence, however. Initially, kabuki troupes were exclusively comprised of young men in an art form known as wakashū kabuki (若衆歌舞伎), but the performers continued to have impassioned admirers and suitors who again threatened the competition during performances.

The next reform, leading to yarō kabuki (野郎歌舞伎, which would be today translated as guys’ kabuki), allowed for older male actors to take on more parts and, if they looked the part, to play the roles of women, too (becoming what are known now as kabuki’s onnagata (女型, woman figure) actors.

But there were always young male apprentices, known as kagema, within the shadows, because they did not get to tread the boards very often. To supplement their meager incomes, kagema found patrons (both sugar daddies and sugar mommies) and reciprocated for any received coin with physical transactions.

There were also unsanctioned options for pleasure, too. Places where women (and men) unofficially plied their wares were known as okabasho (岡場所, the hill place, literally). Kagema were known to haunt such places, but the women who worked there were known, beautifully, to my mind, as yotaka (夜鷹, literally, hawks of the night).

Geisha also resided within pleasure quarters, and sometimes the houses, known as okiya (置屋, which I would translate as the shop where things are left behind), that trained them would offer performances to offer customers the chance to meet the young women. Still, more often than not, as is true today, geisha were engaged to perform at expensive parties. Since most guests at those parties, then as now, were men, geisha were there to charm the guests, whether with their music and dance performances or with cunning conversations.

What I did not know…

I’ve known about geisha (as performers, not prostitutes) since college. I began learning about Japan’s former pleasure quarters shortly after arriving in Japan in 1988. For example, my favorite temple in Tōkyō, Sensōji, lies on the outer periphery of what was once Edo’s most famous pleasure quarter, Yoshiwara.

But it was only two weeks ago when I learned that geisha have (and continue to have) a male counterpart. Known as hōkan (幇間, the helping interval), these men are trained as geisha are. They develop musical talents, often performing with a handheld drum called a taiko (太鼓). In fact, they were initially called taiko mochi (太鼓持ち, those who carry taiko drums) during the sixteenth century.

They are also trained for conversation skills, and although dancing can be part of their repertoire, one early Western chronicler of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters, J.S. de Becker, included a lion performance that hōkan would do while lying on their backs, their legs and feet bearing the lion’s mask and traditional cloak. That must have wowed the guests at parties where they performed.

From J.S. de Becker’s book, Yoshiwa Yukwaku.

In modern Japan, the only people with enough scratch to afford geisha and hōkan entertainments are politicians or business executives. As much as I would love to sit (on a chair—my days of cushions on tatami are well past me) and talk to a hōkan about his life and profession, I doubt I will ever afford it.

But perhaps one of my next books (I already have ideas for three more) will allow me to use research as an in. Even if it weren’t at a party, I’d still love to sit and talk someday with both hōkan and geisha.