Tokyo: A Biography. Stephen Mansfield
plasterers did well in this still largely flammable city. Burnt earth from the fire was collected and used to reclaim a number of marshes. Ryogoku-bashi, Edo’s “Interstate Bridge,” was built over the Sumida River, effectively annexing the east side of the city for further development. Lumberyards were moved from Hatchobori to Fukagawa, a supposedly less incendiary area east of the river. The transfer to Fukagawa, which at that point was little more than a marsh, added to the eastward movement and expansion of the shitamachi, more land reclamation, and the building of docks and storage yards. Preeminent lumber tycoons like Kinokuniya Bunzaemon made fortunes from the almost constant necessity to rebuild. The lumber king’s own mansion was located a sensible distance from the river, so that fresh water could be channeled into the garden.
Rather than being cowed by the fire, the city took on a fresh life, actually expanding in size so that formerly rural areas now became part of the urban mass of Edo. Fires were the price you paid for living in the most culturally dynamic city in Japan. The ever-positive townspeople even chose to see poetic merit in the fires, calling the periodic conflagrations Edo no hana, the “flowers of Edo.” Vigor flowed back into the veins of Edo citizens, their irrepressible energy at times usurping the best-laid plans of the authorities. No sooner had a large area of merchant houses between the bridges at Nihonbashi and at Edobashi been cleared to create a firebreak, for example, than food stalls, storytelling booths, makeshift tea houses, and tents putatively known as “archery ranges,” which actually functioned as brothels, began to line the newly broadened Edobashi Road, nullifying the self-evident benefits of the project.
In a city so vulnerable to fire, it is not surprising to learn that arson was punishable by death. When a fire broke out in the winter of 1682 near the home of a greengrocer’s daughter named Oshichi, the family was forced to seek shelter in Enjo-ji, a nearby temple, where she fell secretly, fatally, in love with one of its young acolytes. Her family’s shop was rebuilt and she reluctantly returned home, but impulsively set fire to her own house in the hopes of being sent back to the temple again. Instead, she was caught in the act and thrown into jail. Being just short of sixteen, she could have had the death penalty reduced to a life sentence. Unable to contemplate separation from the object of her love, however, she altered her age by one year and duly received the death sentence. Her comportment as she was led through the streets, unapologetic and seemingly unfazed by any concerns for the ghastly fate awaiting her at the execution ground at Suzugamori, won over the hearts of bystanders. Like those of many popular folk heroines, her story acquired extra details and embellishment with the passage of time.
To some degree, fires were also tied to the Buddhist concept of ukiyo, the “sorrowful world,” referring to the grief-laden plane of existence defined by transience and impermanence. Reinterpreting the word homophonically, the Genroku-era (1688–1704) merchants and tradesmen who lived in this period of heightened affectation and dilettantism, which was contemporaneous with the Restoration in England, altered the meaning of ukiyo from “sorrowful world” to “floating world,” suggesting a realm of sensual, hedonistic pleasures.
After the Meireki Fire, the authorities, who regarded the pleasure districts and the theatres as akusho (venues of moral degeneration), had the city’s preeminent pleasure quarter, the Yoshiwara, removed from east of the castle to Asakusa in the northeast, where they hoped it would languish. To their chagrin, Asakusa’s location on the banks of the Sumida River meant that an easy boat trip could be made up the river into the Sanya Canal and thence to the pleasure quarter. At Yanagibashi, the “Willow-Tree Bridge” located at the mouth of the Kanda River, boats known as chokibune could be boarded for that purpose; however, enterprising locals soon turned the water district into an unlicensed quarter, obviating the need for those with less refined tastes or funds to travel upriver to the Yoshiwara. For their part, brothel owners in the Yoshiwara were delighted that they were now allowed to stay open all night. This led to the quarter being dubbed the fuyajo, or “place without night”; it flourished to such a degree that by 1780, the number of prostitutes exceeded four thousand, and would grow to over seven thousand by the end of the Edo period in 1868.
To the consternation of the ruling elite, the pleasure quarters acted as social levelers, with clients drawn from the samurai ranks of the yamanote as well as the merchants and tradespeople of the shitamachi. The only requirement for entry was the admission fee. And there were services to accommodate every purse. Aside from the houses for licentious pleasure, there were drinking establishments, restaurants, and shops near the entrance that sold amigasa, broad-brimmed hats made from straw that could be purchased by customers such as samurai and priests, who preferred their identities to go unnoticed. The absence of behavioral parameters in the pleasure quarters, and the abandonment of the strict social codes that determined class relations, was a matter of increasing concern to the authorities.
The services of the jiroro, the lowest-ranking purveyors of pleasure in the hierarchy of the flesh trade, were swift and without the pretentions of affection; those of the more celestial tayu, high-ranking courtesans, were more lingering and nuanced. Adept at witty repartee and double entendres, tayu were accomplished at flower-arranging, incense-differentiation, sake-pouring, singing, dancing, haiku composition, fortune-telling, and the playing of the shamisen. The pleasures of the flesh, like the administration of a strong potion, were the final ecstasy that would guarantee the return of a patron, even if it ruined him.
Exalted symbols of beauty, the tayu were sumptuously robed, the outer lineaments of their kimonos stiff with gold thread; saf-flower juice was used to make the rouge they applied to their lips. Teeth-blackening was common; the powder used for this was made from a mixture of iron filings and nails soaked in tea and sake. A striking fashion at one time was to paint the lower lip with a gloss of iridescent green rouge. With faces, necks, and hands luminous with the otherworldly effects of white cosmetics, the tayu resembled painted icons, effigies whose power was, arguably, more voluptuous than spiritual. The novelist Shozan wrote, “The dress of the tayu is a long robe made of luxuriously embroidered silk brocade. Her head is ornamented with a brilliance of tortoise-shell hairpins that radiate around her like the aureole of a saint.” The satirist Ihara Saikaku sounded a more cautionary note when he observed, “The clothing of the courtesan is so arranged that her red crepe de chine undergarment will open to reveal a glimpse of white ankle, or even the thigh. When men see such a vision, they become insane, lavishing even money entrusted to them.” The tayu, emblems of a divine but costly beauty, would eventually cultivate themselves out of existence.
Women like the tayu, who could comfortably afford such costly adjuncts to their profession and lifestyle, kept a number of adult toys in their closets, presumably both for self-pleasure during slack times and for the benefit of customers. A dried sea cucumber—tube-shaped, with nobbly outer layers—was filled with water to serve as an embellished dildo. Other dildos were uniform in shape, but their proportions varied from giant decorative versions to tiny “finger” varieties. There was a brisk trade in aphrodisiacs, though they were costly. Korean and Chinese ginseng roots were mixed with pulverized rhinoceros horn and wild herbs that could be found along the banks of the Sumida River to make extracts and potions. These were quite expensive, and the tayu were virtually the only people who could procure them.
Economics were an equally important consideration for both patrons and procurers of women. The influx of men working at the newly built warehouses and lumberyards of Fukagawa, east of the river, created the need—in a city outside the jurisdiction of Edo magistrates where males vastly outnumbered women—for an unlicensed pleasure quarter that was more affordable than the Yoshiwara. The establishment of a temple and shrine in the area stimulated commerce, and soon there were shops and teahouses staffed by young women. Many of the lower-ranking prostitutes were on display along the back streets of the quarter, where they could be seen sitting behind latticework windows.
A similar level of service, catering to those of more slender means, existed at Shinjuku, the first westward stop of the Koshu Kaido—the post road running westward from Edo toward Nagano and the Japan Sea. The rough-and-ready temporary inns set up in 1698 as lodgings for travelers were shut down in 1718 because of an incident involving a customer and a “rice-serving girl” at one of the many brothels catering to their guests. It would be almost fifty years before the Shinjuku post town was reopened, but it went on to become one of the foremost of Edo’s six licensed quarters.
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