Prostitution in Feudal Japan: A Literary Look

Tokyo Weekender

27-05-2025

With over 1 million residents at its height, Edo (modern-day Tokyo) was the largest city in the world around the 18th century. And also the most literate. About half of its population were samurai, who were well versed in the classics. But Edo also had a thriving popular literature scene greatly enjoyed by the other half of the city.
Together with adventure epics, dramas and comedies, the thing that commoners loved the most were stories involving the city's prostitutes. Though most of them were fictional, these stories help us understand the nature of sex work and the very culture of Japan's capital hundreds of years ago.
List of Contents:
Looking Down on Nighthawks
To Be a Cool Guy in Edo, You Had To Visit Prostitutes
Only Monsters Would Get Mad at Their Husbands Visiting Prostitutes
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Image of Yoshiwara workers by Kitao Masanobu (c. 1800) | British Museum collections (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Looking Down on Nighthawks
Yoshiwara, a government-sanctioned red-light district, was one of only three places in all of Japan which was set up to better control the flow of sex work in the country. It quickly became a common setting of popular books during the Edo period, many of which juxtaposed it and its working women with 'nighthawks.'
Author Yamaoka Matsuake explained in his classic
Sekifujinden
that nighthawks, or
yotaka,
were unlicensed prostitutes who operated outside Yoshiwara, sometimes literally on the slopes of its moat, but also all around the city.
The story
focuses on a high-ranking Yoshiwara worker being condescending to a nighthawk while trying to get her to join the brothel district, for which she receives an eloquent dressing down about the hypocrisy of her gilded cage and its suffocating, rule-ridden hierarchy.
Licensed prostitutes looked down on the nighthawks, but they themselves lived and worked in a place with a rigid etiquette system and a mean-girl-style pecking order.
Yamaoka probably did not personally believe that the nighthawks had it better than the women in Yoshiwara (unlicensed prostitutes were virtually homeless and had no protection outside local gang bosses). But he simply refused to romanticize a place that put a lot of rules on sex.
Terakado Seiken offered additional details on nighthawks in
Edo Hanjoki
, describing, among other things, their heavy makeup meant to hide skin conditions and other diseases.
He also wrote about the wobbly shanties where they entertained clients. It was apparently common for people to peek in on those occasions and get a serious beating when they were caught.
'8 O'clock at night of Yoshiwara' by Odake Kokkan. Meiji Period (1906) | British Museum collections (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
To Be a Cool Guy in Edo, You Had To Visit Prostitutes
Physical contact was restricted in feudal Japan. Things like hugs, caresses and kisses were reserved for prostitutes, so naturally it was quite common for young men to fall in love with working women. But showing it would make them un-
tsu.
'Tsu' was the name for the cool aloofness and emotional distance that people from Edo decided was the definition of a true man of the capital. While the concept is a little more complex than simply 'not caring,' that was a big part of it and the best way to show it was with prostitutes.
Umebori Kokuga's
Keiseikai Futasujimichi
describes a Yoshiwara prostitute and her client, who are both the epitomes of tsu. They're smooth-talkers seemingly only focused on what they want, and they spend most of their time playfully insulting each other.
In reality, the two are miserable and the only joy in their lives is each other's company, but they'd rather gargle the Yoshiwara moat water (which was essentially a communal toilet) than admit their feelings. In the end, they break up in a torrent of sarcasm because tsu trumped personal happiness every time. Or, in some cases, common sense.
Santo Kyoden's
Edo Umare Uwaki no Kabayaki
tells the story of Enjiro, the son of a wealthy Edo merchant who wants to be known for his mastery of tsu. By this, he's already failed, because trying
to be tsu is automatically un-tsu — it should come naturally to you — yet he still gives it a go.
For instance, he visits the most expensive prostitutes in Yoshiwara and hires a live-in mistress to yell at him and be jealous of his many conquests. He even pays a guy to pretend to be a hired prostitute's steady client so that she can sneak away and be with her beloved Enjiro. Because getting a prostitute to fall in love with you — while you yourself remained emotionally unattached — was the ultimate cool-guy fantasy during the Edo period.
Only Monsters Would Get Mad at Their Husbands Visiting Prostitutes
Feudal Japan actually had a pretty liberal attitude towards sex… whenever there wasn't some anti-prostitution
moral panic
sweeping the capital. On the whole, though, if a husband visited prostitutes or had a mistress, his wife was expected to be fine with it.
Nowhere is this attitude more obvious than in Baba Bunko's
Todai Edo Hyaku Bakemono
, a collection of short stories including the tale of a merchant who falls for a courtesan and starts spending all of his time with her, abandoning his family and business.
His wife eventually disguises herself as the courtesan's aunt to gain entry to her brothel, mirroring the legend of
Watanabe no Tsuna
, whose demonic foe Ibaraki-doji also disguised itself as the hero's relative.
Once inside, the wife tries to drag her husband back home, and through this and the Ibaraki-doji reference, she is branded by the author as a 'monster' who used trickery to disturb her husband's good time.
Haifu Yanagidaru,
an Edo-period collection of humorous poems, suggests that wives should have their children accompany their husbands during their outings to stop them from hiring prostitutes.
This loose attitude towards fidelity continued well into the 20th century and once involved Prime Minister Katsura Taro, who actually had to publicly break up with his lover to save her, but not from his wife. The two women reportedly
got along well together
.
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