Never before have I visited a brothel alone. Usually I was there with a nice companion. And then it turned out right awkwardly, he showed up at a brothel in the Japanese city of Kobe alone and just to "spend the night." The fact is that the houses of love (as it would be more correct to call them) earn not on an overnight stay as such, but on additional services. At the same time, they offer beautiful clean rooms with a bunch of amenities that you will not find in a regular hotel. Formally, they cannot refuse you the right to rent a room, although they are not happy with your appearance: well, what good is it for them, because you won’t order champagne in your room, you won’t buy a “lifting” potion, and it’s unlikely that you rent a rubber penis with pimples.
In fact, this is not really about a brothel. Still, a brothel is a place where you pick up girls and go with them to their rooms. Here is also the "house of love", where the Japanese come with their partners and wish that no one bothers them to spend time. The situations can be different: a married lady met an old friend and they have something to talk about in private, a strong married couple temporarily found themselves in cramped living conditions with their parents and ... well, you understand. Love houses don't cost a lot of money, averaging $40-60 per night. There is a tariff "rest", in simple words, "rest during the day", so cheaper than spending the night. There is even an hourly rate, but there is no tariff for less than 90 minutes, if you hurry, you will make people laugh.
You can't take pictures in these places, and for this photo report, I could well have dealt with the Yakuza. I'm not kidding, these are the places they keep.
You can argue for a long time, a brothel is not a brothel, but the idea is that even if you are alone, then dial the reception phone and a pretty masseuse will solve your loneliness.
Any of the above, choose: in the form of a nurse, in the form of a bunny, a schoolgirl -
Inside, as I said, everything is just great -
I must say that although the bed is huge and beautiful for everyone, it seemed to me that it was too soft. Of course, I’m alone here and I don’t understand much about technology, hmmm, but the feeling that your lady will drown in the depths of the bed -
You do not need to carry anything with you, everything is provided here -
Tea, coffee, mineral water - everything is included in the price.
For a separate and decent fee, alcoholic drinks and all sorts of sexual toys, the purpose of which I did not quite grasp. You have to have a wild imagination there. Some balls on a string and stuff -
I've never met a bathroom with a TV -
There is also a massage chair
For regular customers of the discount, every 10th visit to the house of love will be free. A trifle, but nice -
I think that love houses are an excellent invention and it is a pity that there are none in the expanses of the former USSR. As a result, the sphere is criminalized and is some kind of dubious apartments for secret meetings, where pedophilia, drug addiction, gang violence against call girls and drunken intoxication flourish. The fuck is all this necessary? Why not just legalize the normal right of adults to intimate meetings with their loved ones?
I love love houses, they are excellent value for money. Here is my small selection.
The sale of intimate services in Japan is prohibited by law, but this does not mean that it does not exist. The Japanese are more law-abiding than the Russians, but there are many loopholes and tricks to get around the law. The sale of intimate services in Japan means not only a simple act between a man and a woman, but also other types of love.
The Japanese sphere of intimate services is very developed and has a well-established mechanism, usually all establishments that provide intimate services are organized jointly with drinking establishments and are concentrated in one area. If the city is large, then there can be two or more such cereal areas, depending on the type of institution, mizusebai and Mizusebai are shared - possible drinking establishments, such as cabarets, bars, eateries, etc., where girls can make a company of tipsy men. Sexual services are not provided here, you can drink alcohol, chat with girls, pay for yourself and for the girl and leave.
Fuzoku is a completely different matter - in fact, Japanese brothels, of which there are a lot of varieties. Kyabakura is a kind of Japanese brothel, where hostesses are always next to the guest, entertaining them with jokes and funny conversations, while not forgetting about alcoholic drinks. This establishment is a border establishment between fuzoku and mizushobai. In kyabakura, girls can be touched in all places, they are dressed in peignoirs. From the point of view of Japanese law, these establishments are establishments that do not provide sexual services.
There are no prostitutes in Japan, all moths work in fuzoku. The Japanese public treat them very tolerantly, visiting fuzoku-ten is not a betrayal, but just a way to find relaxation and get rid of stress. Practically in every Japanese city there is a guide to hot spots, which are constantly updated and sold in convenience stores. They can advertise girls with a photo and a price for their services. You can be sure that the girl you choose will cost you as much as indicated in the guidebook. Fuzoku offer intimate services to corporate clients with receipt of a check for accounting purposes. Foreign guests are not allowed into Japanese brothels because of the risk of catching the disease, because, as a rule, the Japanese are very careful about their health, in almost all fuzoku intimate services are provided without contraceptives. Another reason why they are afraid to let foreigners in is a lack of understanding of the local language, which can cause additional noise and scare away other customers.
Japan is a country of contradictions and contrasts, liberated and chaste. Having lived for about 250 years under the Iron Curtain, in artificial isolation, the Japanese have formed their own attitude towards sex, in many respects incomprehensible to the "gaijin" - a non-Japanese.
forbidden kiss
To illustrate the duality of the Japanese attitude towards everything sexual, we will tell a funny story that happened in the 30s of the last century. An exhibition was held in Japan, to which a valuable exhibit was brought - Rodin's sculpture "The Kiss". A naked marble couple is intertwined in a passionate embrace, their lips are connected ...
This is what confused the Japanese. No, not the nakedness of stone lovers and not even their frank embrace. It was the kiss that caused indignation and shock from the host. The Japanese offered the organizers to cover up the "shame" so as not to embarrass the decent citizens of the Land of the Rising Sun. Of course, no one gave consent to this, and the Japanese did not admire the masterpiece of the French sculptor.
After the self-isolation of Japan ended, a stream of European literature poured into the Land of the Rising Sun. Translators faced the difficult task of translating the untranslatable. For example, the word "kiss". No, it certainly existed in Japanese, but it was not playful or erotic in nature, but a shade of vulgarity and rudeness. For example, in one of the texts, the phrase "pluck a kiss from your lips" was bashfully translated as "lick your lips." Even now in Japanese films or anime, you rarely hear the Japanese equivalent of the word "kiss", more and more often you will come across the familiar English kiss, slightly phonetically changed to the Japanese manner.
Sex and religion
The Japanese religious system has always been benevolent towards sex as such. The ban on kissing was one of the few that were imposed on the Japanese. The traditional Japanese religion, Shintoism, almost did not limit the intimate life of the spouses. Although certain recommendations were given to the husband and wife. For example, spouses were advised to lie down with their heads to the west, and the famous writer of erotic stories Ihara Saikaku (remember that name!) Disapprovingly spoke of a husband and wife whose “sleeping mats ... are in disarray, despite the fact that last night passed under the sign of the Rat ".
In the 17th century, Confucianism became the main ideology of Japan. Buddhism is the most ascetic of the teachings presented - and it was much freer in Japan than in many other countries.
Difficulties in marital sex
At the beginning of the 17th century, Japan was united under the rule of the shoguns (nobles) of the Tokugawa dynasty, headed by Minamoto Tokugawa no Ieyasu. Like any new ruler, Tokugawa began to change the country "for the better." It was the shoguns who closed Japan from the outside world for a long two and a half centuries. First, Tokugawa expelled all foreigners from the country, and the Japanese themselves, under pain of death, forbade them to leave their homeland.
Tokugawa set himself the goal of "raising Japan from its knees" and reviving "traditional values", and therefore there were more than enough restrictions, including those relating to intimate life. First of all, class boundaries. Tokugawa was a fierce champion of Confucian values, and therefore banned marriages not only between freemen and slaves (they were banned before), between “mean” and “good” (close to the emperor) classes, but also between different categories of “mean” . They banned premarital sex, and if after the wedding it turned out that the bride was no longer a “girl”, the marriage was terminated. The minimum marriageable age for boys was 15 and for girls it was 13.
Representatives of the upper class could have concubines, but only with the consent of the wife. Although the institution of concubines in Japan did not take root, this did not prevent Japanese men from having fun on the side, but if they caught their wife with a lover, they could deal with both without trial or investigation.
Tokugawa also changed the logistics of selling love. He singled out special areas on the outskirts of cities where one could trade oneself. These areas were surrounded by high walls and carefully guarded.
Selling love
In the 13th century, the influential Japanese Hojo Shigetoki wrote the book "The Message of Master Gokurakuji", which he addressed to his grandson. There he described what, in his opinion, a worthy man of the military class should do. There were also lines like this:
“Communicating with corrupt women and dancers, do not think that if they are such, then you can take liberties and talk to them too familiarly. Behave and talk to them simply. If you go too far, you may become embarrassed. Choose for yourself one of several corrupt women, take the one who is unattractive and not too well dressed. A man will fall in love with a beautiful girl, and an ugly girl will be left without a partner. Moreover, if you choose an ugly girl, your heart will not be hurt, because it will be just for one night. And she'll probably enjoy it too."
In Japan at the beginning of the 17th century, male and female prostitution was widespread in the cities of Kyoto, Edo and Osaka. One of the largest red-light districts was Tokyo's Yoshiwara of the Edo era. It was created by the shogunate as a kind of ghetto for forbidden entertainment. Yoshiwara was usually reached by boat - Yoshiwara was surrounded by about 50 berths.
It was not difficult for a Japanese to choose an institution to his liking: the front wall of the dating houses was in the form of an open lattice through which women could be easily seen. Expensive women sat behind vertical bars, and cheap ones behind horizontal ones, and the best courtesans, oiran, were completely hidden from the eyes of strangers.
In 1893, over 9,000 women lived in the area. Many suffered from syphilis, died from sexually transmitted diseases or failed abortions. Parents often sold girls to brothels between the ages of seven and twelve. If the little ones were "lucky", they became students of a successful courtesan. Although the contract with the brothel was most often concluded for 5-10 years, the girls were sometimes kept in the brothel for the rest of their lives because of the huge debts.
Sometimes a rich man could buy a prostitute contract and make her his wife or concubine, but such cases were rare. More often women simply died from diseases or in childbirth.
Same-sex love worthy of a samurai
The heyday of homosexuality in Japan came at the end of the 18th century: treatises began to appear that discussed in some detail the aesthetic and ethical aspects of this phenomenon. Previously, "men's houses" could easily coexist with temples. In the days of the shogunate, the phenomenon was fiercely fought, but then the “corrupt men” pretended to be incense merchants and freely visited rich houses, offering their goods and themselves.
Japanese homosexuals were angrily condemned only by visiting Christians. For the time being, intimate relationships between men - usually between monks or samurai - were not discussed publicly, but by the 17th-18th centuries, the attitude towards homosexuality had become quite unambiguous. If it was not equated with virtue, then it was considered an ordinary phenomenon.
On one condition. Men should sincerely love each other, and not just satisfy their lust in this way. Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a former samurai and author of Hidden in the Leaves, which has become a code of honor for Japanese warriors, wrote: “A teenager without an older lover is like a woman without a husband. We give our feelings to only one person for life. The young man must check on the elder for at least five years. If during this time he never doubted his good intentions, then he can reciprocate him. He also wrote: “Giving your life in the name of another person is the basic principle of sodomy. If it is not observed, then this is a shameful occupation.
Enamored samurai often exchanged vows of allegiance, including in writing. A document of 1542 has been preserved in which Takeda Shingen (in the future a great warrior and commander) swore allegiance to a sixteen-year-old lover. “Since I want to get close to you, from now on, if you have any doubts about this, I want you to understand that I am not going to hurt you. If I ever break these promises, may divine punishment befall me."
This is Japan. Dual, unusual, unusual to the eye and understanding of a European, but still incredibly interesting and attractive. If you want to get better acquainted with the classics of Japanese erotic literature - believe me, this is worth reading at least once! - then remember the name - Ihara Saikaku. A Japanese writer who lived in the 17th century devoted many of his works to the intimate side of life. In particular, he wrote the novel "Five women who made love" and the erotic homosexual story "The Tale of Gengobei, who loved a lot."
Visiting brothels in Japan is not a cheap activity. Today in the country there is a fairly large number of nightclubs of various price categories and directions. The famous "red light street" has long been turned into a local attraction. The sex industry is legalized in the state, which is probably why Japanese brothels look very well-groomed and presentable.
Story
The social problem of single men was solved by the Tokugawa shoguns in 1617 by creating a separate quarter in Edo. The city's name Yoshiwara literally means "Reed Field". At that time, the windows of brothels were painted green or blue, which is why they were called Blue Gazebos or Green Chambers. Such quarters soon spread literally throughout the state. Shimabara in Kyoto and Shimmachi in Osaka were considered the most popular and famous. In these places, for money you could get both a beautiful woman and exotic sex.
Brothels in Japan hired girls who owned a great variety of sexual tricks and tricks that legal spouses could not even guess about. So, for example, Yujo (moths) knew how to dry a sea cucumber and put it on you-know-what. Only in these houses could a man experience the incredible sensations of an extraordinary kiss (seppun).
The Japanese red-light districts had an attractive power, since it was here that the male body and soul found maximum pleasure and enjoyment.
Classification of girls in brothels
Depending on the mastery of the art of seduction and satisfaction of male desires and their beauty, girls working in brothels in Japan become jero (an ordinary prostitute) or geisha. In turn, joro are divided into several categories:
- age-joro - professional prostitutes.
- otmise-joro - girls who provided sex services without being registered as a representative of the first oldest profession.
Separate quarters were called "yuri". Only true professionals in their field could get here. With the onset of darkness, red lights were lit in the quarters, the girls dressed in the most exquisite outfits, put on stunning makeup and gathered in small groups in special rooms that were separated from the street by only one lattice.
Large brothels in Japan offered their regular and potential new clients the best girls who perfectly mastered the art of love. More economical establishments were distinguished by horizontal lattice windows - this was necessary so that a man, even with a foggy sake mind, could accurately assess his financial capabilities. The change of prostitute was not approved. However, the girl herself could in some cases reject her client.
Almost every influential person in Japan had a geisha who acted as a mistress. This fact did not bother absolutely anyone. Moreover, girls of high culture often advertised this connection and their importance in the life of an influential official or a talented commander.
The attitude of the Japanese towards brothels is ambiguous. For many centuries of its existence, prostitution has acquired a completely unique character. From the very beginning, she was not something shameful, and the girls working in this field were the usual representatives of the working class, with the exception of geishas, of course.
The Tokugawa shoguns solved the social problem of single men by creating a separate city block in Edo in 1617. The block where the brothels were located was founded in 1617 and was called Yoshiwara, which literally means "Reed Field". But soon the original hieroglyphs were replaced with the same sounding "Merry Field". The windows of brothels in Japan had blue or green shutters, so they were called Green Gazebos or Blue Chambers. Yoshiwara's experience so pleased the shogunate that similar neighborhoods soon sprang up throughout Japan. The most famous of these were the Shimabara in Kyoto and the Shimmachi in Osaka. Word yoshiwara became a household name - a common name for all the "fun quarters".
Here, for money, you could get all the pleasures at once - a beautiful woman, exotic sex, a magnificent feast. The female population of entertainment centers consisted of whores jorō
, girls yujo
and prostitutes shougi
. The ladies of the court were at the top of the hierarchy. I melt
. In exchange for cooperating with the secret police in identifying suspicious individuals, the brothels of the Yoshiwara quarter were exempted from taxes. The quarter was surrounded by a moat with water and a high wall with gates that closed at night, around midnight. The girls were only allowed out of Yoshiwara on three occasions - to visit a doctor, on a court summons, and while walking with a client to admire the sakura. In all cases, the girl was accompanied by a policeman. Girls had the right to walk only barefoot.
They were assembled as follows. Most of the inhabitants of the quarters were sold there by their families in childhood. The slave trade in Japan was banned, so formal contracts were concluded with the girls for a period of several, usually five, years. In fact, however, in order to leave the quarter, it was necessary to buy out, and most of the money earned by the yujo was eaten by overhead expenses: dresses, hairstyles, cosmetics. Children born in the quarter also stayed there to study and work.
Unlike lawful wives, the Yoshiwara girls possessed many special sexual techniques, the existence of which the former did not even know. Yujo knew, for example, how to soak a dried sea cucumber and then, for the immediate transformation of an ordinary man into a sex giant, put this slippery bumpy tube on him ... however, you yourself understand what exactly. In order to give a man more pleasure, shougi injected rinno tama - “love bells” into their bodies. Only here, a Japanese man could experience the unexplored pleasure that seppun delivers - a sophisticated kiss (or, more precisely, the art of exciting lips touching lips), when the partners' lips alternately overlap one another, and the tongue slowly squeezes into each other's mouths in turn.
Initiated in toko no higi, the secret teaching of the bedroom, the yujo knew not only the "forty-eight postures", but also the action of burnt newt, eels and lotus roots, and how to handle those same sea slug rings worn on the penis like French feathers. But from the point of view of modern technology of sex, the secrets of yujo do not offer anything special. Yes, and there was no sex, even they have a center of entertainment. All the same, a friendly feast, poetry, panache, singing, dancing - communication, craving for beauty - that was the main thing in the cheerful quarters.
The Pleasure Quarters had a great attraction. It was here that the Japanese male soul and the Japanese male body received maximum pleasure. In conditions of complete seclusion of girls from respectable families, prostitutes became objects of courtship for young men. It was they who most often became the first lovers of Japanese young men. The fathers of young men, desiring that their sons be best prepared for the role of lovers and husbands, often introduced them to yujo to become their tutors in love, and generously paid for the high quality of training. These girls were the darlings of society and the inspiration for some of the greatest poets.
Fires more than once destroyed the paper-wood nest of entertainment. The most terrible was the fire on March 2, 1657. He left homeless a fifth of the inhabitants of the capital. During the global restructuring of the city, a new quarter was allocated for brothels, called "New Yoshiwara". However, he continued to be called simply "Yoshiwara". The territory of 15.2 hectares was one and a half times larger than before. The quarter consisted of five streets lined with dating houses, tea houses, restaurants, residential buildings for various kinds of service personnel. It was forbidden to enter with weapons and enter on horseback. Also, samurai were forbidden to enter Yoshiwara, but in fact they were its regular visitors, while hiding their faces. In New Yoshiwara, the gates were kept closed at night, however, customers were allowed to spend the night within the walls of the block. Yoshiwara was planted with willow - the Chinese symbol of prostitution - and cherry blossoms.
You could choose a girl just by walking through the streets of Yoshiwara. Prostitutes sat on the sides of the streets, on the verandas of brothels behind lattice walls. The front of the brothels was a cage, or lattice, behind which women were exhibited. Some of the most famous printmakers have captured these street scenes. The large grate houses were the most expensive places, and the cheapest houses had the grates horizontal rather than vertical, so that a man, no matter how clouded his mind with sake, was never wrong about the value and class of a woman he was looking for. In fact, however, the need for choice rarely arose. The change of the girl was not encouraged, it was recommended, once choosing a prostitute, to stick to her. Note that the girls also had the right, within certain limits, to refuse or reject objectionable clients.
The choice of the girl was formalized by a semi-official contract, in order to eventually change the yujo to her colleague, it was necessary to obtain the consent of both. Competition between girls was not encouraged. Yujo became, as it were, the second or "temporary" wife of the client. Contracts were concluded and the actual "service" took place not on the territory of brothels, but in tea houses, of which there were 400 in Yoshiwara. In total, 4,000 prostitutes lived in Yoshiwara and about the same number of servants. The large room in which the prostitute was waiting for her guest was called zashiki and was covered with eight mats. It had a niche tokonoma
for ritual offerings and small ornaments, scrolls and calligraphic inscriptions, usually poems written in Chinese characters. Here are two typical poems -
I feel empty
accumulating in the mountains.
Flowers - the eyes of the world -
Everyone has gone away...
No matter how I try to hide
Love shows up on my face
So clearly that he asks:
"What are you thinking about?"
There were also shelves with flowers in ceramic vases from Kutani and with musical instruments - koto, shamisen, gekkin, ni-genkin; sometimes - small figurines of animals, a mirror, books or theater posters. There was a shelf for the visitor's clothes and a folding screen. In the inner room there were shelves for bedding, drawers for the girl's clothes and often hibachi with glowing coals, a metal kettle, yotyaki (tea set), plates and bowls, as well as what in the West serves as a night vase, but here it was a lacquered cylinder with handles like ears. After greetings, the couple retired to a smaller inner room, tsugi no ma covered with only four mats.
The girl herself paid for decorating the room and keeping it in order, as well as for cleaning. An admirer guest, say a bakuchi-uchi (professional gambler), would often give money to redevelop the place where he had spent so many happy nights; if not for love, then at least for good luck. There was also love on the water in tea houses on boats fune-yado where boats could be hired and taken on by prostitutes for the duration of the river trip; slowly drifting, eating, drinking, loving, listening to music and watching fireworks explode across the inky sky of holiday nights. Yoshiwara didn't look like a bottom or a vice factory at all. The quarters of the Japanese "red light districts" in general had little resemblance to European ones - they were buried in flowers, the luxury of silks and were distinguished by the exquisite aristocracy of the inhabitants. It was more of an island of romantic relationships, and if a factory, then a dream factory, a medieval "Hollywood". Beautiful prostitutes were the favorite models of artists and heroines of writers and playwrights. Some of their names have been passed down from generation to generation. In terms of popularity, only the great actors of the traditional Kabuki theater could compete with them. On the one hand, they were outcasts in society, and on the other hand, they were celebrities, trendsetters and destroyers of men's hearts. Their popularity contributed to the flourishing of a new genre in painting, and then in engraving - bijinga (“paintings of beauties”). Many famous masters, among whom the “singer of female beauty” Kitagawa Utamaro (1754–1806) stands out, left wonderful images that convey the subtle femininity, grace, and charm of their contemporaries.
In Yoshiwara, male townspeople bought not only temporary love, here they could at least briefly throw off the shell of conventions, social pressure and find serenity and blissful pleasure to be the object of attention, admiration, albeit simulated, but still served as a balm for male pride. Of course, much depended on the solvency of the client. Clients quite often fell in love with yujo, and they sometimes reciprocated the clients. A wealthy widower had the right to ransom the yujo and marry her, but it was very expensive. Therefore, various types of love oaths, signs and contracts were practiced - tattoos, embroidery on clothes, and even mutual chopping off of the little fingers. Periodically, double suicides (shinju) occurred - it was believed that people united in death would unite in the next rebirth.
The cost of prostitutes' services is difficult to translate into modern money. One silver kenme was worth about 75,000 yen, or $760. One golden ryo was worth about 45,000 yen today, or about $470; ichibu koben and copper commen were both about 12,000 yen, or $110; one silver momme was 216 yen, or $2. One copper monsen was approximately equal to three cents. The cost of the girls' services depended on her class. The highest were melting, the lowest - semi-professionals santa
, where they got from bath servants and ordinary street girls. Girls of the tayu class cost 58 momme at a time with an additional 18 momme for her servants, or about $180. Those of the lowest rank cost about $1.5; thus, a wide prospect of prices opened up for the woman hunters. The Dutch in the 18th century were allowed to visit the "fun districts" in Nagasaki in the Maruyama area, they paid 65 momme per girl, while Chinese merchants only paid 5 momme. There were additional costs. Food, sake, entertainment, tips in dozens of outstretched hands. On average, a visitor could spend about 150 momme per evening, or about $350. This is the average price of entertainment with a high-class call girl in New York, Los Angeles or Moscow, but no American or European woman has the skill, charm, intelligence, costumes and manners, I tayu of the highest rank. They don't have that fame and reverence, unless they become persons in the official entertainment industry.
Here are photographs of Japanese brothels from the early 20th century.
Yoshiwara. Prostitutes in Tokyo, 1900s
Women sit in the windows of a hangout in Yoshiwara, Tokyo. Meiji period.
Gorgeously dressed prostitutes stand in the windows of a brothel in Yokohama. This world famous brothel is known as No. 9 or Jimpuro (sometimes romanized as Jinpuro or Shinpuro). Until the Great Earthquake in 1923, Jimpuro was one of the finest brothels in the city. It was originally opened in 1872, in Yokohama in Takashima-cho. In 1882, Jimpuro moved to the less prestigious Eiraku-cho. A branch specifically for foreigners was opened in Kanagawa at Nanaken-machi.
Brothels in Yoshiwara, Tokyo's red-light district in the late 19th century. The architecture at the time was heavily influenced by Western ideas, although Yoshiwara still retained a Japanese uniqueness.
Women stand at the front of a building with an exotic mix of Western and Japanese architecture. Fukuhara , Kobe is a famous red-light district. Although the area did not appear in tourist guides or official history, Fukuhara was Kobe's main attraction. Fukuhara's history goes back to the early days of Kobe's opening as an international port. In 1868, the city became an open port, the Japanese population of the villages of Hyogo and Kobe were asked to create a quarter of licensed prostitutes. Fukuhara was more than just a group of brothels. There were countless restaurants, cafes, theaters, houses of Geiko Okiya. Although prostitution was outlawed in 1958, Fukuhara, like many other traditional red light districts in Japan, managed to survive. The area is still filled with sex clubs, brothels and bars.
Prostitutes behind bars at Yoshiwara in Tokyo.
The main gate of the district Yoshiwara in Tokyo. The gates were originally made of wood, but were replaced with wrought iron gates in 1881. They were lit by gas lamps. Cherry trees have been planted in the center of Nakanocho's main street. In the evening, when thousands of colored lanterns and electric lamps were lit up, cherry blossoms and women in kimonos were magnificent.
Prostitutes in beautifully decorated rooms at Yoshiwara in Tokyo.
Brothels in Nagasaki. At the height of the area's popularity, there were 54 brothels with 766 prostitutes.
"Tea House" was misleading by its name. It's actually a brothel in Nagasaki. Two prostitutes are at the entrance, and twenty more are on the balcony, several of them are children. Maruyama and Yoriai were especially popular with the many sailors who visited Nagasaki. Most of these sailors were from Great Britain, the USA, France, the Netherlands, Russia and Prussia.
Around 1900, Yoshiwara has about 9,000 prostitutes, 126 brothels divided into three classes - from simple to expensive and very exclusive. The prostitutes themselves were also divided into several classes. At the very beginning there were tayuu , are highly cultured women, meticulously trained in the classical arts of Japan, from calligraphy to dance. The Russian word "prostitute" is extremely insufficient to describe them.
Tayuu (upper class prostitute) of Shimabara
. The area was licensed for prostitution in Kyoto. The Tayuu wore magnificent costumes and their hair is different from that of maiko and geisha. Tayuu practitioners have long since disappeared, but there are now four women in Shimabara who are actively trying to revive the culture.
