Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination Book 34) by Mansfield Stephen

Author:Mansfield, Stephen [Mansfield, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Signal Press
Published: 2011-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Geisha in Rivalry

Shimbashi, Yanagibashi’s great rival, had a similar system, with boats functioning as houses of assignation, a subject much beloved by ukiyo-e artists. A woodblock triptych by Torii Kiyonaga, entitled A Moored Pleasure Boat beneath the Bridge, showing gorgeously clad geisha seated under roof awnings, is typical of the genre.

After the great fire of 1872 that destroyed much of the city, including Ginza, Shimbashi geisha were the first of their breed to move into the new redbrick buildings replacing the old black plaster walls that formerly characterized the district. The Victorian furnishings, floral wallpaper and the chintz and velvet may have borne a superficial resemblance to the guest parlours and drawing rooms of high-society London and New York, but the lack of proper ventilation, with air trapped in rooms already stuffy with the fumes from oil lamps, must have been more ordeal than elegance in the humid summer months.

As the Shimbashi area grew, so did its entertainments. The Kabuki Theatre was within its orbit, so too the later Shimbashi Embujo theatre. As the Shimbashi geisha’s star rose, a simmering rivalry sprang up with the geisha houses of Yanagibashi. By the 1910s the two districts were the city’s premier geisha quarters. In Kafu’s novel, Geisha in Rivalry, the writer portrays the insincere, coldly calculating women of Shimbashi, but also gives us a sense of the strictly tiered world of the Tokyo geisha. During a theatre performance

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