Tokyo a Cultural History by Mansfield Stephen;

Author:Mansfield, Stephen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Kafu’s disapproval of the scheming geisha in his novel did not detract from the pleasure he took in the company of such women, nor his belief that in the karyukai (the flower and willow world) the flavour of Edo culture was preserved. If the geisha were the earthly equivalents of Benten, the lute-playing goddess of art and beauty, they were also, as Kafu showed, made of flesh and blood. In his illustrated series The Twenty-four Hours at Shinbashi and Yanagibashi, the print artist Yoshitoshi Tsukioka took a similar interest in the foibles and weaknesses of geisha, and the impact of western culture on Meiji Tokyo. Images of photographers, gas-lighters, rickshaw-pullers, and references to newspapers, all novelties at the time, make their appearance in this set of prints.

By Yoshitoshi’s time, the strictures governing the lives of geisha and courtesans in the Shimbashi and Yanagibashi districts, as well as the Yoshiwara, had been considerably relaxed since the Edo period. Geisha were able, should they so desire, to spend the night with a guest. The new freedoms led to predicaments, which the new, vigilant media only exacerbated. The narrative cartouche accompanying one of the prints of a pregnant, clearly worried geisha reads:

I hear the newspaper hawker’s voice.

There seems to be no way

To delete the bad mouthing

Of these despicable jealous editors.

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