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Updated: May 20, 2025
It was when prostitution began to decline two centuries ago, that the geishas first appeared and were organized in such a way that they should not, if possible, compete as prostitutes with the recognized and licensed inhabitants of the Yoshiwara, as the quarter is called to which prostitutes are confined.
There are 394 tea-houses in the Yoshiwara, which are largely used as places of assignation, and which on those occasions are paid, not by the visitors frequenting them, but by the keepers of the brothels.
It is also the fashion to give dinners and drinking-parties at these houses, for which the services of Taikomochi, or jesters, among whom there are thirty-nine chief celebrities, and of singing and dancing girls, are retained. The Guide to the Yoshiwara gives a list of fifty-five famous singing-girls, besides a host of minor stars. These women are not to be confounded with the courtesans.
One day Banzayémon and two of Chôbei's apprentices Tôken Gombei and Shirobei, who, from his wild and indocile nature, was surnamed "the Colt," were amusing themselves and drinking in an upper storey of a tea-house in the Yoshiwara, when Tôken Gombei, happening to look down upon the street below, saw a Samurai pass by, poorly clad in worn-out old clothes, but whose poverty-stricken appearance contrasted with his proud and haughty bearing.
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