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Updated: June 20, 2025
Tokugawa Iyeyasu, the greatest of all Japanese statesmen, who gave peace to the whole country, put in order this untidiness also. He had the Yoshiwara built, and he put all the women there, where the police could watch both them and the men who visited them. The English might learn from us here, I think. But you are an unruly people.
It is indeed a glorious ride around the crescent bay, through the sea-shore villages of Okitsu, Yui, Kambara, and Iwabuchi to Yoshiwara, a little town on the footstool of the big, gracefully sweeping cone. The stretch of shore hereabout is celebrated in Japanese poetry as Taga-no-ura, from the peculiarly beautiful view of Fuji obtained from it.
There is, so far as I know, no prostitution outside the Yoshiwara, and the inmates thereof are subject to a rigorous supervision and inspection, medical and otherwise, which has produced excellent results. The inmates of the Yoshiwara are not recruited as are the similar class in the West. Here the "unfortunate" usually plies her trade as a dernier ressort.
"You do not know how the Fujinami have made so much money?" "No," said Asako. "It used to come for me from Mr. Ito. He had shares or something." "Yes. But a share that means a share of a business. Do you not know what is our business?" "No," said Asako again. "You have seen the Yoshiwara, where girls are sold to men. That is our business. Do you understand now?" "No."
Vice, of course, there is in Japan, vice of various kinds and degrees, but the ordinary Japanese man is not, in my opinion, nearly so immoral as the average European. The chastity of the Japanese woman I place still higher. The fact, already stated, that the inmates of the Yoshiwara are not generally recruited from those who have lapsed from virtue might be urged in proof of this.
It symbolises the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them. But to the Japanese, woman must be merely animal. You buy a girl as you buy a cow." Lady Everington shivered, but she tried to live up to her reputation of being shocked by nothing. "Well, that is true, after all, whether in Piccadilly or in the Yoshiwara. All prostitution is just a commercial transaction."
"Thank you very much," answered the young Viscount. "How long are you staying in Japan?" "Oh, for some months." "Then we shall meet often, I hope," he said, and returned to his game. "A very decent fellow; quite human," Reggie commented. "Yes, isn't he?" said Geoffrey; and then he asked suddenly, "Do you think he would take his wife to see the Yoshiwara?"
It is, nevertheless, an extraordinary fact that the Englishman or the Englishwoman who has mayhap lived in London most of his or her life, when he or she visits Japan in the course of, perhaps, "a round the world trip" in ninety days, and learns that there is in each Japanese town a Yoshiwara, the inmates of which are subject to supervision and regulation, lifts up his or her hands in holy horror, returns home with a virtuous indignation, and has no hesitation in henceforth declaring, whether in speech or writing, that the Japanese are a grossly immoral people.
"How is it that I find you here pursuing this vile calling, in the Yoshiwara? Pray explain this to me, for there is some mystery beneath all this which I do not understand." But Komurasaki who, having thus unexpectedly fallen in with her lover that she had yearned for, was divided between joy and shame answered, weeping "Alas! my tale is a sad one, and would be long to tell.
He wanted to answer frankly, but he was still awed by the canons of Good Form. At last he said: "This Yoshiwara business." The Japanese statesman seemed surprised. "But that is just a local difference in the manner of regulating a universal problem," he said.
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