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Updated: June 20, 2025
He had an income of five thousand koku of rice a great income in those days. But he fell in love with an inmate of the Yoshiwara, named Ayaginu, and wished to marry her. When his master bade the vassal choose between his fortune and his passion, the lovers fled secretly to a farmer's house, and there committed suicide together. And the above song was made about them. It is still sung.
"About the Yoshiwara," he said, seating himself on one of the benches placed round the courts. "They are having a special show down there to-morrow. It will probably be worth seeing." "Look here," said Geoffrey, "is it the thing for ladies English ladies to go to a place like that?" "Of course," answered his friend, "it is one of the sights of Tokyo. Why, I went with Lady Cynthia not so long ago.
I am glad, however, to be able to state that quite recently the highest court in Japan has decided that, whatever custom may have decreed, the law gives, and will give, no sanction to any such custom. A girl confined in the Yoshiwara was forcibly taken away therefrom.
A treasure art thou, giv'n to mortal man, A god-protector watching o'er Japan: On thee forever let me feast mine eye." Fuji is passed and left behind, and sixteen miles reeled off from Yoshiwara, when Mishima, my destination for the night, is reached.
The Yoshiwara has, of course, other recruits, but in the main its inmates are not the victims of lust but of self-sacrifice. There is too often a whole tragedy in the story of a Japanese girl of this kind, and it is deplorable when the self-righteous European comes along and points the finger of scorn at her.
When it became time for them to separate, he embraced her tenderly and returned to Chôbei's house; but he could not banish Komurasaki from his mind, and all day long he thought of her alone; and so it came about that he went daily to the Yoshiwara to see her, and if any accident detained him, she, missing the accustomed visit, would become anxious and write to him to inquire the cause of his absence.
I am aware that though not despised, as in this country, the lot of the inmate of the Yoshiwara is often, if not always, a horrible one. She is, as a rule, sold, or sells herself, for a lump sum of money to which amount is added the cost of her outfit, usually as much as the price paid to the woman or her relatives.
These foreigners say our Yoshiwara is a shame; but, in their own cities, immoral women walk in the best streets, and offer themselves to men quite openly. These virtuous foreigners are worse than we are. I myself have seen. They say, 'We have no Yoshiwara system, therefore we are good. They pretend not to see like a geisha who squints through a fan.
When she leaves her little village to give a certain number of the years of her life to the Yoshiwara in order to free her parents from debt she is lauded and fêted by the people of her village and sent off as one who goes on a crusade of service. Prostitution is so much a part of the acknowledged life of Japan that Temples for prostitutes exist where they may go and pray.
"Perhaps," said the young diplomat, "but what about the Ideal at the back of our minds? Passion is often a grotesque incarnation of the Ideal, like a savage's rude image of his god. A glimpse of the ideal is possible in Piccadilly, and impossible in the Yoshiwara. The divine something was visible in Marguérite Gautier; little Hugh saw it even in Nana.
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