{"id":7513,"date":"2019-10-19T21:08:29","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T21:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/frog\/?p=7513"},"modified":"2019-11-17T13:44:32","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T13:44:32","slug":"opening-vignettes-on-tokugawa-prostitutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2019\/10\/opening-vignettes-on-tokugawa-prostitutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening vignettes on Tokugawa prostitutes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I never really responded to Jonathan’s post on opening vignettes as pedagogy, but I do like using them. In fact, I will be using a couple Monday. Sometimes I do this by putting a short bit of text on the screen and reading it with them. Sometimes, like this time, I print things out.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next Wednesday the students will be leading a discussion on Amorous Woman <\/a><\/em>and so Monday I need to talk about Geisha and prostitutes and the trade in women on Monday. I hope to do this by stealing shamelessly from Amy Stanley. Her chapters tend to start with a story, and I will be passing out one of hers and one from a review. We will see how this goes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two stories about Tokugawa\nprostitutes <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kokane ran away with a man named Sodayu in 1614,\nleaving behind her husband and her home in the remote mining town of Innai\nGinzan in Akita domain.1 She was taking her life in her hands. It was illegal\nfor a married woman to leave town without her husband\u2019s permission, and it was\nalso extremely dangerous. Although the major military engagements of the\nSengoku, or Warring States, era had come to an end, this corner of the\narchipelago was far from peaceful. Even the newly appointed lord of the domain\n(daimyo), Satake Yoshinobu (1570\u20131633), a fearsome warrior in his own right,\nfound it dif\ufb01cult to impose order. While he ensconced himself in the forti\ufb01ed\ncastle town of Kubota, the area along the domain\u2019s southern border remained\nungoverned. Bandits hid out in the mountains, ready to ambush those who dared\nto traverse their territory.2 For a woman, even one accompanied by a male\ncompanion, the journey over the steep and thickly forested terrain would have\nbeen perilous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kokane must have had a good reason for breaking the\nlaw and risking her life. The record of her disappearance offers an explanation\nfor her reckless escape attempt: her husband, Tahei, had been hiring her out as\na prostitute (keisei<\/em>). There is very\nlittle information offered about her accomplice Sodayu, who could have been her\nlover, a procurer who promised her a job in another city, or a guide she paid\nto lead her through the mountains. In any case, it made little difference to\nAkita domain of\ufb01cials. Regardless of the circumstances, the couple had\ncommitted a serious crime by absconding. Since the domain had a \ufb01nancial\ninterest in retaining Innai\u2019s population of laborers, who extracted silver for\nthe government\u2019s coffers, of\ufb01cials imposed the death penalty on those who left\nthe mine without special permission.3 Some absconders were able to argue their\nway into more lenient punishments, but Sodayu had compounded his offense by stealing\nanother man\u2019s wife. Clearly, he deserved the harshest possible sanction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Sodayu\u2019s crime was so straightforward (and so\negregious), domain of\ufb01cials knew exactly what to do with him when they\napprehended the couple in the mountains east of the mine: they beheaded him on\nthe spot. But they could not reach an immediate decision in Kokane\u2019s case,\nwhich was unprecedented in Akita domain\u2019s short history. What was the\nappropriate punishment for a married prostitute who ran away with another man?\nAt a loss, they gave her Sodayu\u2019s head and sent her back to the settlement at\nInnai. The decision about Kokane\u2019s fate was left to the domain\u2019s general mine\nmagistrate, Umezu Masakage (1581\u20131633). In a terse account of his\ndeliberations, sketched out in a few sentences in his diary, he stated that\nKokane deserved the same punishment as Sodayu. But then he seemed to\nreconsider. In the next line, he mentioned that her husband, Tahei, had\ninvested a large sum of money in her. By juxtaposing these concerns, he suggested\nthe contours of his dilemma: he could not execute Kokane without unfairly\ndepriving her husband of his property, but he could not pardon a married woman\nwho had absconded with another man. Because she was simultaneously a wife and a\nprostitute, a person and a possession, the magistrate puzzled over the correct\nresponse to her transgression. Stolen property would be returned, but an\nadulteress, particularly one who had compounded her crime by absconding, might\ndeserve to be executed. While he struggled with the implications of Kokane\u2019s\nmultiple identities, Masakage never condemned Tahei for sending his wife out to\nwork as a prostitute. In Kokane\u2019s situation, the categories of \u201cwife\u201d and\n\u201cprostitute\u201d had come into con\ufb02ict, but only because she had absconded without\nher husband\u2019s permission and forced the magistrate to make a decision about her\npunishment. The idea that the roles of \u201cwife\u201d and \u201cprostitute\u201d were inherently\ncontradictory, that a woman whose sexual body was available to multiple men\nbelonged in a fundamentally different category from a woman whose sexual body\nwas available only to her husband, did not enter into his deliberations. From\nMasakage\u2019s perspective, his task was not to disaggregate two mutually exclusive\ncategories of women, but to decide on a penalty that was appropriate for\nsomeone who belonged within both at once.          <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Masakage ordered an unusual, and rather\nspectacular, punishment: he forced Kokane to parade around the mine holding\nSodayu\u2019s head. Apparently, the magistrate believed that the sight of a woman\ncarrying a severed head (which was by then a few days old) would serve as a\ndisincentive to others who might be tempted to commit similar crimes.4 After\nshe had completed this humiliating task, he returned her to Tahei. This\ncompromise reconciled Masakage\u2019s desire to punish Kokane with his unwillingness\nto deprive her husband of his property. Yet it did nothing to settle the larger\nquestion about her legal status. She remained both a wife and a prostitute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy Stanley Selling\nWomen Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan<\/em>\nBerkeley: University of California Press, 2012. 23-24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1806, a resident of the castle town of Hamada in\nIwami province petitioned that his older sister Kinu be removed from their family\nregistry due to her disappearance together with a man named Tokubei. Yet nearly\neight years later, both of them suddenly returned. Asked about their\nunexplained absence, Kinu related that Tokubei had initially convinced her to\naccompany him to Osaka with the promise they would marry. In her testimony\n(k\u014dj\u014d-oboe), which was submitted to domain officials within a few weeks of her\nreturn, Kinu provided a detailed account of the many events that had transpired\nthereafter.1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To begin with, upon arriving at Tokubei\u2019s residence,\nKinu quickly discovered that he was already married. After a short stay in\nseparate lodgings, she was sold for five ry\u014d to work at an establishment in the\ncity\u2019s licensed quarters (y\u016bsho). Almost six months later, Tokubei again visited\nKinu, this time to take her to a Kyoto middleman through whom he had arranged\nfor her sale to an interested party in Edo. Because the move required Kinu\u2019s\nendorsement and she expressed strong reservations about making the journey\nalone, Tokubei agreed to escort her. Even so, his role as chaperone lasted only\nas far as their entrance into Edo\u2019s Yoshiwara district, at which point Tokubei\nfurtively negotiated Kinu\u2019s sale to a local brothel owner and promptly\nabsconded with a profit of thirty ry\u014d. Left with no other choice Kinu continued\nto work as a prostitute (yuj\u014d) until, later that same year, her contract was\nbought out by a man from Kawagoe with whom she then cohabited for the next\nseven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the man\u2019s death, Kinu grew lonely and longed\nto see her mother back in Hamada. She therefore sought out the assistance of\nrelatives living in Edo and through their intervention acquired permission to\njoin the entourage of a warrior from her native domain who was just then\ndeparting for home. Travel proceeded smoothly until the group passed through\nOsaka, where Kinu parted ways with these companions and an old associate\ncajoled her into meeting with Tokubei once more. Despite avowing to have\nlearned her lesson  from the events of\nrecent years, Kinu nevertheless consented to speak with Tokubei and even\naccepted his offer to schedule and pay for the remainder of her trip. That\nnight, however, while feigning sleep, Kinu chanced to overhear a conversation\nbetween Tokubei and his wife in which they discussed plans to sell her into\nservice in one of the many port towns that dotted the Honshu and Shikoku\ncoastlines of the Seto Inland Sea. A few days later Kinu attempted to escape,\nbut she was soon caught by Tokubei and beaten severely. Undeterred, Kinu\napologized repeatedly and pleaded for permission to visit her family, if only\nbriefly. Tokubei ultimately relented and brought Kinu back to Hamada on the\nfourteenth day of the tenth month of 1813.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eason, David. \u201cSelling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan by Amy Stanley (Review).\u201d Monumenta Nipponica<\/em> 69, no. 2 (2014): 278\u201383. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n

  1. Don’t tell my chair, we are in a budget crunch  ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I never really responded to Jonathan’s post on opening vignettes as pedagogy, but I do like using them. In fact, I will be using a couple Monday. Sometimes I do this by putting a short bit of text on the screen and reading it with them. Sometimes, like this time, I print things out.1 Next…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[125,63,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","category-japan","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-1Xb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7513"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7515,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7513\/revisions\/7515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}