Breathtaking Words: After the Horeki Era - Late Edo Period: Everyday Conversation Flowing into Shin-Yoshihara

Breathtaking Words: After the Horeki Era - Late Edo Period: Everyday Conversation Flowing into Shin-Yoshihara

From the Horeki era onward, Shin-Yoshihara was a place of extraordinary splendor, but at the same time, it was a closed space where prostitutes conducted their daily lives. The people who brought everyday life into the interior were book dealers, peddlers, kimono makers, and other people from the outside. In conversations with the book-lenders, the topics of new publications and reputations were discussed, and the prostitutes, detached from the tension of dealing with customers, spoke to each other as women of the town. In the conversations with the peddlers, the women were able to assess the value of fish, vegetables, and sweetmeats, and to make a living as they did in Edo, showing that Yoshiwara functioned as a town. Conversations with kimono merchants were glamorous yet earnest, and behind the cheerfulness with which they talked about antique fashions and color patterns, they shared the reality that they could not obtain them without a congratulatory gift. The reason these
conversations seemed relatively cheerful is that the other party was not a guest, not demanding anything. These brief moments of daily life served as a kind of breather for the prostitutes, while at the same time highlighting the reality of their deprived freedom. The light conversation with book-lenders, peddlers, and drapers is a quiet and human testimony to the fact that prostitutes were indeed living as people of life.