Dignified and sunken first flower / Tranquil struggle of the first oiran-kai (late 18th century)

Dignified and sunken first flower / Tranquil struggle of the first oiran-kai (late 18th century)

In the late Edo period, Yoshiwara brothels were not merely places for the buying and selling of lust, but also "palaces for the masses" where rituals and chic were elaborately woven together. The beauty of this formality has been featured on JBpress (Japan Business Press), PRESIDENT Online (President Online), and other media. PRESIDENT Online (President Online), etc., have also taken up this formal beauty. This silence contained the ambivalence of "the image of a dignified woman who is not flirtatious" and "a tactic to tease customers and increase their value.

On the other hand, the silence was so tense that it froze the air in the tatami room. The drummers and geisha would fill the void with impromptu puns, songs, and musical accompaniment to adjust the temperature of the room. The manipulation of the "ma" (pause), where tension and comedy intersect, was a skill valued by the stylish performers of the Edo period. Behind this formal beauty lay the maturity of Edo merchant culture and the flourishing of a value system that observed the subtleties of emotion.

Under the Edo shogunate, the townspeople developed a culture of expressing themselves within a secular framework, while keeping a distance from direct authority. Yoshiwara was at the forefront of such merchant culture. Oiran (courtesans), with their appearance, culture, chants, and costumes, were not mere objects of sex, but acted as "artists at the feast. Therefore, the silence of the first meeting was not mute, but the strength of the silence and the pauses were eloquent.

However, recent studies and folklore question this common belief that the first meeting is silent. For example, it has been pointed out that the theory that "oiran (courtesans) did not speak at the first meeting" may be a legend or a later stage direction, and as discussed in articles on YouTube and JBpress, the ritual of silence may have been passed down as an ideal image of Edo culture rather than a historical fact. Nevertheless, the story has survived for a long time because it breathes the "aesthetics of pauses and margins rather than words" that the Edo people sought.

The hatsukai was a space in which multiple performers (courtesans, guests, geisha, and taiko drummers) competed for the "balance of tranquility. This struggle for tranquility was the first opening of the stage called Yoshiwara.