Having said so much, I will now try to give some account of the famous Yoshiwara[13] of Yedo, to which frequent allusion will have to be made in the course of these tales.

[Footnote 13:  The name Yoshiwara, which is becoming generic for “Flower Districts,”—­Anglice, quarters occupied by brothels,—­is sometimes derived from the town Yoshiwara, in Sunshine, because it was said that the women of that place furnished a large proportion of the beauties of the Yedo Yoshiwara.  The correct derivation is probably that given below.]

At the end of the sixteenth century the courtesans of Yedo lived in three special places:  these were the street called Koji-machi, in which dwelt the women who came from Kioto; the Kamakura Street, and a spot opposite the great bridge, in which last two places lived women brought from Suruga.  Besides these there afterwards came women from Fushimi and from Nara, who lodged scattered here and there throughout the town.  This appears to have scandalized a certain reformer, named Shoji Jinyemon, who, in the year 1612, addressed a memorial to the Government, petitioning that the women who lived in different parts of the town should be collected in one “Flower Quarter.”  His petition was granted in the year 1617, and he fixed upon a place called Fukiyacho, which, on account of the quantities of rushes which grew there, was named Yoshi-Wara, or the rush-moor, a name which now-a-days, by a play upon the word yoshi, is written with two Chinese characters, signifying the “good,” or “lucky moor.”  The place was divided into four streets, called the Yedo Street, the Second Yedo Street, the Kioto Street, and the Second Kioto Street.

In the eighth month of the year 1655, when Yedo was beginning to increase in size and importance, the Yoshiwara, preserving its name, was transplanted bodily to the spot which it now occupies at the northern end of the town.  And the streets in it were named after the places from which the greater number of their inhabitants originally came, as the “Sakai Street,” the “Fushimi Street,” &c.

The official Guide to the Yoshiwara for 1869 gives a return of 153 brothels, containing 3,289 courtesans of all classes, from the Oiran, or proud beauty, who, dressed up in gorgeous brocade of gold and silver, with painted face and gilded lips, and with her teeth fashionably blacked, has all the young bloods of Yedo at her feet, down to the humble Shinzo, or white-toothed woman, who rots away her life in the common stews.  These figures do not, however, represent the whole of the prostitution of Yedo; the Yoshiwara is the chief, but not the only, abiding-place of the public women.  At Fukagawa there is another Flower District, built upon the same principle as the Yoshiwara; while at Shinagawa, Shinjiku, Itabashi, Senji, and Kadzukappara, the hotels contain women who, nominally only waitresses, are in reality prostitutes.  There are also women called Jigoku-Omna, or hell-women, who, without being borne on the books of any brothel, live in their own houses, and ply their trade in secret.  On the whole, I believe the amount of prostitution in Yedo to be wonderfully small, considering the vast size of the city.