Yūjo byō-shi oyobi jō-shi no koto.37 (Of the death and double-suicide of courtesans.)

Yūjo byō-shi oyobi jō-shi no koto.37 (Of the death and double-suicide of courtesans.)

The Yoshiwara Ō-kagami, (吉原大鑑) says that as the life of a courtesan is generally spoken of as “the painful world” (Ku-gai 苦界) its really painful nature may be well imagined. Not only does a woman who has fallen into this unhappy position become a mere plaything to gratify the lusts of immoral men, but her freedom is so curtailed by circumstances that she cannot even sleep and eat independently, and therefore often has her constitution ruined owing to her irregular mode of eating and drinking. Others fall sick by reason of excessive anxiety over monetary affairs, and others fall a prey to loathsome and, perchance, virtually incurable diseases.

When a first-class prostitute (jōtō no yūjo) was sick, if the master of the brothel had been to much expense in procuring her, he would spare no pains to cure her illness, and if the matter was serious the woman would be removed to the master’s villa, (which was situated, perhaps, in the vicinity of Imado or Sanya), for treatment. Such an invalid would be closely attended by a kamuro (female page), and sometimes the master himself went to some temple to pray for her recovery. If, however, the yūjo happened to belong to a lower class, and was not particularly popular, the attitude of the brothel-keeper would be entirely different, and the treatment of the girl would be simply entrusted to some quack doctor, the poor creature being meanwhile thrust into an out-of-the-way gloomy room where she would pine away unseen by the other inmates of the house. When her condition was considered very precarious, the master, in order to avoid the trouble and expense involved at death, used to summon her parents and hand the sick woman over to them together with her shōmon (document of engagement). When a yūjo died in a brothel the matter was reported by the monthly manager (tsuki-gyōji) of the Yoshiwara to the nanushi, and the latter summoned her parents or surety to take delivery of her corpse. In the event of the home of her parents being far away, the remains of the yūjo were interred by the brothel-keeper in the Dōtetsu (general burial place) on the bank in the presence of her surety. This place was also known as the “nage-komi” (the “throwing-in-place”). There is an old poem illustrating the sad future which is in store for some unfortunate shōgi: it runs:—

“She is hurried to the grave in a pauper’s coffin, with but one solitary little maid to mourn her.”

Alas! this description was only too true in many cases.

Besides natural death, there were many yūjo who committed suicide, together with their sweethearts, owing to various reasons, among which the most powerful were either their inability to live together in conjugal felicity with each other, or their pecuniary embarrassments. Such double suicides had been known as shinjū (心中 “the inside of the heart or mind”), but about the era of Kyōhō (1716–1735) Judge Ōoka Echizen-no-Kami, (who is regarded as the Japanese Solomon), gave it out as his opinion that the word shinjū (心中) if read reversed would make chūshin (中心 = loyalty) and that it was absurd to call the double suicide of a man and woman, owing to love affairs, “loyalty”. He therefore ordained that this kind of suicide should be called “aitai-jini” (相對死 = “death by mutual consent”) and that word was accordingly adopted.

The late Mr. Koidzumi Yakumo (Lafcadio Hearn) in his “Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan” (Vol. 1.) gives an extremely interesting example of shinjū, as follows:—

“There lived in ancient times a hatamoto called Fuji-eda Geki, a vassal of the Shōgun. 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.

“The sad occurrence was commemorated in a popular song which ran:—

Kimi to neyaru ka, go-sen-goku toru ka? Nan no go-sen-goku kimi to neyo? Once more to rest beside her, or keep live thousand koku? What care I for koku? Let me be with her!”

According to the Tōto Ko-fun-shi (東都古墳志 = Record of ancient tombs in the Eastern Capital), the Jōkan-ji (浄閑寺) temple of Minowa, Shitaya district, was the burial ground of the yūjo of the Yoshiwara. When the secret prostitutes of the City of Yedo were transported into the Yoshiwara, they were called baijo (賣女 = “sold women”). Originally the bodies of these women, and other secret prostitutes, were interred in the burial ground of this temple only, but later on it became the custom to bury their remains elsewhere, as also those of regular yūjo. The book goes on to say:—

“In these burial places are to be found many graves of yūjo who committed suicide with their paramours. On the tombstones are to be found engraved the descriptions of the swords with which they killed themselves, as well as their names and ages. There is something so weird and uncanny about these horribly pitiless records on the grey lichen-covered monuments that the blood of a sightseer runs cold and he becomes so nervous that he leaves the gloomy spot with the intention of never visiting it again.”38