Yoshiwara

Established in 1617, Yoshiwara was one of three licensed and well-known red-light districts created during the early 17th century by the Tokugawa shogunate, alongside Shimabara in Kyoto in 1640[1] and Shinmachi in Osaka.

[1] Created by the shogunate to curtail the tastes of and sequester the nouveau riche chōnin (merchant) classes, the entertainment offered in Yoshiwara, alongside other licensed districts, would eventually originate geisha, who would become known as the fashionable companions of the chōnin classes and simultaneously cause the demise of oiran, the upper-class courtesans of the red-light districts.

However, a significant number either served out their contracts and married a client, went into other employment (including other forms of prostitution), or returned to their family homes.

However, Yoshiwara remained in business as a traditional red-light district until prostitution was outlawed by the Japanese government in 1958 following World War II.

Though technically illegal – with the definition of prostitution under the Prostitution Prevention Law being 'compensated penetrative sex with an unspecified person' other forms of sex work that do not violate this law continue to exist in the modern area of Yoshiwara, with the portion of the town near Minowa Station on the Hibiya Line, now known as Senzoku Yon-chōme, retaining a large number of soaplands and other façades for sexual services.

People involved in mizu shōbai (水商売, "the water trade")[8] would include hōkan (comedians), kabuki actors, dancers, dandies, rakes, tea-shop girls, Kanō (painters of the official school of painting), courtesans who resided in seirō (green houses) and geisha in their okiya.

Yoshiwara today looks very similar to many other neighborhoods of modern Tokyo, but it retains legacies to its past, as it contains commercial establishments engaged in the sex trade although police cracked down on the soaplands in 2007.