Women Of The Pleasure Quarters

Author : Lesley Downer
Publisher : Crown
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2002-01-08
Category : History
ISBN : 9780767909723

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Women of the Pleasure Quarters by Lesley Downer Pdf

From critically acclaimed author and Japanese scholar Lesley Downer, an enchanting portrait of the mysterious world of the geisha. Ever since Westerners arrived in Japan, they have been intrigued by Japanese womanhood and, above all, by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of extraordinary fictional creations, from Puccini's Madama Butterfly to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. The reality of the geisha's existence, though, whether today or in history, has rarely been addressed. Contrary to popular opinion, geisha are not prostitutes but, literally, "arts people." Their accomplishments include singing, dancing, playing a musical instruments; but above all, they are masters of the art of conversation, soothing the worries and stroking the egos of the wealthy businessmen who can afford their attentions. It is this which imbues the geisha with such power—and which makes absolute secrecy such a crucial aspect of their work. As denizens of a world defined by silence and mystery, geisha are notoriously difficult to meet and even to find. Lesley Downer, an award- winning writer, Japanese scholar, and consummate storyteller, gained more access into this world than almost any other Westerner ever has and spent several months living among them. In Women of the Pleasure Quarters, she weaves together intimate portraits of modern geisha with the romantic legends and colorful historical tales of geisha of the past. From Sadda Yakko, who dined with American presidents and had her portrait painted by Picasso, to Koito, a modern-day geisha who maintains her own website, geisha throughout history step out of the pages of Women of the Pleasure Quarters to become living, breathing creatures. Looking into such traditions as mizuage, the ritual deflowering which was once a rite of passage for all geisha, and providing colorful depictions of the geisha's dress, training, and homes, Downer, with grace, elegance, and respect, transforms their reality in a captivating narrative that both informs and entertains. At once a symbol of a bygone age and an institution more quintessentially Japanese than any other, geisha are a society at a crossroads, struggling to reinvent their place in the new millennium while honoring the traditions of the past. Both instructive and evocative, Women of the Pleasure Quarters is an enthralling portrait of a world unlike any other.

Author : Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton,Kazue Edamatsu Campbell,Liza Crihfield Dalby,Mark Oshima
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Art
ISBN : UOM:39015040622543

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The Women of the Pleasure Quarter by Elizabeth de Sabato Swinton,Kazue Edamatsu Campbell,Liza Crihfield Dalby,Mark Oshima Pdf

This volume is the first comprehensive study of the women of the pleasure quarters and entertainment districts of Japan of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. It examines the cultural and metaphorical meanings of courtesans and geisha and their appearance in art and Kabuki theater. These women were at the nexus of social relations, part of public culture, organized into institutions and transformed into emblems of femininity, personifications of the romantic ideal. The Women of the Pleasure Quarter reproduces paintings and woodblock prints by forty-six artists, virtually all the leading masters of the genre, including Miyagawa Choshun, Ando Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, and Kitagawa Utamaro. These works, the most familiar forms of Japanese art to Westerners, are important both for their intrinsic aesthetic quality and for their value as documents of Japanese cultural history. Art and life were fundamentally intertwined in the floating world; it was a realm in which art not only influenced life but in which popular entertainment also transformed itself into art by inventing its own conventions and artistic forms. The Women of the Pleasure Quarter is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, and also seen at Equitable Gallery, New York, and Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth. Every work in the exhibition, including several rare hand-colored photographs, is reproduced in full color and discussed in an individual commentary. Capsule biographies of each artist, a glossary, and a selected bibliography complete this enchanting survey of one of the most extraordinary bodies of work in art history.

Author : Cecilia Segawa Seigle
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1993-03-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0824814886

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Yoshiwara by Cecilia Segawa Seigle Pdf

Drawing on both historical and literary sources, examines life in the pleasure houses of Japan during the Edo period from the early 1600s to 1868. Among the topics are the origins, illegal competitors, the cost of a visit, the treatment of the courtesans, traditions and protocols, Yoshiwara arts, th

Author : Lesley Downer
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Geishas
ISBN : 0747264260

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Geisha by Lesley Downer Pdf

Ever since Westerners arrived in Japan, we have been intrigued by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of fictional creations from Madame Butterfly to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. The reality of the geisha's existence has rarely been described. Contrary to popular opinion, geisha are not prostitutes but literally arts people. Their accomplishments might include singing, dancing or playing a musical instrument but, above all, they are masters of the art of conversation, soothing worries of highly paid businessmen who can afford their attentions. The real secret history of the geisha is explored here.

Author : William R. Lindsey
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2006-11-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780824830366

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Fertility and Pleasure by William R. Lindsey Pdf

As their ubiquitous presence in Tokugawa artwork and literature suggests, images of bourgeois wives and courtesans took on iconic status as representations of two opposing sets of female values. Their differences, both real and idealized, indicate the full range of female roles and sexual values affirmed by Tokugawa society, with Buddhist celibacy on the one end and the relatively free sexual associations of the urban and rural lower classes on the other. The roles of courtesan and bourgeois housewife were each tied to a set of value-based behaviors, the primary institution to which a woman belonged, and rituals that sought to model a woman’s comportment in her interactions with men and figures of authority. For housewives, it was fertility values, promulgated by lifestyle guides and moral texts, which embraced the ideals of female obedience, loyalty to the husband’s household, and sexual activity aimed at producing an heir. Pleasure values, by contrast, flourished in the prostitution quarters and embraced playful relations and nonreproductive sexual activity designed to increase the bordello’s bottom line. What William Lindsey reveals in this well-researched study is that, although the values that idealized the role of wife and courtesan were highly disparate, the rituals, symbols, and popular practices both engaged in exhibited a degree of similitude and parallelism. Fertility and Pleasure examines the rituals available to young women in the household and pleasure quarters that could be employed to affirm, transcend, or resist these sets of sexual values. In doing so it affords new views of Tokugawa society and Japanese religion. Highly original in its theoretical approach and its juxtaposition of texts, Fertility and Pleasure constitutes an important addition to the fields of Japanese religion and history and the study of gender and sexuality in other societies and cultures.

Author : Stephen Longstreet,Ethel Longstreet
Publisher : Tuttle Publishing
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : History
ISBN : 0804815992

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Yoshiwara by Stephen Longstreet,Ethel Longstreet Pdf

Yoshiwara was for centuries the famed pleasure center of Tokyo. There, behind moated walls, an erotic world unmatched in the West was created by beautiful courtesans, geishas, dancers, actors, and artists. To this "floating world" came the hedonists, the women-seekers, the sensual pleasure-hunters of old Japan. Stephen and Ethel Longstreet trace the rise and fall of this city within a city, a sanctioned preserve of teahouses and brothels that was not abolished until 1958, sketching a vivid portrait of social and sexual mores in Japan's capital.

Author : Lesley Downer
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1592400507

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Madame Sadayakko by Lesley Downer Pdf

The author of Women of the Pleasure Quarters shares the story of the famous geisha whose life inspired Puccini's Madame Butterfly, from her training and participation in secret geisha traditions to her defection from her lucrative career to marry the penniless actor and political maverick Otojiro Kawakami and her rise to international celebrity. Reprint.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 194 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:1333584497

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The Women of the Pleasure Quarter by Anonim Pdf

Author : Lesley Downer
Publisher : Random House
Page : 481 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2010-04-13
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781409095453

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The Courtesan and the Samurai by Lesley Downer Pdf

1868. In Japan's exotic pleasure quarters, sex is for sale and the only forbidden fruit is love ... Hana is just seventeen when her husband goes to war, leaving her alone and vulnerable. When enemy soldiers attack her house she flees across the shattered city of Tokyo and takes refuge in the Yoshiwara, its famous pleasure-quarters.There she is forced to become a courtesan. Yozo, brave, loyal and a brilliant swordsman, is pledged to the embattled shogun. He sails to the frozen north to join his rebel comrades for a desperate last stand. Defeated, he makes his way south to the only place where a man is beyond the reach of the law - the Yoshiwara. There in the Nightless City where three thousand courtesans mingle with geishas and jesters, the battered fugitive meets the beautiful courtesan. But each has a secret so terrible that once revealed it will threaten their very lives ...

Author : Ann Marie L. Davis
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2019-03-13
Category : History
ISBN : 9781498542159

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Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913 by Ann Marie L. Davis Pdf

This cultural history examines representations of pleasure work during Japan’s transformation into a modern nation-state. It traces the figure of the prostitute in the context of Japanese nation- and empire-building immediately before and during the Meiji era.

Author : William R. Lindsey
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2006-11-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780824862503

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Fertility and Pleasure by William R. Lindsey Pdf

As their ubiquitous presence in Tokugawa artwork and literature suggests, images of bourgeois wives and courtesans took on iconic status as representations of two opposing sets of female values. Their differences, both real and idealized, indicate the full range of female roles and sexual values affirmed by Tokugawa society, with Buddhist celibacy on the one end and the relatively free sexual associations of the urban and rural lower classes on the other. The roles of courtesan and bourgeois housewife were each tied to a set of value-based behaviors, the primary institution to which a woman belonged, and rituals that sought to model a woman’s comportment in her interactions with men and figures of authority. For housewives, it was fertility values, promulgated by lifestyle guides and moral texts, which embraced the ideals of female obedience, loyalty to the husband’s household, and sexual activity aimed at producing an heir. Pleasure values, by contrast, flourished in the prostitution quarters and embraced playful relations and nonreproductive sexual activity designed to increase the bordello’s bottom line. What William Lindsey reveals in this well-researched study is that, although the values that idealized the role of wife and courtesan were highly disparate, the rituals, symbols, and popular practices both engaged in exhibited a degree of similitude and parallelism. Fertility and Pleasure examines the rituals available to young women in the household and pleasure quarters that could be employed to affirm, transcend, or resist these sets of sexual values. In doing so it affords new views of Tokugawa society and Japanese religion. Highly original in its theoretical approach and its juxtaposition of texts, Fertility and Pleasure constitutes an important addition to the fields of Japanese religion and history and the study of gender and sexuality in other societies and cultures.

Author : Yoko Kawaguchi
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2010-11-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780300169461

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Butterfly's Sisters by Yoko Kawaguchi Pdf

In this fascinating and wide-ranging book, Yoko Kawaguchi explores the Western portrayal of Japanese women—and geishas in particular—from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. She argues that in the West, Japanese women have come to embody certain ideas about feminine sexuality, and she analyzes how these ideas have been expressed in diverse art forms, ranging from fiction and opera to the visual arts and music videos. Among the many works Kawaguchi discusses are the art criticism of Baudelaire and Huysmans, the opera Madama Butterfly, the sculptures of Rodin, the Broadway play Teahouse of the August Moon, and the international best seller Memoirs of a Geisha. Butterfly’s Sisters also examines the impact on early twentieth-century theatre, drama, and dance theory of the performance styles of the actresses Madame Hanako and Sadayakko, both formerly geishas.

Author : Amy Stanley
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2012-06-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520270909

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Selling Women by Amy Stanley Pdf

“At last, a study that goes far beyond the urban-centered discourse with which we are already familiar to place the trafficking of women in a solid historical and comparative context. Through a carefully reasoned and balanced analysis of diverse sources, Stanley shows how prostitution practices varied. This book will set the standard for studies of prostitution in early modern Japan for decades to come.” -Anne Walthall, University of California, Irvine “Selling Women is a remarkable achievement. With her gaze fixed firmly on the young women whose labor sustained prostitution as an industry, Amy Stanley traces shifts in the moral economy of the sex trade over the course of the Tokugawa era, and unveils the ironic consequences of economic growth and social change. This meticulously researched, wonderfully written book is a major contribution to the literature on gender and society in Japan.” -David L. Howell, Harvard University

Author : Stephen Mansfield
Publisher : Andrews UK Limited
Page : 374 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2023-01-06
Category : Travel
ISBN : 9781904955863

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Tokyo: A Cultural and Literary History by Stephen Mansfield Pdf

From its obscure origins as a fishing village along a marshy estuary, Tokyo grew into one of the world's largest and most culturally vibrant metropolises. For all its modernity and craving for the new, it is a city impregnated with the past. In the backstreets of districts that have inspired the setting for science fiction novels are wooden temples, fox shrines, mouldering steles and statues of Bodhisattvas that evoke a different age. The point where time past, present and future coexist, Tokyo's thirst for the contemporary is moderated by nostalgia for the past. As an urban laboratory where the cultures of the East and West are remixed into perceptibly Japanese forms, Tokyo embraces sudden transitions, constant flux and transformation. The courtesans of its pleasure quarters inspired Edo-period woodblock artists, novelists and poets. In a later age, its experimental artists, feminist writers and Modern Girls of 1920s Ginza both shocked and electrified the capital. Stephen Mansfield explores a city rich in diversity, tracing its evolution from the founding of its massive stone citadel through rise of a merchant class whose wealth transformed Edo into a home for artists, writers and performers. In contemporary Tokyo he explores the unique crossbred cultures of taste that make the giant conurbation one of the most exciting and creative cities in the world. * City of Literature, Theatre and Art: The print masters Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro; the Kabuki theatre; authors Nagai Kafu, Tanizaki Junichiro, Mishima Yukio, Murukami Haruki; foreign writers Angela Carter, William Gibson and Donald Richie. * City of Architecture: From the fortifications of Edo Castle, great temples and shrines, via the western hybrids of the Meiji era to the post-modernist skyscrapers, giant neon screens and digitalized surfaces of today s city. * City of Calamities: The great fires of the Edo period; floods, famines and typhoons; the 1923 Earthquake, coups and rising militarism in the 1930s; the fire bombings of the Second World War; the 1995 subway gas attack by members of a death cult and the fatalism of residents living on one of the earth's largest fault lines.

Author : Stanton Wortham,Angela Reyes
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2020-11-29
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781000245196

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Discourse Analysis Beyond the Speech Event by Stanton Wortham,Angela Reyes Pdf

In its first edition, winner of the 2016 Edward Sapir Book Prize from the Society for Linguistic Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association Discourse Analysis Beyond the Speech Event introduces a new approach to discourse analysis. In this innovative work, Wortham and Reyes argue that discourse analysts should look beyond fixed speech events and consider the development of discourses over time. Drawing on theories and methods from linguistic anthropology and related fields, this book is the first to present a systematic methodological approach to conducting discourse analysis of linked events, allowing researchers to understand not only individual events but also the patterns that emerge across them. This new edition: Draws on theories and methods from linguistic anthropology and related fields; Presents the first systematic methodological approach to doing discourse analysis of linked events; Provides easy-to-use tools and techniques for analyzing discourse both within and across events; Offers transparent procedures and clear illustrations to show how the approach can be applied to analyze three types of data: ethnographic, archival, and new media; Includes a new chapter focusing on the discourse analysis of contemporary nationalist new media data. Updated and revised for the second edition, this book is essential reading for advanced students and researchers working in the area of discourse analysis.