Women of the Pleasure Quarters by Lesley Downer Read Free Book Online Page A

claimed the beautiful and spirited dancer as their ancestor. 5
    Shizuka’s story began when her lover, Yoshitsune, was forced to flee Kyoto to escape his wicked half-brother, the shogun (generalissimo) Yoritomo. Besides warriors to defend him, he took with him twelve women with whom he was on intimate terms. But he soon realized that this enormous retinue was slowing him down and sent all the women back, including his favorite, Shizuka, who was pregnant with his child.
    When she reached Kyoto, she was arrested and taken to Yoritomo’s court. There she was interrogated as to Yoshitsune’s whereabouts. But, being plucky as well as beautiful—characteristics which would come to distinguish the geisha too—she refused to give anything away. Far worse was to come. The cruel Yoritomo, discovering that she was pregnant, ordered that if the child was a boy, he should be killed immediately; he could not risk allowing any son of Yoshitsune’s to live. The baby was barely out of Shizuka’s womb when Yoritomo’s retainers snatched him from her arms, took him down to the beach, and dashed his brains out against a rock.
    Before letting her go, Yoritomo was determined to see this most famous of dancers perform. Caring nothing for her feelings, he sent an order for her to dance before him. Disdainfully she refused. Then his retainers persuaded her that she should perform a dance of supplication before the gods at Hachiman Shrine. Too late, she realized that she had been fooled. Yoritomo was watching, hidden behind a bamboo blind.
    Shizuka’s dance is still performed on the Japanese stage. Wearing an exquisite garment of Chinese damask over long white skirts which swirled around her feet like a train and a voluminous long-sleeved overgarment embroidered with diamonds, and with her floor-length hair swept into a loose knot on her head, she unfurled her crimson fan and stepped forward. First she performed one of the erotic
shirabyoshi
dances after which the dancers were named, singing and dancing with such grace and beauty that everyone who watched was bewitched. Then—when she was sure she had them in the palm of her hand—she burst full-throatedly into a defiant love song. Passionately she sang of Yoshitsune, her love and yearning for him, and her joy that he had successfully managed to evade his evil half-brother Yoritomo. Yoritomo was torn between rage at such effrontery and pleasure at the exquisite beauty of her voice. But she was, after all, a mere woman and therefore harmless, so he let her go unpunished.
    She was still only eighteen. She returned to Kyoto where she cut off her floor-length tresses, shaved her head, and became a nun. A year later, or so the story goes, she died of grief. As for the historical Yoshitsune, he was tracked down and killed.
    Japan’s Great Cultural Renaissance
    Living only for the moment, giving all our time to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, cherry blossoms, and maple leaves. Singing songs, drinking saké, caressing each other, just drifting, drifting. Never giving a care if we have no money, never sad in our hearts. Only like a plant moving on the river’s current; that is what is called
ukiyo
—the Floating World.
    Ryoi Asai, c. 1661 6
     
    Had you arrived in Kyoto at the turn of the seventeenth century, you would have found yourself swept along with the mob to the sprawling entertainment district beside the River Kamo, stretching as far as the massive red gates of Yasaka Shrine at the foot of the Eastern Hills. One of the chief attractions was the burgeoning pleasure quarters packed with teahouses and taverns where women—who a century later would become known as geisha—sold tea or saké and might, for a consideration, entertain you with singing, dancing, or more, depending on the depth of your purse. Here and there on open-air stages, under wooden roofs, groups of women performed lively dances to the plink plonk of the shamisen or the tootle of the flute while their audiences