Oiran


Oiran was the historical term for high-ranking courtesans in Japan who were not considered to be merely prostitutes. Though oiran were considered to be a type of prostitute, they were distinguished by their skills in the traditional arts, with the highest-ranking oiran having a degree of choice in which customers they took. The term originated in Yoshiwara, the red-light district of Edo in the 1750s, and is applied to all ranks of high-level courtesans in historical Japan.
Many oiran became celebrities both inside and outside of the pleasure quarters, and oiran would often entertain the upper classes of society, gaining the nickname of "keisei" for their perceived reputation of both being able to match the wit and steal the hearts of upper-class men. This archetype became commonly-represented in a number of kabuki stories, in both sewamono and jidamono plays.
Though regarded as trend-setting, fashionable women when at the height of their profession, this reputation was later usurped in the late 18th through 19th centuries by geisha, who became popular for their freer and more fashionable expressions of contemporary womanhood. The profession continued to decline steadily throughout the 19th century, before prostitution was outlawed in Japan in 1957.
Cultural aspects of oiran traditions, which differed in some cases significantly to geisha, continue to this day, preserved by re-enactors.

Etymology

The word "oiran" comes from the Japanese phrase oira no tokoro no nēsan which translates loosely to "the lass at our place." When written in kanji, the word consists of two characters, meaning "flower", and meaning "leader" or "first." Technically, only the high-class prostitutes of Yoshiwara were known as oiran, although the term is widely applied to all.

History

Rise to prominence

Courtesan culture arose in the early Edo period ; laws restricting brothels to bounded pleasure quarters, Shinmachi in Osaka and Yoshiwara in Edo.
Over time, these districts rapidly grew into large and self-contained neighbourhoods, containing a number of different forms of entertainment outside of sex work, including performances and festivals. Geisha also occasionally worked within these districts, having been periodically forbidden to work outside of them.

Status, rank and terms

Compared to yūjo, whose primary attraction was sexual services, courtesans were first and foremost entertainers. In order to become an oiran, a woman first had to be educated in a range of skills from a relatively young age, including chadō, ikebana and calligraphy. Oiran also learned to play the Koto, shakuhachi, tsuzumi, shamisen and kokyū. Clients expected oiran to be well-read, able to converse and write with wit and elegance, and able to match them in intellect in conversation.
Within the pleasure quarters, a courtesan's prestige was based on her beauty, character, education and artistic ability, which was reflected in the number of ranks falling in the category of "oiran". An oiran could be promoted or demoted, and could inherit a generational name upon changing rank that carried the prestige of those who had previously held it. These myōseki were exclusively the property of the brothel owner, and were written in kanji, whereas courtesans not considered high-ranking or skilled enough to hold a myōseki simply used a professional name considered elegant enough to be the name of a courtesan. The names of both kamuro and shinzō were written in hiragana, and a courtesan with a myōseki rarely saw it passed over to either their kamuro or the shinzō they trained. or their apprentices, known as shinzō. The names used by other, lower-ranking prostitutes were typically pseudonyms taken to either protect one's identity or to promote the brothel's image, and were likely to be slightly more elaborate than the average woman's name, though they were not written in kanji.
The highest rank of courtesan was the tayū, followed by the kōshi. Unlike a common prostitute, the tayū had sufficient prestige to refuse clients. High status also made a tayū extremely pricey — a tayū's fee for one evening was between one ryo and one ryo, three bu, well beyond a laborer's monthly wage and comparable to a shop assistant's annual salary.
Though many courtesans could be registered in one area, extremely few reached tayū status; a guidebook published in 1688 listed the contemporary numbers of high-ranking courtesans in comparison to all the courtesans listed in one area:
A Yoshiwara guidebook published in 1792 listed the six extant ranks of oiran, including tayū and kōshi, who had, by the time of the guidebook's publication, been dormant, with no courtesans in these roles in Yoshiwara, for 30 years:
  1. Tayū
  2. Kōshi
  3. Yobidashi Tsukemawarashi
  4. Sancha
  5. Tsukemawarashi
  6. Zashikimochi
In 1761, the last tayū of Yoshiwara retired, marking the end of the tayū and kōshi ranks in that pleasure quarter, though both tayū and kōshi continued to work in Kyoto and Osaka. The word "oiran" therefore appeared in Yoshiwara as a polite term of address for any remaining woman of courtesan rank.

Appearance

The appearance of oiran was markedly set apart from that of both geisha and the average woman; by the height of the profession at the beginning of the Edo period, oiran wore upwards of eight large kanzashi, often made from tortoiseshell, silver, gold and gemstones, worn in a number of elaborate, heavily-waxed hairstyles known as date-hyōgo, though a number of different hairstyles - with a number of different names - were worn, all representing different ranks, seasons and occasions.
An oiran's outfit consisted of a number of layered kimono, made of heavily-decorated, often satin silk or silk brocade fabrics, which would then be belted with an obi tied at the front. During the Edo period, this obi became both wider and stiffer, adding weight and discomfort. Over the top of this outfit, an oiran would wear an even heavier kimono#uchikake, a formal, heavily-decorated overcoat with a long train and a padded hem, worn unbelted over the top.
When parading or otherwise walking outfit, oiran wore Geta #History - three-pronged, 20cm tall pauwlonia wood clogs. Though lightweight for their size, these would prevent an oiran from taking anything other than small, slow footsteps when walking; oiran would thus walk in koma geta with a sliding, figure-of-8 step, with two manservants assisting her. Oiran generally did not wear tabi socks, with her bare foot considered to be a point of eroticism in her outfit. In total, a formal parade outfit worn by an oiran could weigh in excess of 20kg, often weighing as much as 30kg, and would require great assistance to put on.

Decline

Because of their isolation and inability to leave the pleasure districts, oiran became steadily more traditional, outdated and ritualised, further and further removed from popular society and bound by their strict rules of etiquette, behaviour and speech. This, combined with their relative financial inaccessibility, created a vacuum of entertainment for the rising merchant classes, whose relatively high wealth and relatively low social status left them unable to hire oiran, thus leading to the decision to patronise the more-accessible and infinitely-cheaper geisha instead.
Over time, oiran also lost their celebrity status, and came in part to be seen less as highly-cultured courtesans reflecting formal, high-class standards of speech and appearance, and more as caged women unable to leave the pleasure districts and chained to the debts they owed to their brothel. The preservation of the appearance of oiran had also not reflected changes in fashion - as the profession of geisha had evolved and become increasingly popular, the authorities had sought to clamp down on the proligate and wealthy tastes of the merchant classes, leading to a number of dress edicts that changed popular aesthetics and led to the rise of subdued and cultivated aesthetics such as iki, which oiran categorically did not reflect or resemble.
Similarly, the entertainment that oiran offered had mostly remained unchanged since generations of courtesans previous. Though oiran played the shamisen, they did not play the popular and contemporary tunes composed for it, and instead stuck to longer ballads such as nagauta, which had refined, but restrained, lyrical content. This was in contrast to the kouta favoured and song by geisha, whose lyrical content was often heartfelt and honest.

Competition with geisha

In the years that oiran declined, the geisha profession was born and grew increasingly stronger, contributing in part, if not in majority, to this decline.
Geisha were, officially-speaking, considered to be a relatively low-class form of entertainment, and as such, were not patronised by the upper classes, who were officially supposed to patronise oiran instead; however, during the Edo period, geisha came to represent the tastes of the merchant classes, whose low social status and high financial freedom left them free of social obligations to uphold the status of a samurai family that men of the upper classes were commonly beholden to.
As the merchant classes throughout Edo period society grew in wealth and profligacy, they became the main source of income for geisha, who represented social and financial accessibility in a way that oiran did not. Geisha were cheap to patronise, informal to converse with, required few introductions before entertaining a customer and both played and sang the most popular songs of the time. Through various dress edicts aimed at controlling the merchant classes and thus preserving the appearances and social status of the upper classes, extravagant or obvious displays of wealth had been outlawed and driven underground, bringing aesthetics such as iki into popularity, which geisha came to both represent and champion.
Though geisha also worked within the pleasure districts that oiran did - at times forbidden to work outside of them - as the profession developed, laws regarding the separation of the two professions were passed. This, over time, ironically led to exaggerate and exacerbate the differences between geisha and oiran, heightening the popularity of the former and leading to the eventual destruction of the latter. Geisha were forbidden to dress elaborately, in the manner of oiran, and were not allowed to sleep with their customers. Geisha were registered at a separate registry office, and if an oiran accused a geisha of stealing a customer, she would be fully investigated, with the potential to be forbidden from working if found guilty.
Though geisha and oiran were likely to be at least in part indentured to their houses, geisha were not considered to be the same kind of physical property that oiran were considered to be by their employers. Though oiran were unable to leave their pleasure quarters and could be, if not in the highest ranks, forced to entertain whichever customers the head of her brothel demanded she entertain, geisha were allowed to both leave their houses and choose which patrons she wished to entertain, leading to the rise of adages comparing the loyalties of an oiran with square eggs, the punchline being that neither were things that existed. Though many geisha went into debt or held at least some debt with their okiya, few found themselves in the same situation of financial domination and ownership that oiran were almost entirely bound to.

Later years (1850-1957)

Towards the end of the Edo period, the oiran continued to dwindle in popularity as the geisha grew in numbers and appeal. By the beginning of the Meiji period, official attitudes towards legalised prostitution within Japan had changed owing to the country's increasing international presence. Towards the end of the 19th century, geisha had replaced oiran as the entertainer and companion of choice for the wealthiest in Japanese society, with the central appeal of oiran having grown increasingly remote from everyday life.
Oiran continued to see clients within the old pleasure quarters, but were no longer at the cutting edge of fashion, and during the years of World War II, when any show of luxury was heavily clamped down upon, the culture surrounding oiran suffered even further, being dealt the final blow in 1957 by the Prostitution Prevention Law - after a which a time, the profession of courtesan as it once was, sex services and all, had become illegal.

Modern

Tayū continue to entertain as geisha do, but no longer provide sex. However, there are fewer than five tayū, in comparison to the three hundred geisha in Kyoto today. The last remaining tayū house is located in Shimabara, which lost its official status as a hanamachi in the late 20th century because of the tayū's decline. However, some still recognize Shimabara as a "flower town", with the number and activities of tayū slowly growing. The few remaining women still currently practising the arts of the tayū, without the sexual aspect, do so as a preservation of cultural heritage rather than as a profession or lifestyle.

Courtesan parade

The Bunsui Sakura Matsuri Oiran Dōchū is an annual event held every April in Bunsui, Niigata, Niigata, Niigata Prefecture. The parade, which takes place in spring, historically re-enacts the walk made by top courtesans around their district in honour of their guests. The modern parade features three oiran in full traditional attire with approximately 70 accompanying servants. The oiran, who are named Shinano River, Sakura, and Bunsui walk with the distinctive slow gait of wearing koma geta. Due to the event's popularity in Japan, organizers are often inundated with applications to be part of the parade as one of the three oiran or as a servant. Dōchū is a shortened form of oiran-dochu, it is also known as the Dream Parade of Echigo Province.
The Ōsu Street Performers' Festival is an event held around Ōsu Kannon Temple in Nagoya yearly around the beginning of October. The highlight of this two-day festival is the slow procession of oiran through the Ōsu Kannon shopping arcade. Thousands of spectators crowd the shopping streets on these days to get close enough to photograph the oiran and their retinue of male bodyguards and entourage of apprentices.
An Oiran Dōchū parade is held in the Minamishinagawa district near Aomono-Yokochō Station, Shinagawa every September.