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Home > History > Asia > Women of the Pleasure Quarters-eBook

Women of the Pleasure Quarters

Downer, Lesley

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Women of the Pleasure Quarters

In this revealing portrait of geisha society, an expert on Japanese culture provides personal insight into a perpetually enchanting underworld. While Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha introduced readers to the geisha existence, Women of the Pleasure Quarters proves that truth can be even more fascinating than fiction.

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Title of ebook: Women of the Pleasure Quarters
ISBN: 9780767909723
Publisher: Doubleday
Internet download file size: 366 kb
Released online for download: 02-05-2002
Author of eBook: Downer, Lesley

Chapter One

japan before the geisha

High-class Courtesans and the Culture of Desire

Because they fall we love them— the cherry blossoms. In this floating world, does anything endure?

Ariwara no Narihira (823-880)1

s

The City of Purple Hills and Crystal Streams

More than a thousand years ago, long before geisha were even thought of, Kyoto was the center of an extraordinarily effete, decadent, and promiscuous culture which transformed love into an art form and beauty into a cult. Centuries later, when pleasure quarters were built where men could transcend their everyday lives and imagine themselves noblemen of leisure, the courtesans and geisha modeled the dreams which they sold on the romantic culture of the Heian princes.

The Heian period lasted from 794 to 1195, the time of the Vikings, King Canute, and William the Conqueror. It began with the construction of a beautiful new capital in an auspicious location, a wide bowl-shaped valley surrounded by tree-clad hills, with sparkling rivers bordering it to each side. The official name was Heian-kyo, the Capital of Peace and Tranquility. Poets called it the City of Purple Hill ... read full excerpt from Women of the Pleasure Quarters ebook