Description
Book SynopsisTraces the social history of early modern Japan's sex trade, from its beginnings in seventeenth-century cities to its apotheosis in the nineteenth-century countryside. Drawing on legal codes, diaries, town registers, petitions, and criminal records, this title describes how the work of selling women transformed communities across the archipelago.
Trade Review"An important book... Illuminates governance and economic change in early modern Japan... Highly recommended." -- S. A. Hastings, Purdue University Choice "Vivid and engaging... A compelling and meticulously researched piece on the evolving place of prostitutes in Early Modern Japanese culture." -- Sam Bieler, Urban Institute Criminal Law & Crim Justice Bks / Criminal Justice Abstracts "Fascinating and often tragic... Stanley's writing style is both exact and fresh... This book satisfies more than the academic." -- Kris Kosaka, Hokkaido International School Japan Times "An exceptionally sophisticated and extensive study ... A careful and nuanced retelling ... lively, insightful, and unique." -- David Eason Monumenta Nipponica
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword, Matthew H. Sommer Acknowledgments A Note on Currency and Prices Introduction Part One: Regulation and the Logic of the Household 1. Adulterous Prostitutes, Pawned Wives, and Purchased Women: Female Bodies as Currency 2. Creating "Prostitutes": Benevolence, Profit, and the Construction of a Gendered Order 3. Negotiating the Gendered Order: Prostitutes as Daughters, Wives, and Mothers Part Two: Expansion and the Logic of the Market 4. From Household to Market: Child Sellers, "Widows," and Other Shameless People 5. Glittering Hair Ornaments and Barren Fields: Prostitution and the Crisis of the Countryside 6. Tora and the "Rules of the Pleasure Quarter" Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
