The World of the Pleasure Quarters in the Transitional Period from Early Modern to Modern Japan

Abstract

This chapter investigates yūkaku (pleasure quarters) built within treaty ports targeting foreigners in various Japanese cities at the end of the Tokugawa period through to the beginning of the Meiji period. Focusing on Yokohama, the chapter examines the development process, special characteristics, society (=spatial structure), and transformations within the pleasure quarter, revealing how the quarters themselves functioned as a remarkable impetus for urban development. The chapter also clearly demonstrates the ways in which the drive to spread yūkaku fused with the logic of developmentalism in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji periods in ways that both built on as well as partially overrode existing practices and that reordered relationships between the authorities, commercial developers, and the women engaged in the sale of sex in important ways.