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The Making of Modern Japan

women from the stage and ordered them conned to their quarters in the licensed section. Next came troupes of young boys in their stead. Homosexuality was prevalent among samurai during the wars, as it was among Buddhist priests, and before long samurai were no less rambunctious at stage performances, ghting over the youths. The shogun Iemitsu invited command performances of kabuki particularly toward the end of his life, but after his death in 1651 the bakufu banned all kabuki for a time. It also, less successfully, forbade homosexuality among samurai. The notion of male entertainers was not limited to the stage. In Genroku times male specialists in dancing, music, and repartee were common, and it was only in the mid-eighteenth century that women who were trained in these arts, tutored from an early age and organized by house, became known as geisha, persons of talent. There were initially several terms denoting such entertainers, but the term geisha seems to have become standard in both Kyoto and Edo after the 1750s. Geisha were prepared for their craft through years of apprenticeship and drill in singing, dancing, poetry, witty conversation, and party games. These were in a sense upper-class accomplishments, and women so prepared commanded skills that could equip them for many years of service and, frequently, liaison with clients or patrons. In practice a host, planning an evening of entertainment, would make reservations for space, food, drink, and entertainment with one of the many meeting houses that were to be found in pleasure quarters like Gion in Kyoto or Akasaka in Edo. These handsome houses in turn sent out to specialist restaurants for food and drink and summoned the entertainers. This would be an expensive evening, for after the party the host was expected to leave a generous gratuity in addition to payment. Geisha charges became calibrated in terms of sticks of incense, which burned about four to one hour. The system thus became highly structured, and employers and teachers set and maintained high standards of achievement. Late-eighteenth-century masters of the color print delighted in portraying these entertainers. By then women had come to play a central role in entertainment, spicing evenings of food and drink with their clever repartee.24 The Genroku stage, however, became and would remain a male world. When kabuki reappeared all roles were played by men. Specialists in womens roles were required to shave the front part of their head in samurai fashion in hopes of making them less sexually desirable, but printmakers showed this did not succeed either. Guidebooks with rankings of actors were closely modeled on those for courtesans. By the 1680s actors were graded in three to six ranks according to skill. Now came plays adapted from military tales, puppet drama of an earlier day. By Genroku times a few drama, and the classic No