Tokugawa Social Structure

Japan has a rich history and it is important to analyze the underlying social structures of gender within each time period to be able to get a better understanding. Specifically, Japan is known for their history of courtesans and the pleasure quarters. Because Japan was not a christianity dominated country, when Americans learned about Japanese culture, they believed that Japan was filled with erotic “sexual possibilities”. The pleasure quarters as portrayed in many literary works and artworks is very different from the realities of most pleasure workers. Tensions between the romanticization and vilification of courtesans revealed that the Tokugawa social hierarchies and ideologies mismatched the modernizing market economy as the country evolved

It placed people in a fixed stratus of the hierarchy but also organized gender within each class. Separating gender from the status hierarchy is impossible because the it was arranged in a way that “construction of status would not have been possible without the initial work of constituting households and establishing gendered divisions of power within them.” Men had authority over women within each stratus and the organization of the structure was roughly a ruling class, peasant class, and a merchant or artisan class. This hierarchy fit the agrarian economy that was influenced by Confucianism because it discouraged excessive consumption but it was not compatible to the booming market economy that began emerging in Tokugawa Japan. The delicate balance of power that relied heavily on each person in the hierarchy to be perfect aligned with their role was thrown off when commercial trade became more prominent and people were disregarding morals like frugality and

According to Confucianism, it is morally correct to uphold virtues of frugality and abstain from excessive consumption of goods. Luxury goods are prohibited and any form of decoration or ornamentation was not allowed. As the sex trade in Tokugawa Japan grew, courtesan fashion and hairstyles became more widespread. There was an inversion phenomenon where many women regardless of status or age were engaging in the “imitation of the courtesans' fashion and consumption patterns [which] blurred the line between the yujo and the respectable women of artisan and merchant classes.” Many people tried to define what characterizes a “respectable” women and the other but when courtesan trends became widespread, it was hard to clearly distinguish between the women. Ukiyo which means “floating world” was used to describe the urban lifestyle with emphasis on the pleasure-seeking aspects. Few felt that Ukiyo was a powerful way to protest the societal oppression of women in the social and political sphere but they were privileged enough to not actually be involved in working at the brothels and bathhouses. The reality for many of the women involved in the pleasure quarters was not so bright as it included lots of manual labor. Courtesans and other pleasure