Oiran

Oiran (花魁) is a collective term for the highest-ranking courtesans in Japanese history, who were considered to be above common prostitutes (known as yūjo (遊女, lit. 'woman of pleasure')) for their more refined entertainment skills and training in the traditional arts. Divided into a number of ranks within this category, the highest rank of oiran were the tayū, who were considered to be set apart from other oiran due to their intensive training in the traditional arts and the fact that they lived and worked in Kyoto, the political capital of Japan, which remained the cultural heart of the country when the seat of political power moved to Tokyo.^[1] Though oiran by definition also engaged in prostitution, higher-ranking oiran had a degree of choice in which customers they took.^[2]

The term oiran originated in Yoshiwara, the red light district of Edo in the 1750s, and is applied to all ranks of high level courtesans in historical Japan.^[3]

The services of oiran were well known for being exclusive and expensive, with oiran typically only entertaining the upper classes of society, gaining the nickname keisei (lit. 'castle toppler') for their perceived ability to steal the hearts and match the wits of upper-class men. Many oiran became celebrities both inside and outside of the pleasure quarters, and were commonly depicted in ukiyo-e woodblock prints and in kabuki theatre plays. Oiran were expected to be well versed in the traditional arts of singing, classical dance and music, including the ability to play the kokyū and the koto, and were also expected to converse with clients in upper class and formalised language.

Though regarded as trend setting and fashionable women at the historic height of their profession, this reputation was later usurped in the late 18th through 19th centuries by geisha, who became popular among the merchant classes for their simplified clothing, ability to play short, modern songs known as kouta on the shamisen, and their more fashionable expressions of contemporary womanhood and companionship for men,^[4] which mirrored the tastes of the extremely wealthy, but for lower class merchants, who constituted the majority of their patronage.

The popularity and numbers of oiran continued to decline steadily throughout the 19th century, before prostitution was outlawed in Japan in 1957. However, the tayū remaining in Kyoto's Shimabara district were allowed to continue practising the cultural and performing arts traditions of their profession, and were declared a "special variety" of geisha.^[5] In the present day, a handful of tayū, who do not engage in prostitution as part of their role, continue to perform in Kyoto, alongside a number of oiran reenactors elsewhere in Japan who perform in reenactments of the courtesan parades known as oiran dōchū.^[6][7]