A nn M arie L. D avis . Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913

Imagining Prostitution in Modern Japan, 1850–1913 is a fascinating study of the way that prostitution was depicted in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan. The book begins in the years just before Commodore Perry arrived in Edo Bay and instituted the Ansei Treaties port system through gun boat diplomacy, ending more than two centuries of Japanese isolationism and flooding Japanese ports with foreign men. Under what came to be called “the unequal treaties,” the Tokugawa government agreed to build licensed pleasure quarters near settlements to cater to foreign traders and military men. The pleasure quarters functioned as a buffer from the local population: the quarters enabled the state to monitor the activities of foreigners, and the women who worked there distracted foreign men from pursuing sexual relations with local women—in theory, at least. The book follows the discourse on sex work through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,...

Ancient history · Art · Diplomacy · Economic history · Foreign policy · Isolationism · Pleasure · Political science · Politics · State (computer science) · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Psychology · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies