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037 Sailortown
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Sailortown,
Titel:
Sailortown
Naam uitgever:
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. - E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
Jaar van uitgave:
1997
Omschrijving:
Liedtekst en Liedtekst verklaring
Aantal pagina's:
360
Taal:
Engels
Plaats van uitgave:
London & Newe York
Auteur:
Stan Hugill
ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN SAILORTOWNS
self-contained brothel-citadels. The interiors of the houses were divided by sliding screens, each room being one of so many 'mats', and a rough unpainted wooden staircase led the way to the upper rooms. Many had a sort of open-air patio in their centres, an area of little gardens, rock lanterns, little bridges, and model Fuji-yamas. The jorö or prostitutes were of many kinds and prices, from the low-class mawashi-joro, who handled a dozen men at a time in as many rooms, up to the Oiran Satna, who was Queen of the Prostitutes. The whole set-up was one full of ritual. Little pyramids of salt to ward off evil spirits were placed at the doors of each room, and of course all seamen had to discard their footwear when entering these halls of vice. The dress of the girls consisted of several beautiful kimonos all held together by a large brocaded sash called an obi, but, instead of being tied at the back, as is customary in the case of ordinary women and Geisha, it was knotted in a special manner in the front. The girls, while awaiting custom, sat on small cushions, looking
out through wooden bars facing the street, and beckoning in the curious Japanese manner—which seems to signify, to Westerners, 'scram'—to paraders outside. Great figures of lucky cats beckoning in the same manner, along with statues of Inari, the Fox-goddess, adorned the entrance halls or genkas, where would sit the Gyütarö, or pimp, in a little box, inviting men to partake of these beauties. The faces of the girls would be covered with heavy white powder and the bottom lip only painted, but their hair-styles were the most elegant part of their get-up. These were a mass of whorls and convolutcs, with kansashi, flower-pins, and combs bristling from each top-knot. The girls had a mama-san or duenna over them although she was usu- ally called the Hikite-baba, that is 'the Old Woman who leads by the hand'. The famous Yokohama kashi-zashiki referred to as Number Nine, sometime in the nineties, was moved to Yamate or the Bluff. It took over the old Hotel Japan, and lasted until the 1923 Earth- quake when it was destroyed. Hyögö, alongside Kobe, had one of the licensed quarters popular
with the early seamen. It was called the Fukuwara and occupied quite a large area of the port. It had been built on the site of a castle of the once-famous Taira clan. In 1868 the foreign legations left Osaka, where the Concession was,
so as to dodge the battles of the Civil War, and took up residence in Kobe. Although Osaka remained a great sailing-ship port right up to the end of sail, very few seamen ever got ashore there. But in Kobe and Hyögö, in the seventies and eighties, the seamen often hit terra firma, many tars paying off with the stays'l-downhaul in the latter port. In time Kobe became the port most popular with British seamen on the Japanese coast. One of its tea-houses, frequented by seamen around the turn of the century, was called the Happy Gardens, and here Jack could drink tea, whiskey, or sake', that is Japanese rice-wine, 307
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Organisatie: Shanty Nederland
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