Page Menu. The short answer: " Oiran " is a word for "courtesan" that became fashionable in Yoshiwara, the licensed pleasure quarter of Edo, in the 's. There were many ranks of courtesans, whose titles and popularity shifted constantly, but to give you a sample of the rankings, this is the list of oiran-level ranks from a Yoshiwara guidebook in The very title originated as a name for the courtesans who were headlining at particular theaters.
It was originally a palace lady's rank, but can be glossed as "leading lady" or "diva. Other ranks of oiran became the queens of the Yoshiwara. There are no more women of other ranks. Long before prostitution was banned in , courtesans went out of style, losing their place to the geisha. Their traditions staggered along for a while, ossified and irrelevant, but in the end, their world faded away and was replaced by modern soaplands.
To go to the list of courtesans' names, click here. A courtesan went through several changes of name in her lifetime. When she became a kamuro, a child attendant, the brothel owner gave her a simple, childlike name. If she found a good patron and was promoted to an official rank, she took on a full-fledged professional name. As long as the courtesan was promoted or demoted within the lower ranks of oiran, she probably didn't change her name with each change of status.
However, if she was promoted to the top one or two ranks, whatever they were at the time, she entered an entirely different universe. Top-ranking courtesans were artists just like actors and painters.
The identity and reputation of the establishment were keyed to the history of the names it possessed. The passing of a name from one woman to her successor was the primary means of maintaining continuity and sustaining the prestige of the house. Hockley, p. When a woman became a high-ranking courtesan, she stepped into two nested sets of expectations. The first set was the behavior expected of a top courtesan, that embodiment of femininity who was too delicate and refined to eat in a man's presence, but sharp enough to cut him down in a battle of wits and brave enough to stand in the garden of a burning house without panicking.
