Junseok Lee, Class of 2025, Industrial and Labor Relations

This blogpost was written as part of the 2022 First-Year Writing Seminar, “The Lure of Leisure: A Global History of Modern Tourism,” taught by History graduate student Aimée Plukker. 

Welcome to Yoshicho is a short, undated leaflet written in English, and published by the Yoshicho Geishagirls Office. The leaflet informs the reader about “Geisha girls” in Yoshicho, “one of the large gay quarters in the Nihonbashi ward,” which is now part of the modern Chuo ward in Tokyo. Welcome to Yoshicho contains a short description of the Yoshicho area and the geishas working there, and a list of common English phrases and their Japanese translation.

Japan’s defeat in the Second World War led to the allied occupation of the country, and American troops were omnipresent on Japanese soil. Japanese officials, privy to the atrocities committed by Japanese forces overseas worried that a similar retribution was headed for Japanese women and sought to employ prostitutes to act as a barrier against sexual violence from the mostly American soldiers who were in Japan. Organizations such as the Recreation and Amusement Association were created to provide places for deployed soldiers to meet Japanese prostitutes. Many details in the leaflet indicate that it was meant for American soldiers; the subtitle saying “For visitors to Japan”, the short introduction stating that the geishas were learning English, and one of the English phrases translated to phonetic Japanese: “My name is John.” The prostitutes and the brothels in which they worked advertised these women as “geisha girls”. Despite this, it is unclear whether the “geisha girls” portrayed in the leaflet were actual geisha who sold sex, or were simply comfort women labeled as geishas. The backside of the leaflet refers to a Yoshicho Geishagirls Office, which was likely a temporary organization made by the local Japanese that administered the connecting of geisha to American guests.

Source

Welcome to Yoshicho, undated, Box 7, Folder 5, Travel Brochure and Mapp Collection, #6591, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

Bibliography 

Kawaguchi, Y. (2010). Butterfly’s sisters: The Geisha in western culture. Yale University Press.

Fujimoto, T. (2011). The story of the geisha girl. Northwestern University Press.