The Unprecedented Views of Wada Yoshiko: Reconfiguring Pleasure Work in Yūjo monogatari (1913)

Abstract

One mid-winter morning in 1913, some six months after the death of the Meiji Emperor on July 30, 1912, newspapers across Japan announced that “an unprecedented manuscript” had arrived in bookstores everywhere. The book, Yūjo monogatari: kukai 4nen no jikken kokuhaku (A prostitute’s tale: Experimental confessions of a four-year abyss), was a detailed memoir written by Wada Yoshiko, a sex worker from one of Tokyo’s largest pleasure quarters in the district of Naitō-Shinjuku.1 Newspapers nationwide publicized the book with overwhelmingly positive ads and reviews. Leading the way was Tokyo’s bestselling journal, the Hōchi Shimbun, which carried a front-page advertisement heralding Wada’s tale as an extraordinary yet reliable behind-the-scenes narrative by a prostitute.2 News about her book traveled far and wide, resulting in a long procession of visitors to her brothel in the ensuing weeks. As Wada observed in her sequel, the Yūjo monogatari, zoku-hen: kukai 4nen no kinen (A prostitute’s tale, part II: Commemorating a four-year abyss), journalists lined up to interview her, patrons came to congratulate her, and aspiring customers came to set eyes upon her.3 Wada’s books open a unique window onto the lived experiences of a licensed sex worker in the heart of early twentieth-century Tokyo. Although readers do not learn all her true thoughts or feelings, her books do contain her personal observations and experiences, and also reveal the consequences of the choices she made in conveying her story to the public. Moreover, the success of her two volumes provides rare insights into the changing figure of the prostitute in Japanese print culture. The media fanfare over