The Women of the Pleasure Quarter: Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Floating World.

2e hands > Minimale gebruikssporen

Swinton explores in her introductory essay the ideal of the "floating world" associated with the women of the pleasure quarters-a metaphor of freedom and of living for the moment, exalted in novels, guidebooks and prints.

Anthropologist Liza Dalby looks at the isolated lives of high-class prostitutes who found a route out of poverty.

Kazue Edamatsu Campbell, a Japanese-language specialist at Boston University, decodes the artificial style of speech used by courtesans.

Mark Oshima, an expert on Kabuki theater, explains how the pleasure quarter-a veritable pressure cooker of desire, greed, love and pride-provided grist for Kabuki plays, and he focuses on male actors (onnagata) who specialized in female roles, projecting a soft, cultured ideal of femininity.