Note on “Jigoku� or Illicit Prostitutes.
The Jigoku: These women are the legitimate representatives of the ancient Yo-taka (night-walker). The origin of the word “Yo-taka� is given in an accepted Japanese encyclopœdia as follows: In the eighteenth century, there was, in Yoshida Street, T�ky� City, a house called the “Yotaka-ya� (the sign of the “Night-hawk�) where women repaired to be painted and decked out when the ravages of disease had made them unpresentable. Thus women who were full of disease were painted and made up to look like young girls, and old hags had their eyebrows blackened with charcoal and their hair fashionably dressed in order to add to their attractions. Many of these prostitutes had their noses eaten away by syphilis, so they had the damage repaired by coloured candle drippings. Among them were deaf, dumb, lame, persons suffering from amaurosis and other maladies owing to syphilis which preventing them from practising in a regular brothel. These whitened their dirty complexions with powder, and the syphilitic sores and wounds in their faces were filled up and concealed by cosmetics, while the handkerchiefs which they bound round their heads did the rest, and guarded against too close an inspection.
These women in their dirty, greasy cotton garments, haunted the public streets, and might be seen by the sickly light of the waning moon, flitting about like the spirits of the damned, hunting for victims. They were in the habit of carrying with them a piece of matting or a rug, the use of which was only too self-evident and requires no explanation. They would accost passers-by with the utmost effrontery, and the price of their favours was a few cash per night! During the period 1711 to 1735, the nuisance grew so bad that a large number of these women were compelled to become regular prostitutes, being forcibly handed over to the Yoshiwara by the Government. From 1711 to 1746, the number of women who had been forced by the Government to enter the Yoshiwara as regular courtesans, served their time there, and been released was, according to a return made the 27th March, 1746, just 246 women.