These are an exceedingly low class of women and their houses are frequented by the riff-raff and scum of the neighbourhood exclusively.

Type of Dress worn by a Courtesan.

In this neighbourhood there is some strange slang employed. A samurai—for example—is called “Yama San;� a priest “Gen San;� a merchant “Ch�nin San;� a young man “Musuko San;� and other queer nicknames are given to the various classes of people who visit the locality. These women used to lie in wait for passers-by, and pulling in any likely patron they could find would slam to the door. A few minutes afterwards the door would reopen and the guest depart, and this process would be repeated ad infinitum.

In a humorous work by Ikku called the “Sato Kanoko Shina Sadame� (里鹿��定) the tayū, k�shi, sancha, zashiki-mochi and heya-mochi are wittily compared to flowers, as follows:—Tayū being scarce nowadays may be compared to the cherry-blossom, for as no other flowers can equal the cherry in point of colour and fragrance, in like manner the beauty and loveliness of the tayū surpasses that of all courtesans. K�shi-j�ro, being mild and gentle, are like the single-petaled cherry-flower booming luxuriantly, for they impose no sense of restraint on anyone. The prosperity of the Sancha and Zashiki-mochi may be likened to the red plum blossom (k�bai) because its colour is so deep (by means of a double entendre this means that the amours of these women are very numerous).

The heya-mochi are like the white plum-blossom, pale in colour but very odoriferous. (!!!).

The following is a chronological table of the various changes of class and nomenclature of the joro:—

Kamuro.
(Young Female Pages.)

It is mentioned in the “Yoshiwara Daizen� (�原大全) that Kaburo (or Kamuro) was the name of young females in the Imperial Court who had the greater part of their head shaven and only a long kind of scalp-lock left hanging. The little girls who attended to the courtesans in ancient times were dressed in imitation of the child attendants formerly attached to the Court, and were styled Kiri-Kamuro. Their portraits are often seen in pictures of the Tosa and Hishikawa ukiy�-e (realistic pictures) schools. The clothes of the Kamuro were cha-j�ro named Miyakoji, belonging to the Naka-Ōmiya in chiefly made of white bleached linen, on which was dyed a pinetree pattern (waka-matsu no some-moy�), or of dyed calico.