Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have ever found this book, let along read it, but when Mamapan (aka Hanfugirl) asks you to read something, you read it. And I’m glad she recommended this book because I never realised how many women have been unfairly classified as prostitutes throughout history.

As the title makes it clear, Freewomen, Patriarchal Authority and the Accusation of Prostitution examines how women in different periods of time and in different parts of the world have been called prostitutes because they are freewomen, a woman the book defines as “a female who is not under patriarchal authority. That is, for whatever reason, she has no father (or is not under a father’s authority) and no husband (or is not under a husband’s authority).” The freewoman is not only not under patriarchal authority, she is often a culture bearer, sexually active, but is not a prostitute, in that she does not sell her body for money. The women examined in this book are:

• Arimtu (Ancient Mesopotamian)
• Hetaira (Ancient Greece)
• Cortigiana (Renaissance Italy)
• Geisha (pre-modern to modern Japan)
• Devadasi (from 300BCE to modern India)

While Budin makes a strong case that all the women in these five countries and time periods are not prostitutes (although they may have been driven to prostitution by the accusation of prostitution or have been conflated with prostitutes), the strongest chapters in the books are the ones on Arimtu and Hetaira, which makes sense because according to her page on the Archaeological Institute of America, Budin’s focus is typically Ancient Greece and the Near East. I really enjoyed how she looked at the interpretation of words and how an uncharitable interpretation can lead to a misreading of who these women really were.

I’ve not read up on the Cortigiana or the Devadasi, but I have read up on courtesans in Japan so I want to talk a bit about them. Going by the Notes and Bibliography, Budin is limited to sources in English, and this may be why in her history of the geisha, she talks about the imayo being sung in the Heian period and the Shirabyoushi but does not mention the Yuujo (遊女). From what I read in 中世遊女 by 辻浩和, in medieval Japan (mid 9th to 16th century), there was a class of women called Yujo which be subdivided into three types: Yuujo, Shirabyoushi, and Kugutsuko. This subdivision is based on the type of art they specialised in but basically as a whole, before the Kamakura period, the Yuujo were valued for both their artistic beauty and their bodies but from the latter half of the Kamakura period onwards, they were increasingly seen as prostitutes, possibly because the imayou starting falling out of favour, with only the Shirabyoushi retaining their status as artists. I thought this rise and fall based on the popularity of the art form was interesting and I’m hoping to be able to learn more about this aspect and how the Yuujo connect to Oiran.

Anyway, I’ve digressed a bit but basically, I thought it was interesting that Budin also connects the Geisha to Kabuki and the women who sang Imayo (I’m guessing these are the Yuujo) because that’s what I’ve been thinking while reading up on the Yuujo. I’m not really surprised that the Yuujo wasn’t discussed in depth because I think most of the research is in Japanese, and I think that there was a lot to talk about if we’re just looking at how the Geisha came to be seen as prostitutes anyway.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book! I’ve been quite narrowly focused on Japan for the Hanfugirl’s project, so it’s interesting (and also infuriating) to see how the same patterns have been repeating themselves throughout history and in various cultures.