From the Edo-period works of Chikamatsu Monzaemon and Saikaku Iharu, to modern texts by Nagai Kafu, Tanizaki Junichiro, and Nobel-prize winner Kawabata Yasunari, the Japanese literary canon is filled with works about the demimonde, or karyukai. After years of being closed off to Western influences on both its literature and social policy, Japan fully opened up to the West in the late nineteenth century and finally abolished legalized prostitution in 1956. Until then, the idea of a space set aside for sexuality, like Tokyo's Yoshiwara district, had been a powerful catalyst in structuring...