There is one figure without whom the traditional culture of Kyoto cannot be told: the tayu.
Splendid robes and elaborate hair ornaments — from her appearance she is sometimes taken for an oiran. Yet the tayu followed a different history and a different culture.
What is a tayu?
The tayu held the highest rank in Kyoto’s Shimabara. Beauty was never the whole of it. She was accomplished in waka poetry, calligraphy, tea, incense, dance and music — a broad command of the arts and of learning.
She was regarded not merely for her place in the licensed quarter, but as a performing artist and a woman of culture who embodied Japanese tradition.
Tayu culture, nurtured in Shimabara
Shimabara was a licensed quarter established in Kyoto in the early Edo period. As Japan’s oldest officially licensed quarter, it drew members of the imperial family, court nobles, feudal lords, wealthy merchants and men of letters, and a refined culture grew up there.
Even within it, the tayu was exceptional. Only a woman who had mastered deep learning and courtly manners was permitted to take the title.
The tayu received guests of the highest standing, entertaining them and meeting them through art and culture.
For the district itself, see About Shimabara.
How she differs from the oiran
The tayu and the oiran are often confused, yet their backgrounds and cultures are distinct.
The oiran developed chiefly in Yoshiwara, in Edo, as the highest rank there. The tayu, by contrast, developed in Kyoto’s Shimabara as a bearer of traditional culture.
The difference shows in dress and bearing. A tayu tied her obi at the front, in a knot said to trace the character for “heart,” and walked in the graceful uchi-hachimonji — an inward figure-eight step that never shows the soles of her clogs. Each gesture carries an aesthetic particular to Shimabara.
Elaborate hair and robes
One of the things that most distinguishes the tayu is her elaborate hair and dress.
By tradition, the Shimabara tayu dressed her own hair into a Japanese coiffure, adorned with many kanzashi hairpins and combs. The magnificent uchikake robe, and the distinctive front-tied obi, are known as hallmarks of tayu culture.
The tayu carried on today
Tayu culture lives on in Kyoto even now, kept alive through traditional ceremonies, offerings at temples and shrines, and tea gatherings that carry the appeal of Japanese culture into the present.
It is not only the splendour of the dress. The spirit that honours courtesy and art is the true heart of tayu culture.
The tayu was the highest-ranking woman nurtured in Kyoto’s Shimabara — beauty, learning and art held together in one figure. In her, the traditional culture and aesthetic sense of Japan are still alive. To learn about the tayu is also to touch the rich culture that Kyoto has raised.