Speaker 1
While Ochiba and Mariko find themselves on opposite sides of a brewing war in this episode, two other women in a very different corner of Japanese society come into focus, the women of the willow
Speaker 5
world. It was a mixture of entertainment like playing the shamisen, dancing, and so
Speaker 1
on. Historian Frederick Krynne's returns tell us understand the role of courtesans during the Sengoku period.
Speaker 5
This part of the show was one of my favorites because now we have that idea of the Geisha. It's a typical Japanese Geisha, but at the time Geisha's friends existing yet. And it was the start of what would later become the Geisha culture. So they had quite a function of entertainment. So it was not just a brothel as such, it was much more than that. It was totally a community of women. The courtes and of course were women, but also the leader of the group which was Ginn here were women. And at the end of the Sengoku periods, they started to change. First, it became more institutionalized. While in the Sengoku periods, there was much more freedom. And the women were much more independent. And you can get some colorful people, colorful figures like Ginn or Kiku.
Speaker 1
So I had a question about something that was always really interesting to me while we were writing the show, which was the names of the characters. We've seen several characters by now who've had different names growing up and then changed them like Ochiba. And I've noticed that consorts and wives have no kata added to their names like Kiri no kata and Ochiba no kata. Then there are some like Kiku or Ginn who exist in a different social class and obviously have very different kinds of names. So how did people choose their names or who chose them?
Speaker 5
Well, in the Sengoku period, how you say it's not that you have an administration, country and everyone is registered by name. So everyone was quite free to use the names they wanted to say. If you have persons, very highly ranked women at the time, it was not polite to utter their names. So they had to use a euphemism and mostly they used the place where they lived. And no kata means the direction. So it's really a euphemism. It's the person who lives there. For example, if you take Ochiba, Ochiba means fallen leaves. So it could be that the room where she lives was called the room of the fallen leaves. And that's why they call her Ochiba no kata. The lady who lives in the room of the fallen leaves. There's so much fun history in this episode.
