Venue: Celetná 20 (FF UK), Room 425

Is sex a vice or a need? In early modern Japan, it was usually viewed as the latter. Therefore, facilities were provided for the foreign traders who had to conduct business in Japan without the
company of their own women. Prostitution took on distinctive characteristics in early modern Nagasaki as result of its unique clientele, attributes that highlight shogunal attitudes toward sex and
foreigners, and reveal the importance of these women in the economy of Nagasaki and as conduits between cultures.

Martha Chaiklin is Assistant Professor at Zayed University, United Arab Emirates. She holds a PhD in History from Leiden University in the Netherlands and M.A. in Japanese History from Seijo University and M.A. in Asian Studies from University of Michigan. Author of books and articles on Japan and the East India Companies, her most recent book is Ivory and the Aesthetics of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Palgrave, 2014). She is also the editor of Mediated by Gifts: Politics and Society in Japan, 1350–1850 (Brill, 2016).