Nightless Cities: The pleasure quarters as timescapes in early modern Japan

Join us for our second talk in the series The Floating World: People and Landscapes in Edo with Dr Angelika Koch-Low on the topic Nightless Cities: The pleasure quarters as timescapes in early modern Japan introduced by Dr Erica Baffelli.

Early modern Japan’s prostitution quarters have frequently been described as a space for “play” (asobi), separate from the regulated normality of life in the burgeoning cities of the Edo period (1600-1868). This “otherness” also found expression with regard to time and the rhythms of life in the quarters, which became “nightless cities,” where “dawn was breaking as the sun set over the city,” as a comic poem from the period put it. Time was therefore essential in defining the identity of the pleasure quarters as a particular place in the popular imagination of the day; in other words, the pleasure quarters became a discrete and distinct “timescape” – a specific place that had a specific time. This is apparent in ukiyo-e woodblock prints and popular literature from the Edo period, which often focused on specific times of the day. In this talk, I will trace these time practices relevant to Edo-period pleasure quarter life in eighteenth and nineteenth century Japan and will discuss both diurnal rhythms, as well as time measurement—two aspects of time that were central to the trade plied in the quarters, as I will show

📅 Thursday 14 May 2026

⏰ 6:30pm - 8pm

📍the Whitworth

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Angelika Koch-Low

Angelika Koch-Low is University Lecturer in Premodern Japanese History and Culture at Leiden University. She specializes in Edo-period (1600-1868) culture and language, with a particular focus on the history of genders/sexualities and history of medicine. Her most recent publications include the online project Blood, Tears, and Samurai Love about an eighteenth-century manuscript detailing a samurai same-sex love affair (see https://japanpastandpresent.org/en/projects/blood-tears-and-samurai-love/about) and a chapter on “Sex in Eighteenth-Century Edo” for the Cambridge World History of Sexualities.

Erica Baffelli

Erica Baffelli is Professor of Japanese Studies at The University of Manchester (UK). She is interested in religion in contemporary Japan, with a focus on groups founded from the 1970s onwards. Her research projects and publication focus on religion in contemporary Japan; religion and media; new and minority religions; religion, gender and violence; and Buddhism and emotions. She currently PI on a Leverhulme Research Project on "Fear and Belonging in Minority Buddhist Communities" (2023-2027).

About the venue

The Whitworth is a venue with level access throughout, and facilities to support you during your visit. Alongside this our visitor team will be on hand to assist you in the gallery. Find out more about planning your visit to the Whitworth and accessibility information for you.

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(Image credit: Beneath the Great Wave_ Hokusai, Hiroshige, and ukiyo-e print, c.1830-32)

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