Alan Ilagan

“Right from the founding of the pleasure quarters in the seventeenth century, there were jesters prancing about, playing tricks, doing risque sketches, and singing ribald or melancholy songs to the accompaniment of the shamisen. They kept the mood upbeat and the jokes coming. Instead of entertaining their clients by singing and dancing, the top courtesans would sit regally in their sumptuous robes surrounded by their entourage of child attendants and junior courtesans. Male geisha and younger courtesans took over the job of performing. Some, like Shakespeare’s fools, were the best friends of powerful men, dispensing advice and flattery along with songs and buffoonery. Others were distinctly tricky.

“We jesters have to drink when we’d rather not,” they sigh. “We have to praise the tiresome little songs of our patrons, hear ourselves called fools by real blockheads, force a smile if we’re offended, and tell a roomful of people what even a woman would keep secret. No, there’s nothing so bitter as to entertain for a living.”" – Lesley Downer

How cruel the floating world

Its solaces how few ~

And soon my unmourned life

Will vanish with the dew.

     – Saikaku Ihara

Because they fall

We love them ~

The cherry blossoms.

In this floating world,

Does anything endure?

     – Ariwara no Narihira

“They knew that something that didn’t kill you didn’t make you stronger – it just nearly killed you. Then, quickly or slowly, you came back to your old self. Sometimes they couldn’t laugh off the disappointment or despair, making one or the other cry until there were no tears left.

Another thing they knew and shared and believed was that no one could really help anyone else, that sadness is solitude, but you could love someone, without reservation or fanfare, just love them, without expecting anything in return and, sometimes, it would be enough.”

- Whitney Otto

{For more visuals from The Talented Trickster Tour 2003: Reflections of a Floating World, please visit The Projects page.}