Before Shimabara existed, Kyoto's courtesan district had already been uprooted twice. The first licensed quarter opened in 1589, with the permission of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, then relocated when the Edo period began, and relocated once more to its final home in 1640. The name Shimabara itself may trace to the large gate that resembled the gate of Shimabara Castle in Hizen, or it may reference the then-recent Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-38, a nod to the chaotic circumstances of the district's founding. Shimabara was one of three licensed pleasure districts established by the Tokugawa shogunate across Japan's major cities, alongside Yoshiwara in Edo and Shinmachi in Osaka. Within these walled quarters, a rigid hierarchy governed everything. The district was known simply as 'the quarter,' distinguishing its higher-class residents from the unlicensed women who worked throughout the broader city.

The heart of Shimabara is Sumiya, which operated continuously for 345 years before closing in 1985. Today it functions as a museum, and it is the only surviving ageya -- a restaurant and entertainment establishment from the pleasure quarters -- remaining anywhere. The building is actually three structures merged over time: the central section dates to the founding in 1641, the north wing was acquired around 1673-80, and the south wing was added in 1787. This explains Sumiya's unusually broad street frontage, which sets it apart from the typically narrow architecture of the district. The pine great hall was lost to fire in 1925, but the rest of the original fabric survives. On the first floor, a banquet hall capable of seating a hundred guests faces a raked gravel garden and a trellised pine tree, now in its second generation at roughly a hundred years old. A sword rack and chest sit near the entrance -- guests surrendered their katana upon arrival to prevent violence.

The second floor of Sumiya tells time in layers of soot. Three linked front rooms, each designed differently, could be joined by removing their partition doors for large gatherings. Paintings on the partitions have absorbed centuries of candlelight smoke. In one room, the art remains uncleaned, the images barely visible beneath the dark patina of age. In another, the paintings were cleaned about a century ago, showing an intermediate state. More recent paintings glow with unstained color. The highest-ranked room sits at the back, overlooking the garden, away from the festive noise below. It once commanded views of the western mountains and Arashiyama, though the JR rail line now blocks that vista. This room is decorated in mother-of-pearl inlay in a Chinese-inspired style popular around 1800 and is the only surviving room of its kind. Unusually, the artist signed the work -- a mark of exceptional skill and prestige.

Sumiya drew an extraordinary cross-section of Edo-period society. Haiku poets gathered in its salons, and many of their poems remain in the archives. The artist Buson's painting Plum Blossoms still hangs among the collection. The Shinsengumi, the late Edo-period police force, frequented Sumiya with such enthusiasm that they ran up enormous bills, eventually prompting their leadership to ban them from returning. The sword gouges on the pillar date from their visits. On at least one occasion, a leader narrowly avoided assassination inside the building, only to be killed on the way home. Yet the same rooms also hosted reformers: Saigo Takamori, a central figure in the Meiji Restoration, used Sumiya for fund-raising parties. By the late Edo period, Sumiya had already evolved from a pleasure house into an exclusively non-sexual venue for dining and entertainment.

Prostitution was outlawed in Japan in 1958, and Shimabara closed as a red-light district that year. It continued briefly as a geisha district, but by the 1970s no geisha remained registered here. Today, a handful of tayuu -- a distinct tradition of courtesans who predate geisha and never entirely vanished from Shimabara -- continue to perform in the district, registered as a special category of geisha. Wachigaiya, the other surviving tea house, still operates as a private venue where geisha from other districts and tayuu perform, closed to casual visitors. The streets of Shimabara were repaved with traditional fieldstones in the early 2010s, restoring a sense of the old atmosphere. Stone markers trace the outlines of what once was: seven in all, indicating where the west gate stood, where the dance hall rose, where the boundary of the quarter ended and the ordinary city began.