In Kyoto, narrow roads that come to a dead end are called “rōji.” This street doesn’t have an outlet so in Japanese it is called “Yakushi Rōji.”

If we look back in time, this road was called “Yakushi Zushi” and “utabikuni” were said to live here. Originally these were women who were ordained as nuns and would sing explanations of the paintings of the hell realm in their songs. These illustrations would depict both the underworld and the world of the living. The job of these women was to analyze the paintings. However, they also had another hidden job, to be “women of the night.”

There was no way these women could survive on just singing the tales of paintings all day now could they? As the entertainment industry grew more rampant around the city, the utabikuni also took on their second jobs. In this space where the sacred and the vulgar came together and there were people coming to visit the temples or just passing through, there was a lot of potential to spread the word of the faith and make a living. In another light, similar to how those shunned from society found safety from the main streets in these alleys, maybe these women used Yakushi Zushi Alley as their sanctum from the outside world.