130601-0016 - Takashima-cho Brothels

Takashima-cho (高島町) in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture. On the right is Jinpuro (新風楼, also Shinpuro), a well-known brothel in Yohohama’s Takashimacho red light district. It was known internationally as “Nectarine No.9.”
Jinpuro was opened in Yokohama’s Takashima-cho in 1872 (Meiji 5). In 1885 (Meiji 18) it relocated to the pleasure quarters in Magane-cho and Eiraku-cho, while a branch for foreigners was opened in Nanaken-machi, Kanagawa.
The brothel ceased business after its destruction in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 (Taisho 12).
Rudyard Kipling, who visited Japan in 1889 (Meiji 22), mentioned Jinpuro in his 1894 (Meiji 27) poem “McAndrew’s Hymn”: “Blot out the wastrel hours of mine in sin when I abode. Jane Harrigan’s an’ Number Nine, the Reddick an’ Grant Road”.
Tentatively attributed to Shuzaburo Usui because of the style of the negative number.