Maruyama in Nagasaki was a pleasure quarter created around 1642 by gathering the brothels scattered through the town. In the Edo period, while the shogunate kept the country closed, Nagasaki was the only trading port open to the Dutch and the Chinese. So the courtesans of Maruyama were allowed to visit not only Japanese guests but also the people of the Dutch trading post on Dejima and the Chinese merchants in the Chinese quarter.
Maruyama was counted with Shimabara in Kyoto and Yoshiwara in Edo as one of the three great pleasure quarters of Japan, and it was even said, "If you don't go and play at Maruyama in Nagasaki, there's no point being born." In The Eternal Storehouse of Japan, Ihara Saikaku wrote, "If there were no place called Maruyama in Nagasaki, the gold and silver of the Kamigata would get home safely." That is, without Maruyama, the money of Kamigata merchants who came to Nagasaki on business would be carried home intact.
Yonosuke too, in his wanderings through the provinces, traveled all the way to Maruyama in Nagasaki. In the town of Nagasaki, overflowing with foreign goods, the Maruyama courtesans adorned themselves in Chinese brocade and rare imported things. In that exotic pleasure quarter, Yonosuke burned with new love once again.
In Maruyamacho in Nagasaki, the restaurant Kagetsu (once the brothel Hikitaya) still stands, and along with a pillar said to bear a sword cut left by Sakamoto Ryoma, it carries the bustle of former days into the present.