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What is Houkan/Taikomochi all about?

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"Taikomochi" is an Japanese traditional entertainer, the role of whom is to entertain guests at Enseki (banquet) through their erotic storytelling and performing arts to make the atmosphere of the banquet merry and varied.

Taikomochi Arai's instantaneous performance of mimicking "Ebisusama", one of the Japanese traditional seven deities of good fortune photo taken in 2001/presented by courtesy of Kadokawa Shoten Publishing

You may be interested in knowing the reason why Taikomochi have trained themselves in erotic storytelling and performing arts for entertaining purposes. Japan, except in recent years, has long been an agricultural country focusing on rice cultivation with food security as its people's most important concern because of their failure to carry out farm work according to the seasons meaning their resultant failure to pass through the winter with food running out.

The food, if derived from vegetables, is obtained as a result of their flowering with pollens from the anthers transferred to the stigma to produce fruits and if derived from animals, is multiplied by coupling between their male and female counterparts. Therefore, Japanese people in ancient times considered these vegetables' and animals' activities as the most beautiful and important to allow them to secure food and obtain food sources for the following year and transfer them to their next generation, thereby stabilizing their living and contributing to the prosperity of their descendants; they thought such erotic activities to lead to their happiness.

In ancient Japan, where people in each community worked hard together in a decent and serious manner on usual days, they had holidays on rare occasions to felicitate their temporarily finished farm work together in the community by releasing their usual decency and seriousness and entertaining themselves, while eating delicious food and drinking to gain strength for their farm work starting the next day in what originated as Enkai (banquet), in which they were allowed to enjoy erotic storytelling and performing arts presented as the profession, which has been handed down from generation to generation.

The performing art of Taikomochi (formally called "Houkan"), who existed earlier than Geisha, is based on Japanese cultures and features cultivated over a long period of time, developing into an entertaining art figuratively representing Japan's history and culture, by means of which Taikomochi can entertain customers, who have refined and cultured tastes of the times, in an unobtrusive and auxiliary manner so that each of the customers may always play the leading role in the entertainment scene, forgetting his usual work and entertaining himself to his heart's content.

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Taikomochi are different from Otokoshi.

I have occasionally noticed Taikomochi mistaken for Otokoshi, the role of whom is to help Maiko wear their kimono and accompany them on occasions such as "Misedashi" where they make their debut at Ozashiki and "Erikae" (collar change) where they complete their apprenticeship to become Geiko (Geisha) with the collar of their under-kimono changed in color from red to white to assist them in paying courtesy visits to the persons they are indebted to. Otokoshi, who serve as assistants for Maiko and are not allowed to sit at Ozashiki with them, are completely different from Taikomochi.

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