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Eunuchs

First off, in case you are confused, the photograph above is of a male Eunich. A eunuch is a castrated man; the term usually refers to those castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past. In ancient China castrationwas both a traditional punishment (until the Sui Dynasty) and a means of gaining employment in the Imperial service. At the end of the Ming Dynasty there were 70,000 eunuchs in the Imperial palace. The value of such employment—certain eunuchs gained immense power that may have superseded that of the prime ministers—was such that self-castration had to be made illegal. The number of eunuchs in Imperial employ had fallen to 470 in 1912, when their employment ceased

Eunuchs castrated before puberty were also valued and trained in several cultures for their exceptional voices, which retained a childlike and other-worldly flexibility and treble pitch. Such eunuchs were known as castrati. Unfortunately the choice had to be made at an age when the boy would not yet be able to consciously choose whether to sacrifice his sexual potency, and there was no guarantee that the voice would remain of musical excellence after the operation.

Castrati were young boys who were castrated (had their testicles removed) before they hit puberty, to ensure that their voices would not “break”. The result of the operation was that the boy would grow up being able to sing with the same voice as a boy soprano, but with the strength of a man. As the castrato’s body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that his epiphyses (bone-joints) did not harden in the normal manner. Thus the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity. The boys were often fed opium to make them unaware of the operation. In the image to the left we see the instrument used to castrate the boys.

Once castrated, the young boys were sent to conservatories. At the “Conservatorio di Sant’ Onofrio” in Napoli, during the 1780s, the work schedule was as follows: In the morning, one hour of singing difficult passages, one hour of literature and one hour of solfeggi in front of mirrors. In the afternoon, one half hour of music theory, one half hour of counterpoint on improvisation and one hour of literature.

The History of Castrati

The first castrati were reported in Spain around 1550 and their presence in the Rome Sistine Chapel Choir was reported to have started around 1565. The Spanish falsettisti ruled the Sistine Chapel. The falsettisti’s voices were more agile and had a richer sound. It has been debated that some of the Spanish falsettisti were castrati. The change from falsettisti to castrati came about because the castrato’s voice sounded more natural.

The earliest castrati known were Jacomo Spagnoletti (probably a Spaniard) and Martino, both of whom were admitted to the Sistine Chapel Choir in 1588. Other two good castrati were mentioned in the archives of 1599, the Italians Pietro Folignani and Girolamo Rosini. By 1640, castrati were used throughout Italy despite much theological debate, the music need of the church always prevailing over anti-mutilation surgery. They were formally banned from the papal chapel by Pius X in 1903.

What do we know of Castrati

Many things are known about castrati. For example, they were not allowed to marry in church and sing in Lutheran churches. In France , Italian singers and castrati were not welcomed because of their excessive ornamentation and decadent life style. In the 17th and 18th century Italy , castrati were considered to be natural sopranos, whereas falsettisti, which would still possess all tokens of masculinity, were considered to have artificial voices. They were so treasured that, in 1625, all sopranos in the choir of the Sistine Chapel were castrati. In Bach’s time, there was already heavy competition between the clerical courts of Venice and Rome, so that the local opera theatres were ordered to engage the best castrati. At the peak of time, there were 4000 boys between the age of 7 and 9 castrated per year.

What did they sound like?

Castrati loathed their parents and families for allowing the surgical intervention. Domenico Mustafa’s family told him that, when he was a child, his testicles were eaten by a pig and he always swore he would kill his father for lying. Alessandro Moreschi was born into a large Roman Catholic family in the town of Monte Compatri, near Frascati. Baptised on the day of his birth, it is clear that his life was in danger. Perhaps he was born with an inguinal hernia, for which castration was still a “cure” in nineteenth-century Italy. Or he could have been castrated later, around 1865, which would have been more in line with the centuries-old practice of castrating vocally talented boys well before puberty. In any case, much later in life, he referred to his enjoying singing as a boy in the chapel of the Madonna del Castagno, just outside his native town.

Fortunately, Pope Leo XIII was a bit of a geek and he asked Thomas Edison to bring his new phonograph to the Cistene Chapel to record the choir. The choir master happened to be Alessandro Moreschi (image left), the last living true castrato. As a result of the meeting between Leo XIII and Edison’s aides, a series of recordings were made of Moreschi in 1908. While the quality is not the greatest, these recordings allow us to hear the true voice of a castrato.

Geishas

The full traditions of the Geisha have now been replaced with a modern system. OnceGeisha were plentiful in number. In 1900s, there were over 25,000 geisha. In the early1930s, there were 80,000 geisha. Most geisha were in Kyoto, the old capital city of Japan. Nowadays, there are less than 10,000 geisha left. In Tokyo, there are only 100geisha left. However, true geisha are much more rare. Modern geisha are not bought from poor families and brought into the geisha house as children. Becoming a geisha is now entirely voluntary, and women who are not the children of geisha can now become geisha. However the training remains as rigourous as before. Young girls have to be very committed to learn the art of traditional Japanese dancing, singing, music, and much more.

Traditional Geisha did not offer the services of prostitution, though some modern ones are rumored to.

Geisha

Dueling

Duelling

As practised from the 15th to 20th centuries in Western societies, a duel was a consensual fight between two people, with matched deadly weapons, in accordance with rules explicitly or implicitly agreed upon, over a point of honor, usually accompanied by a trusted representative (who might themselves fight), and in contravention of the law.

The duel usually developed out of the desire of one party (the challenger) to redress a perceived insult to his honor. The goal of the duel was not so much to kill the opponent as to gain “satisfaction,” i.e., to restore one’s honor by demonstrating a willingness to risk one’s life for it.

Duels could be fought with some sort of sword or, from the 18th Century on, with pistols. For this end special sets of duelling pistols were crafted for the wealthiest of noblemen. After the offence, whether real or imagined, the offended party would demand “satisfaction” from the offender, signalling this demand with an inescapably insulting gesture, such as throwing the glove before him, hence the phrase “throwing down the gauntlet”.

Concubinage

The photograph here shows a group of concubines standing behind their protectors (usually Eunuchs). Concubinage is the state of a woman or youth in an ongoing, quasi-matrimonial relationship with a man of higher social status. Typically, the man has an official wife in addition to one or more concubines. Concubines have limited rights of support from the man, and their offspring are publicly acknowledged as the man’s children, albeit of lower status than children born by the official wife or wives.

Historically, concubinage was frequently voluntary (by the girl and/or her family’s arrangement), as it provided a measure of economic security for the woman involved. Involuntary, or servile, concubinage sometimes involves sexual slavery of one member of the relationship, typically the woman.

Seppuku

Seppuku (Hara-Kiri) was a key part of bushido, the code of the samurai warriors; it was used by warriors to avoid falling into enemy hands, and to attenuate shame. Samurai could also be ordered by their daimyo (feudal lords) to commit seppuku. Later, disgraced warriors were sometimes allowed to commit seppuku rather than be executed in the normal manner. Since the main point of the act was to restore or protect one’s honor as a warrior, those who did not belong to the samurai caste were never ordered or expected to commit seppuku. Samurai women could only commit the act with permission.

A Samurai was bathed, dressed in white robes, fed his favorite meal, and when he was finished, his instrument was placed on his plate. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloths, the warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem. With his selected attendant (kaishakunin, his second) standing by, he would open his kimono (clothing), take up his tantō (knife) and plunge it into his abdomen, making a left-to-right cut. The kaishakunin would then perform daki-kubi, a cut in which the warrior was all but decapitated (a slight band of flesh is left attaching the head to the body).

Human Sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing a human being for the purposes of making an offering to a deity or other, normally supernatural, power. It was practiced in many ancient cultures. The practice has varied between different cultures, with some like the Mayans and Aztecs being notorious for their ritual killings, while others have looked down on the practice as primitive. Victims were ritually killed in a manner that was supposed to please or appease gods or spirits. Victims ranged from prisoners to infants to Vestal Virgins, who suffered such fates as burning, beheading and being buried alive.

Over time human sacrifice has become less common around the world, and sacrifices are now very rare. Most religions condemn the practice and present-day laws generally treat it as a criminal matter. Nonetheless it is still occasionally seen today, especially in the least developed areas of the world where traditional beliefs persist.

Foot Binding

Footbinding was a custom practised on young females for approximately one thousand years in China, beginning in the 10th century and ending in the early 20th century. In Chinese foot binding, young girls’ feet, usually at age 6 but often earlier, were wrapped in tight bandages so that they could not grow and develop normally; they would, instead, break and become highly deformed, not growing past 4-6 inches (10-15 cm). Today, it is a prominent cause of disability among some elderly Chinese women.

First, each foot would be soaked in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood. This concoction caused any necrotised flesh to fall off. Then her toenails were cut back as far as possible to prevent ingrowth and subsequent infections. To prepare her for what was to come next the girl’s feet were delicately massaged. Silk or cotton bandages, ten feet long and two inches wide, were prepared by soaking in the same blood and herb mix as before. Each of the toes were then broken and wrapped in the wet bandages, which would constrict when drying, and pulled tightly downwards toward the heel. There may have been deep cuts made in the sole to facilitate this.

Foot Binding

BoneBreaking Beauty

Suffering for beauty is a concept familiar to most women, who have dyed, plucked or shaved their hair, squeezed their feet into uncomfortable high heels or even surgically enhanced parts of their anatomy. Millions of Chinese women went even further — binding their feet to turn them into the prized “three-inch golden lotuses.” These “golden lotuses” were proof of a foot fetish on a national scale, with hobbled feet acting as another erogenous zone, the most forbidden of them all.

Binding usually began somewhere between the ages of four and seven. Possibly even later if the family was poor and needed their daughter to do work around the house or farm. A bandage, ten feet long and two inches wide was wrapped tightly around the foot, forcing the four small toes under the sole of the foot. This made the feet narrower but at the same time it made the feet shorter because it also forced the big toe and the heel closer together by bowing the arch of the foot. The bandage was tightened each day and the girl was put into progressively smaller and smaller sized shoes.

The entire process usually took about two years at the end of which the feet were essentially dead and utterly useless. Binding the feet was the easy part, being bent so out of shape the feet required lots of core. The feet had to be washed and manicured on a daily basis. If they weren’t manicured properly the toe nails could cut into the instep and infection could set in.

If the bindings were too tight they could cut off circulation which could lead to gangrene and blood poisoning. The feet had to be massaged and given hot and cold compresses to help relieve the pain and help improve circulation. If all this isn’t bad enough, corns would develop on the toes that were bent under and would have to be cut off with a knife. But wait! It gets worse! With the lack of circulation flesh would rot and fall off and sometimes the toes would ooze pus. The pain was said to have been excruciating especially if this process was begun at a later age. The ideal foot would fit into a shoe only three to four inches long. A Chinese saying says, “Every pair of small feet costs a bath (kang) of tears”. It is difficult to imagine the suffering that these women had to endure.

Foot binding began late in the T’ang Dynasty (618-906) and it gradually spread through the upper class during the Song Dynasty (960-1297). During the Ming period (1368-1644) and the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911) the custom of foot binding spread through the overwhelming majority of the Chinese population until it was finally outlawed in the 1911 Revolution of Sun Yat-Sen. In fact, the only peoples to avoid this custom were the Manchu conquerors, The Hakka Chinese migrant groups in south China and the mean people, the lowest class of people in China who were below the social norms. The practice of foot binding lasted for approximately one thousand years. During this time, approximately one billion women had their feet bound.

Sati

Sati was a Hindu funeral custom, now very rare and a serious criminal act in India, in which the dead man’s widow would throw herself on her husband’s funeral pyre in order to commit suicide. The act of sati was supposed to take place voluntarily, and from the existing accounts, most of them were indeed voluntary. The act may have been expected of widows in some communities. The extent to which any social pressures or expectations should be considered as compulsion has been the matter of much debate in modern times. It is frequently stated that a widow could expect little of life after her husband’s death, especially if she was childless. However, there were also instances where the wish of the widow to commit sati was not welcomed by others, and where efforts were made to prevent the death.

Self-Mummification

Sokushinbutsu were Buddhist monks or priests who allegedly caused their own deaths in a way that resulted in their being mummified. This practice reportedly took place almost exclusively in northern Japan around the Yamagata Prefecture. Between 16 and 24 such mummifications have been discovered.

For three years the priests would eat a special diet consisting only of nuts and seeds, while taking part in a regimen of rigorous physical activity that stripped them of their body fat. They then ate only bark and roots for another three years and began drinking a poisonous tea made from the sap of the Urushi tree, normally used to lacquer bowls. This caused vomiting and a rapid loss of bodily fluids, and most importantly, it killed off any maggots that might cause the body to decay after death. Finally, a self-mummifying monk would lock himself in a stone tomb barely larger than his body, where he would not move from the lotus position. His only connection to the outside world was an air tube and a bell. Each day he rang a bell to let those outside know that he was still alive. When the bell stopped ringing, the tube was removed and the tomb sealed.

The first step is a change of diet. The priest was only allowed to eat nuts and seeds that could be found in the forests surrounding his temple; this diet had to be stuck to for a 1000 day period, a little under three years. During this time, the priest was to continue to subject himself to all sorts of physical hardship in his daily training. The results were that the body fat of the priest was reduced to nearly nothing, thus removing a section of the body that easily decomposes after death.

In the second stage, the diet became more restrictive. The priest was now only allowed to eat a small amount of bark and roots from pine trees. This had to be endured for another 1000 day period, by the end of which the priest looked like a living skeleton. This also decreased the overall moisture contained in the body; and the less fluid left in the body, the easier to preserve it.

Towards the end of this 1000 day period, the priest also had to start to drink a special tea made from the sap of the urushi tree. This sap is used to make lacquer for bowls and furniture; but it is also very poisonous for most people. Drinking this tea induced vomiting, sweating, and urination, further reducing the fluid content of the priest’s body. But even more importantly, the build up of the poison in the priest’s body would kill any maggots or insects that tried to eat the priest’s remains after death, thus protecting it from yet another source of decay.

The last step of the process was to be entombed alive in a stone room just big enough for a man to sit lotus style in for a final 1000 day period. As long as the priest could ring a bell each day a tube remained in place to supply air; but when the bell finally stopped, the tube was removed and the tomb was sealed. When the tomb was finally opened, the results would be known. Some few would be fully mummified, and immediately be raised to the rank of Buddha; but most just rotted and, while respected for their incredible endurance, were not considered to be Buddhas. These were simply sealed back into their tombs.

The Japanese government outlawed Sokushunbutsu in the late 19th century, though the practice continued into the 20th.

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