Courtesan Plucking Daruma's (Bodhidharma) Beard

The courtesan is plucking the beard of Bodhidharma, known in Japan as Daruma, the founder of Zen Buddhism. Reversing the sacred and the profane in a kind of parody was a favorite motif during the Edo period—in Edo slang, to “pull out one’s nose hair” implied a man enslaved by a woman. An especially popular theme was that of the Daruma and the courtesan, a play on the familiar subjects of Daruma’s nine years of meditation facing a stone wall, which caused the loss of his arms and legs, and the courtesan’s 10 years of trial-laden life at a brothel—the word “daruma” was slang for a courtesan.