 While the actual origin of the term "mizu-shōbai" is debatable, it is likely the term came into use during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1868).The Tokugawa period saw the development of large bathhouses and an expansive network of roadside inns offering "hot baths and sexual release", as well as the expansion of geisha districts and courtesan quarters in cities and towns throughout the country.Bearing relation to the pleasure-seeking aspects of "ukiyo" (浮世, with its antithetical homophone 憂世 "sorrowful cycle of existence"), or "the floating world", "mizu-shōbai" is a metaphor for floating, drinking, and the impermanence of life, akin to the Western expression