"Lovers" listening to the nightingale might be considered a misnomer if we took it to mean that this client and courtesan were mutually in love with each other. (We should probably take it to mean simply that they are making love.) There are indeed famous examples of courtesans and clients falling in love and running off together (or perhaps committing a double love suicide or shinjû), but they were rare and served more as material for embellishment on the theater stage than as a reflection of the norm in the pleasure quarters. In fact, the Yoshiwara courtesan was strictly trained to maintain the fiction of love for her client with sweet talk and ardent declarations of devotion, but without actually being in love with him. This was necessary to maintain the livelihood of her brothel. A popular saying in Edo was that "The standard lie of the prostitute is 'I love you'; the standard lie of the client is 'I will marry you.'" So much for romance. . .