Geisha
[13][14] After the imperial court moved the capital to Heian-kyō (Kyoto) in 794, aspects of now-traditional Japanese art forms and aesthetic ideals began to develop, which would later contribute to the conditions under which the geisha profession emerged.
Some were renowned poets and calligraphers as well; the development of the cultural arts of the pleasure quarters led to the rise in oiran being considered to be the celebrities of their day.
[18] At the same time, the forerunners of female geisha, the teenage odoriko ("dancing girls"),[20] developed trained and hired as chaste dancers-for-hire within these teahouses.
[21] Further still, some courtesans, whose contracts within the pleasure quarters had ended, chose to stay on to provide musical entertainment to guests, making use of the skills they had formerly developed as part of their job.
'town geisha') had begun to successfully establish themselves as worldly, cutting-edge entertainers, more artistically daring than their cloistered, indentured cousins, and able to come and go and dress as they pleased.
Though geisha returned to the karyūkai relatively quickly after the war, many had decided to stay on in their wartime jobs, considering it to be a more stable form of employment.
Some geisha had begun to experiment with wearing Western clothing to engagements, learning Western-style dancing, and serving cocktails to customers instead of sake.
However, the incumbent pressures of the war rapidly turned the tide against Westernisation, leading to an effective abandonment of most radical "Western-style" geisha experiments.
[39]From the 1930s onwards, the rise of the jokyū bar hostess began to overshadow geisha as the premiere profession of entertainment at parties and outings for men.
Sugawara stated that girls now "prefer[red] to become dancers, models, and cabaret and bar hostesses rather than start [the] training in music and dancing at the age of seven or eight" necessary to become geisha at the time.
"[47]In recent years, a growing number of geisha have complained to the authorities about being pursued and harassed by groups of tourists keen to take their photograph when out walking.
Ex-maiko pieces may be sold on when they are considered too worn for use in formal engagements, or when an okiya closes and decides to sell its stock of kimono and obi.
Following World War II, many of the hairstylists who had previously served the karyūkai no longer operated, leading to the redevelopment of hairstyles for geisha and maiko.
The nihongami hairstyle with kanzashi hair ornaments are most closely associated with maiko,[50] who spend hours each week at the hairdresser and sleep on special pillows (takamakura) to preserve the elaborate styling.
The most visible form of this are public dances, or odori (generally written in traditional kana spelling as をどり, rather than modern おどり), featuring both maiko and geisha.
[57] At the Kitano Tenman-gū shrine there is an annual open-air tea ceremony (野点, nodate) during the plum-blossom festival (梅花祭, baikasai) every February 25.
The okiya will usually supply her with food, board, kimono, obi, and other tools of her trade, but a maiko may decide to fund everything herself from the beginning with either a loan or the help of an outside guarantor.
Liza Dalby, an American national, worked and performed briefly with geisha in the Pontochō district of Kyoto as part of her doctorate research.
She entertained in full costume, was tied to an established okiya, and was assigned an 'older sister'; however, because of the academic nature of her stay, she did not undergo the rites to formally debut as a geisha.
[9][88] Infrequently, men take contingent positions within the karyūkai such as hair stylists,[52] dressers (known as otokoshi, as dressing a maiko requires considerable strength) and accountants.
In 1872, shortly after the Meiji Restoration, the new government passed a law liberating "prostitutes (shōgi) and geisha (geigi)", ambiguously grouping both professions together.
Writing in 1956, former geisha Sayo Masuda wrote of her experiences in the onsen town of Suwa, Nagano Prefecture, where she was sold for her virginity a number of times by the mother of her okiya.
Henshall stated that the job of a geisha included "[entertaining] their customer, be it by dancing, reciting verse, playing musical instruments, or engaging in light conversation.
"[97] In the past, it had been unspoken tradition for an established geisha to take a danna, or patron, who would pay for her expenses, buy her gifts, and engage her on a more personal level – at times involving sex – than a banquet or party would allow.
[49] Mizuage (水揚げ, "raising the waters") was a ceremony undergone by junior kamuro (apprentice courtesans) and some maiko as part of the process of promotion to senior status.
Alongside changes in appearance – such as from the junior wareshinobu hairstyle to the more senior ofuku style,[49] – and visits paid to businesses and places of importance around the karyūkai, an apprentice would occasionally have their virginity sold to a patron, who ostensibly supported their graduation to geisha status – usually through the exorbitant fee charged for the privilege.
[101] Mizuage as a rite of passage, a coming-of-age ceremony in which a patron paid a great sum of money to take a girl's virginity, did exist, but it was more of a courtesan's and prostitute's tradition than a maiko's and geisha's.
[9] Historically, geisha on occasion were confined to operate in the same walled districts as courtesans and prostitutes; however, both professions have on some level always maintained a distance officially, despite often being legislated against by the same laws.
The six hanamachi in Tokyo are Asakusa (浅草), Akasaka (赤坂), Kagurazaka (神楽坂), Shimbashi (新橋), Mukōjima (向島), and Yoshichō (芳町).
The Fukagawa district of Tokyo is known for being the location of the first female geisha in Japan; however, the area faced decline following WWII, with its registry office closing temporarily in the 1980s, before being partially revived in the mid- to late-2000s.
