“If the flower and willow world disappears, kimonos will disappear too,” he sighed. “Outside the geisha world, people wear kimonos once or twice a year. It’s only geisha who wear them every day. Obi, zori [straw sandals], fans, clogs—all the accouterments of the geisha world—will disappear forever. Gei—the arts, Japanese classical culture—will disappear. Music, dancing, that whole gracious teahouse way of life, will be lost.
“In the past,” he went on, “we had a class system. Now we are democratic. Of course, that’s a very good thing; how could anyone say otherwise? But it means that everything is reduced to the same level. What we need is to get young businessmen to come to teahouse parties. But they won’t, no matter how rich they get.
“Young people can’t understand the charm of the flower and willow world. It’s the quietness that makes it interesting. You go into a teahouse and there is a beautiful painting, exquisite flowers, good food, charming geisha. In the old days you would sit quietly and talk to the geisha, how lovely she was, her beautiful kimono, the wonderful tea ceremony, the beautiful piece of craftsmanship you had just bought. But in our modern democratic society, no one knows how to appreciate that kind of thing anymore.
“I hope the flower and willow world survives. Without it life will be lonely and dull. Japan will be just another Hong Kong, nothing but neon.
“The oldest geisha in Shimbashi is ninety. She told me that this is the worst. Worse than after the Great Earthquake, worse than after the war. It’s not just that business is bad. It’s the end.”
Tea and Cakes
Before I left for good I wanted to go back to Kyoto to say farewell to the hairdresser, the printer, the wig maker, everyone at the Haruta geisha house, and all the other geisha house mothers, maiko, and geisha who had come to seem like my enormous extended family. Arriving in the geisha district there from Tokyo was like stepping back in time to a quieter, slower era. For the last time I unpacked my bag in my barely furnished tatami-matted room with the tall narrow mirror and flimsy rack on which to hang my clothes, then went out onto the balcony to watch the maiko clattering along the street and clustering like butterflies in the concrete-lined parking lot in front of the Kaburenjo, giggling and chattering.
Months had passed since I first arrived, all innocence, looking for a way to breach this closed world. I had never realized then how fragile and threatened that world was and is. Now, when I walked the streets of the Kyoto flower towns, I saw the maiko, the geisha, and the “older sisters” with new eyes. To me they were no longer exotic birds but women dedicated to their art who had chosen a life of discipline in order to transmute themselves into creatures of beauty. I had come to respect their silence. That was their iki, their “cool,” that gave them their special flavor. I felt proud and humbled that some of these powerful and alluring women had chosen to befriend and confide in me.
I pondered the best gifts to give everyone. For the sharp-tongued mama-san, who had in her abrasive way provided me with a real experience of geisha training, it had to be cakes from Kanshindo. But for others, less concerned about propriety, maybe the best would be something more personal, with a hint of England about it.
Not far from the Haruta geisha house there was a newly opened tea shop, run by a plump, rather pompous man who spent a good ten minutes brewing up each pot of Darjeeling tea, following, he assured me, the strict rules and rituals of the English tea ceremony. He also sold for an exorbitant price small packets of Indian tea, carefully wrapped in pretty flowery cloth bags, and slices of cake each in its own cellophane package. I decided on tea for the “older sisters” and “mothers” and cake or cookies for the maiko.
In the case of the mama-san, the conventions had to be followed to the letter. I phoned her and made an appointment to visit, then arrived promptly with my Kanshindo cakes neatly wrapped in their shop packaging. She was sitting very upright like a ballet dancer, talking to a guest, while the barman leaned on the counter with a deferential smile.
As usual, she was discussing the terrible decline in traditional values.
“It’s all a matter of rank,” she said regally. “In the old days, when you visited a lord, his wife and all the concubines would be kneeling in order of rank, bowing and greeting the guests. But now rank has disappeared completely. People pay as much attention to what a maid says,” she went on with the tiniest exquisite hint of a disdainful wrinkle of the nose, “as to what a lord says.
“Mine is the last generation,” she concluded. “There will be no geisha after me.”
I remembered that whenever I sat down to pore over books on the history of the Yoshiwara, I was always puzzled as to when exactly the famous pleasure quarter began to decline. Almost as soon as the first brothels were in place back in the early seventeenth century, people started to bemoan the fall in standards. Thereafter generation after generation of writers complained that the courtesans of the old days had been queens, boasting every imaginable accomplishment; those of their own day were lowly creatures in comparison, hardly better than prostitutes. The same thing applied to the geisha. At the beginning of the last century Kafu Nagai made it his personal mission to capture for posterity their last fleeting years. They were, he declared in his novels, already effectively extinct.
I decided I should take into account this eternal tendency to glorify the past and lament the present when listening to the mama-san’s complaints. Things might be bad but they were not that bad. With an appropriate show of humility I thanked her profusely for her help and took my leave.
The next day I dropped in to see my neighbor, the beaming and beautiful white-haired ex-geisha, Hara-san. In exchange for the humble tea I gave her, she deluged me with gifts—dainty wooden sandals with bright blue silk-covered thongs, a couple of pairs of white socks, and a delicate wooden hairpin with a tiny chicken carved on the end. Then, laden down with bags of tea and cakes, I made the rounds. In the evening I met up with Mori-san, my raffish drinking companion who had written a book on guide dogs for the blind, and paid a last visit to the mama-san who had told me about her experiences of mizuage. I also said good-bye to the plump mistress and jazz-loving master of the coffee shop. They told me to be sure to come back soon. The best time, they said, would be New Year, when everyone would be relaxed and I could enjoy the New Year festivities.
On my last morning, a maiko called Miegiku, who lived in a geisha house a few doors from my inn, suggested that we have a cup of tea together before I took the bus to the station. At twenty-two she was a little older than average, rather serious and thoughtful, not as giggly and little-girlish as the others. She had an intelligent, open face with a pert nose, a pretty smile, and a candid, direct gaze. Unlike other maiko she had gone to high school. That was one very good reason that not many girls were becoming maiko now; to do so meant that they had to drop out of school at fourteen or fifteen. Then she had had to decide between university and maiko training; so she had started her maiko training late, at seventeen.
“I decided this was something I could only do while I was young,” she told me. “My father was opposed to it. He knows now that we learn traditional arts but he’s still worried. He knows I always say what I think. It’s not good to be too outspoken in this world. We’re supposed to be cute, not clever.”
That day she was wearing a summery pale pink kimono with a pattern of white flowers and a deep mauve obi. Her hair was waxed in the ofuku style of the mature maiko. We strolled along together, she shuffling with tiny steps on her wooden clogs, her legs constrained by her tight kimono.
“Let’s go to Hankyu,” she said, naming one of the department stores in the bustling traffic-filled hub of the city. We crossed the River Kamo by a small bridge, cut through a side street to the store, and took the escalator to the coffee shop.
Miegiku had reached that moment of no return when she had to choose whether to go ahead with the turning of the collar and commit herself to being a geisha or leave the flower and willow world for good.
“Have you decided yet?” I asked.
“I really want to be an English teacher,” she confessed. “Sometimes I think I should have gone to university. Customers talk about their children who are students and I wonder if I made a mistake.
“My life has become very narrow. I always have to be so polite; and everyone’s always so nice to me. I feel I’m getting selfish. Whenever I’m invited to a party, I know I will definitely be going by taxi and the customer will pay for the taxi and everything. I’m afraid if I stay here too long I will be completely spoiled. It will be more and more difficult to return to normal life.
“It’s difficult to make a living nowadays as a geisha. In the old days it was easier, people had danna. Nowadays fewer people are interested in teahouse parties. Geisha have no families. They live by themselves. Some of those older sisters must be lonely.
“I’m thinking little by little of giving up and doing a normal job. Being a geisha is not a normal job. It looks so pretty from the outside, always wearing a kimono. But inside it’s harsh. If you think of that, it’s not so pretty. It’s a world of show. I want to go back to normal life.”
Sitting on the train as it pulled out of Kyoto, away from the purple hills and crystal streams celebrated by poets for more than a thousand years, I wondered how much longer there would be people around who appreciated that heritage of beauty. There were many reasons why the geisha were fading away—higher taxes, fewer private businesses, more choices for women and, above all, modernization and the changing tastes of the new generation.
Nevertheless Japanese culture—the essential Japaneseness of Japan— had persisted for millennia. Each younger generation was seduced by fashion and modernity; but as they grew older, they always returned to the old ways. In the 1920s young women dressed like flappers. Now many of those same women wore kimonos.
In a few years the baby boomers, who currently considered themselves far too modern and sophisticated to consort with geisha, would have aged into patriarchs. Then Ginza hostess bars and fancy French restaurants might begin to seem a little mundane. Like their fathers and grandfathers before them, perhaps they too would begin to feel that what they now deserved to mark their years and status was the society of those classiest and most exclusive of women—geisha.
The geisha, it seemed to me, might decline but they would not die out. Even if they became very few, they would be all the more valued, like rare precious stones. While there was a demand for them, they would always be there to fill it.
For most people in Japan, there was precious little love or romance to be had anywhere—not in marriage and certainly not in the booming sex industry. But Japanese songs, films, and traditional literature were awash with it, as if in a desperate attempt to inject it into brutally unromantic lives. It was not surprising that such a country should have invented the geisha to embody all the missing romance and love—even if their world too turned out to be only a dream.
notes
Introduction
1. In Longstreet, p. 103.
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Chapter 1
1. “Chireba-koso itodo sakura wa medetakere ukiyo ni nani ka hisashikarubeki,” in McCullough, Tales of Ise, no. 82, p. 125. Author’s translation.
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2. “Iro miede utsurou mono wa yo no naka no hito no kokoro no hana ni zo arikeru,” in Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature, p. 73.
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3. “Hito ni awamu tsuki no naki yo wa omoiokite mune hashiri hi ni kokoro yakeori,” ibid., p. 74.
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4. Just as there are many words for “snow” in Eskimo languages, for “sand” in Arabic, and for “rain” in English, so there are many words for the differing ranks and varieties of prostitute and courtesan in Japanese. The different terms varied city by city and also changed over the centuries. English unfortunately has very few, so I will use “prostitute” to mean low-level sex workers who were freelance and unrecognized by society and “courtesan” for the trained professionals who held a recognized position in society.
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5. Shinto is Japan’s ancient folk religion, less a set of beliefs than a way of life. In Shinto all nature is sacred. Mountains, rocks, and trees are all deities. The (literally) innumerable Shinto gods coexist with human beings. They will intercede in human affairs to ensure good health or success in school, love, or business if approached in the proper way by the Shinto priests and priestesses who act as intermediaries. Shinto places of worship are referred to as “shrines” to distinguish them from Buddhist temples. They are usually large red-painted buildings with sweeping tiled roofs and a henge-shaped portal (as in Stonehenge), called a torii.
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6. Ryoi Asai, Ukiyo Monogatari (Tales of the Floating World), written after 1661.
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7. François Caron, A True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam, ed. C. R. Boxer (London, 1935). Caron (1600–1673) lived in Japan from 1639 to 1641, where he fathered an illegitimate child.
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8. Hiromi, p. 228.
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9. Seigle, p. 229.
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10. Crihfield, Ko-uta no. 22, p. 84.
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11. From Joshin Miura’s Keicho Kenmonshu, 1614, in Seigle, pp. 26–27.
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Chapter 2
1. In Scott, p. 162.
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2. Love Suicides at Sonezaki, tr. by Keene in Anthology of Japanese Literature, pp. 375–393.
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3. Dazai’s story is told in Dazai, Return to Tsugaru, and Keene’s Dawn to the West.
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4. T. H. Sanders, My Japanese Years (Mills & Born, 1915).
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5. In Keene, Dawn to the West, p. 403.
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6. Arthur Rose-Innes, English-Japanese Conversation Dictionary (Tokyo: Meiseisha Publishing Co., 1969).
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7. Keene, Dawn to the West, p. 65.
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8. Saikaku Ihara, Comrade Loves of the Samurai and Songs of the Geishas, no. 10, p. 108.
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9. Lafcadio Hearn, “The Eternal Feminine,” in Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan (Jonathan Cape, 1927), p. 73.
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10. David J. Lu, Inside Corporate Japan: The Art of Fumble-Free Management (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1987), p. 216.
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11. Tamura, The Japanese Bride, p. 2.
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12. Yukiko Tanaka, Contemporary Portraits of Japanese Women (Praeger, 1995), p. 45. In 1983, the divorce rate for Japan was half that for the United States—though still double what it had been fifteen years earlier. Since then the number of divorces has been increasing, with more and more initiated by women; under the Tokugawa divorce could only be initiated by the husband. The total number of divorces in 1992 was nearly 180,000, as opposed to 70,000 in 1962, in a population of 120 million, almost all married. In England and Wales, with a population of 53 million, there were about 160,000 divorces in 1992. More than two thirds of divorces were initiated by the wife.
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13. Paul Abrahams, “Time to Sweeten the Pill,” Financial Times Weekend section, February 27/28, 1999.
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Chapter 3
1. Crihfield, Ko-uta no. 5, p. 32.
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Chapter 4
1. Crihfield, Ko-uta no. 23, p. 87.
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2. Keisei Irojamisen (1701) and Keisei Kintanki (1711).
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3. From “A Wayward Wife,” translated in Hibbett, p. 110.
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4. Elisonas, pp. 285, 287.
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5. Seigle, p. 171.
Retu
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6. Seigle, Appendix D.
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7. Sansom, p. 485.
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8. Hiromi, p. 232.
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9. Crihfield, Ko-uta no. 17, p. 67. Tatsumi was another name for Fukagawa.
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10. Edo Mumare Uwaki no Kabayaki (1785), recounted in Seigle, p. 198, and Keene, World Within Walls, p. 405.
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Chapter 5
1. Saikaku Ihara, Comrade Loves of the Samurai and Songs of the Geishas, no. 24, p. 113.
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2. Ibid., no. 8, p. 107.
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3. Hayasaki, Gion yoi banashi.
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*[-kun is an affectionate suffix used for boys, rather like abbreviating Robert to Bobby; literally something like “young Nakai.”]
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Chapter 6
1. Gerstle, p. 27.
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2. Seigle, p. 216.
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3. Yamata, p. 42.
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4. Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème, p. 216, quoted in Ashmead, p. 219.
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5. Quoted in Otaka, ch. 1, Ito Hirobumi.
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6. My thanks to Hal Gold for the information and translation, which I have amended. Gilbert and Sullivan never credited their source; in The Good Opera Guide (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), the author Denis Forman mentions the “phoney Japanesy idiom” in which Sullivan’s “Miya Sama” chorus is written. Little did he know!
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7. A. B. Mitford, “Wanderings in Japan,” Littell’s Living Age CXIII (April 6, 1872), pp. 36–37, quoted in Kido, p. 275.
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8. Quoted in Otaka, ch. 1.
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9. Material on Ito from Seidensticker, Low City, High City, pp. 99–100.
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10. Material on Japonisme in Britain, including “The Geisha” by Charles Wilmott from Sato and Watanabe, pp. 37–40.