Shigemasa, late eighteenth century
First published in Asia in 2000 by Charles E. Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
Distributed by Berkeley Books Pte. Ltd.
61 Tai Seng Avenue #02-12, Singapore 534167
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Produced by SMITHMARK PUBLISHERS
115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011.
Creative Direction: Kristen Schilo, Gato & Maui Productions
Design: Lynne Yeamans
ISBN: 978-1-4629-0219-4 (ebook)
Printed and bound in China
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Hokkei, early nineteenth century
by Tsuchida Bakusen, 1924
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
I was twenty-five when my "older sister" Ichiume first brushed the geisha's cold white makeup on my face. She was twenty-one. In the geisha world of Kyoto she was still my senior since she had graduated from the status of maiko to that of full-fledged geiko the year before. I, of course, had never been a maiko. Ichiume had taken on the task of showing this American graduate student the inside perspective of a geiko (the Kyoto dialect term for geisha) behind the history, the statistics, and the interviews I had been collecting. Some customers were surprised to find their sake cup filled by an American geisha; and some didn't even notice until the other geisha began to giggle.
I made no secret of the reason behind my transformation into Ichiume's younger sister Ichigiku of Pontocho-I was trying to obtain a deeper understanding of the profession of geisha in order to write my Ph.D. thesis in cultural anthropology. The suggestion that I put on kimono and take my shamisen to the teahouses came from the geisha themselves. After I had gotten to know them and they me, they seemed to think I might be able to tell their side of the story-for geisha definitely feel they are misunderstood in the West.
The word "geisha" conjures up a mythically exotic creature in the Western imagination. Fantasy, wishful thinking, and plain misconceptions have been bound together with threads of fact, so that in English to say "geisha" summons a vision of a servile beauty who dotes upon her master's whim, satisfying every desire. Her personality he need not bother about, and she will obligingly melt away like Madame Butterfly rather than disturb him. This fantasy is hard to project on a real woman, but settles quite easily on a mythic one.
Geisha have the odd distinction of being both legendary and real, and this book helps clarify those differences. Myth by nature is monolithic, transcending history and individuals, whereas the reality is a variety of geisha communities in different areas of Japan, status hierarchies among communities in the same city, and of course differences among individual geisha.
This is not to say that geisha are not exotic. These women are more mysterious than they themselves imagine-in Japan as well as outside it, albeit for different reasons. Westerners have a notion that geisha must be experts in the art of subservience in a country like Japan where even ordinary women are supposed to put men first. We infer that the art of pleasing men would mean being even more servile. I myself accepted this myth before I learned better as Ichigiku. To my surprise, I found that the social give and take between geisha and customers in the teahouses of Kyoto was quite comfortable to an American-bred geisha. One must not confuse the general cultural norms of Japanese politeness with subservience. Geisha are among the most outspoken