Life of Geisha. Eleanor Underwood

      Sumo wrestlers clap and stamp in a circle for a ceremonious start to the day's bout.

      Two young charmers share a large rain parasol as they stroll together under a willow.

      Geisha peer through the snow in front of the shrine of Gion in Kyoto in this mid nineteenth-century print by Hiroshige.

      The eleventh-century The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu epitomized the sensitive ideal of Japanese romance that inspired Edo-period fantasies enacted in the pleasure quarters. This 1896 image of Ukifune is based on a picture by Mitsunoki.

      ALLURING ENTERTAINERS OF OLD

       Geisha, by that name, have occupied only a short space in the long span of Japanese history. It was only a few hundred years ago that those recognizable today as geisha emerged. However, the geisha "type"- women who entertained and then offered their bodies to men- goes back to earliest times in Japan. Depending on their level of artistry, sensitivity, and intelligence, these women, like geisha later on, could become famous and even powerful, Japanese figures.

      The earliest predecessors to geisha were found among the saburnko (ones who served) who arose at the end of the seventh century. These women, who were forced to become wanderers as a result of social displacement, traded their sexual favors in order to survive. Among them were talented dancers and singers who were invited into the aristocratic compounds to entertain at gatherings. There is mention of these women in ancient Japanese poetry.

      A bathhouse scene in summer, by Yoshitoshi in 1883, shows courtesans of Nezu in Tokyo.

      From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries a new class of courtesans, called shirabyoshi, emerged. They were highly accomplished minstrels and dancers who wore white Shinto-style dress and played the drum and fife. Often coming from fallen aristocratic families, they were also the result of social upheaval. The names of some of these women have become legendary. Most famous is Shizuka, who was the companion of the most beloved warrior of medieval Japan, Yoshitsune. Another, Kamegiku, the concubine of the Emperor Gotoba, was said to have begun a war through spite! Some of the ancient legends, hymns and ballads that their tradition preserved were later taken up by the Noh theater.

      LIFE IN THE PLEASURE QUARTERS

      Saburuko and shirabyōshi were only antecedents to geisha in that they were female entertainers who were free with their bodies. But geisha could not have arisen without the later culture of the yūjo (courtesans), the hot-house flowers who lived in yūkaku, the walled-in pleasure quarters.