Lt-Col A. Tack
06-12-2008, 11:25 PM
Memories of a geisha: a rare glimpse into a private world
By Hiroshi Maetani, Mainichi Shimbun
The elegant woman entertains me to the strumming beat of a samisen that reverberates around the traditional Japanese-style room.
"Danna-san (lord), please take one," she says, offering a morsel.
We are in the karyukai -- the characters for which mean "the land of flowers and willow" -- the name given to the world inhabited by the geisha, entertainers who carry on the gaiety of the traditional culture of Edo, as Tokyo was known in the pre-modern era and the word used to describe Japan's late feudal era.
Thanks to their frequent appearances in movies, dramas and other forms of media, most people are well aware of the existence of the geisha, yet the image many have of the traditional performers are that they are an expensive form of entertainment difficult to approach.
What is the charm of ozashiki asobi, the term literally meaning to "play in a parlor" that is used to describe a session with a geisha? I got a chance to experience entertainment from geisha at a high class ryotei, an exclusive traditional restaurant of the type typically patronized by Japan's elite business people and bureaucrats and a usual site for the geisha to entertain.
Kagurazaka, a district in Tokyo's Shinjuku-ku, retains some of the feeling of old Edo. Before the war, the district was home to 150 ryotei, but the number of establishments began dwindling in the postwar period. With businesses and bureaucrats curbing their entertainment expenses nowadays, there are just six ryotei left in Kagurazaka.
Chigetsu, one of Kagurazaka's remaining ryotei, first opened its doors 72 years ago. Normally, a night there, with geisha, costs around 50,000 yen to 60,000 yen per person. It's not the kind of place someone like me, an ichigen-san or one-off visitor, could go to without an introduction. I feel self-conscious being there.
I was in Chigetsu because I was taking part in a "lecture" for people in the tourism industry to give them a chance to experience ozashiki asobi. The event was run by Iki-machi, a company that plans events to promote Kagurazaka's culture. I was one of 12 people who took part in the three-hour lesson.
Even though we were ostensibly being given a lecture, what we actually experienced was a typical ozashiki. After some chit-chat with food and sake, Natsue, a geisha for 45 years, played her samisen while Hanae, a geisha for three years, and Ryoya, a geisha for the past seven years, danced for participants. My eyes were drawn to the outstanding dance.
But all of the participants were strangers to each other. Everybody seemed a little distant and closed. And that's where the professionalism of the geisha came to the fore. We started the ozashiki asobi.
The first game was called Konpira Funefune. It involved a sake flask being placed atop a container and the guest and geisha playing a hand game. When there is a container, players have to show an open palm, but when there is no container, they must display a fist. It's an incredibly simple game, but as the customer makes more and more mistakes, uproarious laughter breaks out. I kept on losing, then found myself becoming tipsy and almost joking around.
While watching closely what was going on around me, I gazed at the geisha as they chatted away, danced and joyfully controlled the ozashiki. I was getting my fill of traditional entertainment.
Sitting beside me was Tomoko Sato, who took part because she works for a Tokyo hotel and is often asked by foreign guests about geisha.
"It was great to be able to see such wonderful movements up close," Sato says.
Geisha Natsue says the geisha world is changing.
"We've got many young girls who dream of becoming geisha now," she says. Natsue is a third-generation geisha, but says it's now rare for the performers to follow in the family footsteps as had once been common. "We now get lots of women with very good educations."
Hanae is a case in point. She started taking singing lessons at a young age and graduated from a music college. She became a geisha after developing an interest in traditional Japanese culture while being questioned so much about it when she was studying in Italy.
Geisha practice their singing and dancing daily, taking at least five years before they are fully recognized. Recently, many women apply to become geisha after seeing online ads for the position, but only one or two actually go through with it.
The geisha remain tight-lipped when asked about the type of people who normally attend ozashiki.
"You shouldn't talk about other customers," Hanae says with a gentle whisper.
Chigetsu owner Shinichiro Shibuya, 71, says trust is important in the world of geisha.
"There used to be lots of times in the past when guests would ask geisha to leave because they had vitally important matters to discuss. And it's because we are a place where things like that happen that we don't allow untrustworthy ichigen-san to come here," he says. "Ozashiki is not simply a matter of how many stars the food is given, it's about the artistic techniques involved that make up the overall concept of lavishing hospitality."
Hearing Shibuya gave me an understanding of why so many famous people have enjoyed the company of geisha.
With so many ryotei disappearing, the future of the karyukai is hardly bright. People are doing all sorts of things, like holding the courses such as I attended, to make sure the culture of luxurious entertaining is passed on. I'd love to see this world continue until the day I can go through the experience of being entertained by a geisha when it's not for my job.
About Tokyo's geisha
There are about 60 ryotei in Tokyo and 300 active geisha.
Tokyo's various karyukai reached their peak in the late 1920s, when about 10,000 geisha were in the capital. Geisha recovered from the capital's widespread destruction during World War II. By about 1960, there were still roughly 50 hanamachi, or geisha districts, in Tokyo, with some 1,500 ryotei operating. But young people in particular started to drift away from the geisha world and it shrank. Now, the only hanamachi remaining in Tokyo are Shinbashi, Akasaka, Yoshimachi (Ningyocho), Kagurazaka, Asakusa and Mukojima, with about 60 ryotei and some 300 geisha working in them.
Kagurazaka was a late-developing hanamachi, appearing only in 1855, but began flourishing when left relatively undamaged by the Great Kanto Earthquake that devastated Tokyo in 1923. The area was flattened by wartime bombing, but Hanko Kagurazaka, a geisha who turned into a pop singer, came out with the huge hit "Geisha Waltz," which raised the district's profile nationwide. There are only six ryotei remaining in Kagurazaka and about 30 geisha working there.
For inquiries about the geisha course, contact Iki-machi (in Japanese) at (03) 6426-1728.
Link (http://mdn.mainichi.jp/entertainment/news/20080610p2a00m0et026000c.html)
By Hiroshi Maetani, Mainichi Shimbun
The elegant woman entertains me to the strumming beat of a samisen that reverberates around the traditional Japanese-style room.
"Danna-san (lord), please take one," she says, offering a morsel.
We are in the karyukai -- the characters for which mean "the land of flowers and willow" -- the name given to the world inhabited by the geisha, entertainers who carry on the gaiety of the traditional culture of Edo, as Tokyo was known in the pre-modern era and the word used to describe Japan's late feudal era.
Thanks to their frequent appearances in movies, dramas and other forms of media, most people are well aware of the existence of the geisha, yet the image many have of the traditional performers are that they are an expensive form of entertainment difficult to approach.
What is the charm of ozashiki asobi, the term literally meaning to "play in a parlor" that is used to describe a session with a geisha? I got a chance to experience entertainment from geisha at a high class ryotei, an exclusive traditional restaurant of the type typically patronized by Japan's elite business people and bureaucrats and a usual site for the geisha to entertain.
Kagurazaka, a district in Tokyo's Shinjuku-ku, retains some of the feeling of old Edo. Before the war, the district was home to 150 ryotei, but the number of establishments began dwindling in the postwar period. With businesses and bureaucrats curbing their entertainment expenses nowadays, there are just six ryotei left in Kagurazaka.
Chigetsu, one of Kagurazaka's remaining ryotei, first opened its doors 72 years ago. Normally, a night there, with geisha, costs around 50,000 yen to 60,000 yen per person. It's not the kind of place someone like me, an ichigen-san or one-off visitor, could go to without an introduction. I feel self-conscious being there.
I was in Chigetsu because I was taking part in a "lecture" for people in the tourism industry to give them a chance to experience ozashiki asobi. The event was run by Iki-machi, a company that plans events to promote Kagurazaka's culture. I was one of 12 people who took part in the three-hour lesson.
Even though we were ostensibly being given a lecture, what we actually experienced was a typical ozashiki. After some chit-chat with food and sake, Natsue, a geisha for 45 years, played her samisen while Hanae, a geisha for three years, and Ryoya, a geisha for the past seven years, danced for participants. My eyes were drawn to the outstanding dance.
But all of the participants were strangers to each other. Everybody seemed a little distant and closed. And that's where the professionalism of the geisha came to the fore. We started the ozashiki asobi.
The first game was called Konpira Funefune. It involved a sake flask being placed atop a container and the guest and geisha playing a hand game. When there is a container, players have to show an open palm, but when there is no container, they must display a fist. It's an incredibly simple game, but as the customer makes more and more mistakes, uproarious laughter breaks out. I kept on losing, then found myself becoming tipsy and almost joking around.
While watching closely what was going on around me, I gazed at the geisha as they chatted away, danced and joyfully controlled the ozashiki. I was getting my fill of traditional entertainment.
Sitting beside me was Tomoko Sato, who took part because she works for a Tokyo hotel and is often asked by foreign guests about geisha.
"It was great to be able to see such wonderful movements up close," Sato says.
Geisha Natsue says the geisha world is changing.
"We've got many young girls who dream of becoming geisha now," she says. Natsue is a third-generation geisha, but says it's now rare for the performers to follow in the family footsteps as had once been common. "We now get lots of women with very good educations."
Hanae is a case in point. She started taking singing lessons at a young age and graduated from a music college. She became a geisha after developing an interest in traditional Japanese culture while being questioned so much about it when she was studying in Italy.
Geisha practice their singing and dancing daily, taking at least five years before they are fully recognized. Recently, many women apply to become geisha after seeing online ads for the position, but only one or two actually go through with it.
The geisha remain tight-lipped when asked about the type of people who normally attend ozashiki.
"You shouldn't talk about other customers," Hanae says with a gentle whisper.
Chigetsu owner Shinichiro Shibuya, 71, says trust is important in the world of geisha.
"There used to be lots of times in the past when guests would ask geisha to leave because they had vitally important matters to discuss. And it's because we are a place where things like that happen that we don't allow untrustworthy ichigen-san to come here," he says. "Ozashiki is not simply a matter of how many stars the food is given, it's about the artistic techniques involved that make up the overall concept of lavishing hospitality."
Hearing Shibuya gave me an understanding of why so many famous people have enjoyed the company of geisha.
With so many ryotei disappearing, the future of the karyukai is hardly bright. People are doing all sorts of things, like holding the courses such as I attended, to make sure the culture of luxurious entertaining is passed on. I'd love to see this world continue until the day I can go through the experience of being entertained by a geisha when it's not for my job.
About Tokyo's geisha
There are about 60 ryotei in Tokyo and 300 active geisha.
Tokyo's various karyukai reached their peak in the late 1920s, when about 10,000 geisha were in the capital. Geisha recovered from the capital's widespread destruction during World War II. By about 1960, there were still roughly 50 hanamachi, or geisha districts, in Tokyo, with some 1,500 ryotei operating. But young people in particular started to drift away from the geisha world and it shrank. Now, the only hanamachi remaining in Tokyo are Shinbashi, Akasaka, Yoshimachi (Ningyocho), Kagurazaka, Asakusa and Mukojima, with about 60 ryotei and some 300 geisha working in them.
Kagurazaka was a late-developing hanamachi, appearing only in 1855, but began flourishing when left relatively undamaged by the Great Kanto Earthquake that devastated Tokyo in 1923. The area was flattened by wartime bombing, but Hanko Kagurazaka, a geisha who turned into a pop singer, came out with the huge hit "Geisha Waltz," which raised the district's profile nationwide. There are only six ryotei remaining in Kagurazaka and about 30 geisha working there.
For inquiries about the geisha course, contact Iki-machi (in Japanese) at (03) 6426-1728.
Link (http://mdn.mainichi.jp/entertainment/news/20080610p2a00m0et026000c.html)