Mineko Iwasaki (b. 1949) was regarded in the 1970s as the most beautiful woman in Japan, and that is not an easy claim to dispute. She was a world-famous geisha whose services were used, among others, by the Imperial Household of Japan and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They engaged her to entertain visiting royalty, heads of state, and megastars of the film industry during their stays in Japan. She earned large sums even for brief appearances. A quarter of an hour could cost thousands of dollars in the money of that time, whose purchasing power today would be almost ten times greater.
Until, at the age of twenty-nine, Mineko unexpectedly ended her career as a geisha and became a businesswoman. She has been successful in that career too. In Geisha of Gion (2002), she tells the story of her journey from a little girl to the foremost geisha first of Gion, Kyoto’s geisha district, and then of all Japan. The book is an extraordinarily interesting glimpse into an old and already partly vanished geisha culture, into the everyday lives of geisha, and into geisha traditions and practices.
According to Iwasaki, the prostitution often associated with geisha is not part of geisha culture, but rather a kind of cosplay that arose on the fringes of the geisha world, where men and women who dream of geisha can act out their fantasies about real geisha. This of course does not mean that geisha do not have love lives and romances of their own, but according to Iwasaki, that belongs to each person’s private life and takes place outside the geisha role.
Geisha Culture Is an Art Form
True geisha culture is an art form that includes music, dance, poetry, storytelling traditions, plays, and rituals. Of these, perhaps the best known in the West are the Japanese tea ceremonies, but there are also many rituals connected, for example, with the traditional welcoming of each season and with the important turning points in the life of a person and a community, both expected and unexpected.
In the old geisha world, all activity, beginning with training, was strictly defined and divided into schools, each with its own recognizable style. Each school was governed by an okiya, a geisha house, whose mistress defined the criteria for examinations and performances and maintained discipline in her realm. Under the main okiya there were a number of lesser houses belonging to the same school, and in relation to them the mistress of the main okiya occupied a position somewhat like that of a pope.
The essential thing was always the flawless, graceful, and artistic performance of the program. In principle, every geisha knew how to do everything, but in practice each usually specialized in something. The best became celebrities. That is still the case today, but the old geisha world described by Mineko Iwasaki was already then crumbling from within and at the edges.
And among the blows dealt to it, not the least was Mineko’s own departure from the most famous okiya in the country, because she no longer wished to submit as a servant to a tradition that bound everyone’s hands, from the youngest apprentice to the apprentice geisha, or maiko, to the fully fledged geisha and even to the mistress of the okiya herself. When Mineko, to everyone’s surprise, left the geisha world, she was just about to become the head of her own okiya and school. Her resignation was a sensation throughout Japan and the leading news story of the day.
A geisha’s training was hard. It usually began when she was a little girl, and it had many stages, each turning point marked by a strict examination. Everyday life was demanding, and the days of a successful geisha were long. The most common task was to entertain a private party with witty and graceful company that faultlessly reflected Japanese traditions.
Appearances were paid for according to the time used, and the price depended on the particular geisha’s reputation and popularity. The day of the most popular geisha might include a large number of brief appearances from afternoon until late at night. In addition, there were public occasions at which geisha performed either purely as entertainment or as an indispensable part of the rituals and traditional choreography of the celebration.
The Okiya Was a Women’s World
The okiya were a women’s world ruled by women, to which men could be connected only as subcontractors or paying customers. Most of the master craftsmen responsible, for example, for designing and/or making a geisha’s wardrobe or arranging her hair were men, and they had often served the same okiya for many generations. The relationship between a geisha and her dresser, for example, was often close and central to the geisha’s success.
To avoid spoilers, I will not go more deeply into Mineko’s story, which is at once tragic, delightful, and perhaps empowering as well, for it ends when Mineko decides to step out of her golden cage into the world of ordinary people, where everything is not predetermined and where one must—and above all can—take responsibility for the affairs of one’s own life.
The book is already more than twenty years old, but it is still on sale or otherwise obtainable. I bought my copy at some airport when it had only just appeared. Ever since then it stood on my shelf among those books “that I will certainly read one day.” Now its time had come.
With its photographs, it is a beautiful view into something largely lost, and it also helps one understand some features characteristic of East and Southeast Asian cultures that from time to time puzzle us. Mineko is an exceptionally intelligent and energetic person, and her story gives rise to many thoughts.
The world is a wonder. Not least because there are so many kinds of us human beings and human cultures.
Ceterum censeo: an old book is often better than a bagful of new ones.
