Geisha: The Art of the Everyday

I was recently in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. It was, as usual, a business trip: I visited the Land of the Rising Sun to attend the 23rd congress of the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. ISAPS always picks interesting destinations for its events. Here, in Kyoto, I saw the old Gion district which, for two centuries, has been the home of exotic beings bound to attract the inquisitive gaze of a plastic surgeon. They are geisha: living icons of style. Together with my colleagues, I decided to explore that phenomenon in more detail. We made no attempt at rigorous research. Instead, we collected a handful of thoughts, facts, and quotes that helped us understand geisha a little better.

Today, geisha are seen as the priestesses of a style cult that dictates every aspect of their life. They are reserved and tactful, and their manners are impeccable, but at the same time they are bold, free, casual and sincere, elegant and even extravagant, and their taste is sublime. Still, some would argue that geisha are no longer relevant.

Geisha literally means a person who has reached perfection. (Gei is Japanese for skill or ability in a craft or art.) This word has had different meanings across history. For example, in the Edo period which began with the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603 and ended with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the word geisha was used to refer to surgeons, dentists, and students studying Confucianism, poetry, and astronomy. Masters of martial arts, such as fencing, archery, horse riding, and javelin throw, were known as bugeisha. (Bu means war or martial.) In the Meiji period (1868-1912), teachers of foreign languages were sometimes referred to as geisha. In the world of the Kabuki theatre, geisha meant dancers, as opposed to the actors (yakusha). Eventually, geisha became the name of entertainers in private settings rather than on stage. From here on, we will be using that word to refer to female performers whose skills include singing, dancing, and melodeclamation to the accompaniment of a three-stringed Japanese lute, shamisen.

The art of the everyday

In 1854, after centuries of intentional isolation, Japan was forced open to the West by Commodore Perry, and the Western civilization discovered the fascinating world of Japanese culture. Its most impressive manifestations were pictures, in particular the ukiyo-e: pictures of the floating world, which have greatly influenced art across the world.

In Japan, on the other hand, the ukiyo-e were not regarded as art: they were popular entertainment, a predecessor of photography, and were often used as wrapping paper. It would have never occurred to the Japanese to display ukiyo-e in public places. (The first public exhibition of ukiyo-e was organized by the ethnographer Ernest Fenollosa in the USA.) Traditional Japan didn’t have museums either. The first formal museum, the Ohara Museum of Art, was opened in 1930 as an example of the country’s transformation under the influence of the West. “To a Japanese, accustomed to simplicity of ornamentation and frequent change of decorative method, a Western interior permanently filled with a vast array of pictures, statuary, and bric-à-brac gives the impression of mere vulgar display of riches,” wrote Okakura Kakuzō. The art sensibilities in traditional Japan were fundamentally different from those typical of the West. Look at the phenomena historically regarded as Japanese arts – calligraphy, Ikebana, tea ceremonies, gardening, Bonsai – and you will see that they are deeply rooted in the everyday life and amount to aesthetic living, as opposed to the Western concept of the intrinsic absolute value of art objects.

Pleasure quarters

Let’s get back for a moment to the aforementioned ukiyo-e. Those pictures often featured beautiful women, or bijin-ga. Curiously, many of them were courtesans. Let me tell you why.

In the 17th century, with the expansion of cities, especially Edo, present-day Tokyo, the sensual and tolerant Japanese created an urban entertainment industry centred around houses and later entire quarters of tolerance, known as Keisei-machi. We need to touch on this subject. Such Keisei-machi as Yoshiwara in Edo and Rokujō-Misuji mati, later known as Shimabara and eventually Gion, in Kyoto were cities within cities, surrounded by walls. They never slept. Originally, one could find all manner of entertainment there: food, girls, music and dancing, daily theatrical performances and festivals. That is the birthplace of the famous Kabuki theatre.

Girls were supplied to Keisei-machi from all the provinces of Japan. The recruiters monitored the situation in the regions and immediately headed to places affected by epidemics, poor harvest, or natural disasters in order to buy girls from the desperate parents who could no longer provide for them. Fate could then lead the girls to the rock bottom, but it could also turn them into top-rank educated courtesans, tayū (in Kyoto and Edo) or oiran (in Edo): tastemakers, hairstyle inventors, a source of inspiration for poets and artists, and an object of desire for every man, from a poor painter to the shogun’s top advisor.

In the early years, the pleasure quarters hosted Noh and Kabuki stages and venues for other entertainment, such as sumo, various types of dance, and bunraku. They were also the home of yujo. That term, which later came to mean courtesans, referred at the time to female travelling actors. Yu or yujo was Japanese for traveller. The word tayū, whose meaning eventually changed to top-rank yujo (courtesan), originally referred to the masters of Noh who performed in Kyoto in the Keichō era (1596-1615).

Yujo and Kabuki are related even more closely. The word Kabuki comes from kabuki odori, the name of a dance performance created by the travelling actor Okuni at the dawn of the Edo period. That stylized dance mimicked the behaviour of the eccentric gangsters kabukimono (literally, deviants) that operated at the time around Kyoto. Okuni transformed their brutal manners into a provocative dance which gathered crowds of men at her performances in Kyoto at the beginning of the 17th century. Other yujo adopted that dance and added the accompaniment of a shamisen: the sound that fundamentally changed the mood of the epoch.

In onna-kabuki, up to 60 girls in beautiful perfumed kimonos made from Chinese silk danced on stage to the accompaniment of yujo shamisen, flutes, and drums. Every movement of the fabric of the 16-year-old dancers’ outfits sent a wave of fragrance to the crowd. The girls sang, “We are but guests in this dream of a floating world.” It is said that some of the spectators were so shaken that they declared this world an illusion and became indifferent to wealth, property, and even life itself. The effect those performances produced on the city crowd exceeded everything experienced before. They turned the pleasure districts of Kyoto and Edo into vibrant neighbourhoods bursting with dancing, music, and sensuality, and the shogunate deemed that a threat to public order. In 1612, the government arrested and executed 300 kabukimono, and in 1616, onna-kabuki was banned in Edo and Kyoto.

Since then, Kabuki has been an exclusively male occupation. The female dancers and actors, now jobless, spread across Japan. Some of them joined the ranks of licensed prostitutes in Yoshiwara, adding a great deal of artistry to the profession. Others remained travelling actors. Later, they acquired the name of odoriko. They were the predecessors of geisha. Their performances gained popularity, and odoriko began to receive invitations to the homes of the ruling class. The soaring demand encouraged parents to arrange the relevant training for their daughters. Commoner girls were ushered into aristocratic homes due to the power of their performances.

“In the old times, female geisha were called odoriko,” writes the poet and author Ōta Nanpo (1749-1823). “Somewhere in the Meiwa and An’ei eras (1764-81), they became known as geisha and sometimes, for reasons of style, as sha. In the past, geisha were young girls, and their mothers often accompanied them as chaperones.”

In his book, The Nightless City, published in 1899, the Yoshiwara researcher Joseph de Becker wrote, “It is stated that geisha first came into existence at Kyoto and Osaka in the 1st year of Hōreki (1751), but they were vastly different to those of the present day. Up to the eras of Shotoku (1711-1715) and Kyōhō (1716-1735) nearly all the courtesans were skilled in the arts of singing, dancing, music, etc., and as they were equal to the task of enlivening parties with their performances there was no room nor necessity for geisha. Besides the fact that the courtesans were accomplished, it was the custom for the wives and daughters of brothelkeepers to play the samisen and dance for the amusement of guests : these were called tori-mochi (entertainers). Again, those shinzo who were versed in amusing arts such as dancing and music, were invited by guests to assist at parties, although no fixed arrangement was made with them. These things ceased at the end of the Horeki era (1751-1763). In the 4th year of Hōreki (1754) regular geiko (kind of geisha) sprang into existence for the time, and the term geisha developed later on about the 11th year (1761).”

Geisha were masters of gidayū-bushi (melodeclamation), nagauta (lyrical poetry and songs), bungo-busi (a singing style originating from the province of Bungo), and more. The word geisha itself hints at virtuosity in arts. Geisha mainly performed popular melodies and songs at banquets and parties. The first geisha, who came into existence in the 10th or 11th year of Horeki (1760-1761), entertained guests in brothels. As they became more popular and numerous, tea houses and individuals began hiring them as well. Other geisha worked on their own and gradually shaped the profession. Then the kemban, the Yoshiwara office in charge of geisha affairs (which still exists as the geisha trade union), strictly banned geisha from wearing exceedingly beautiful outfits on the grounds that dressed-up women might distract guests from courtesans. The kemban-sho further made strict sumptuary regulations prohibiting geisha from wearing unnecessarily fine clothes, believing that if these women were dressed too magnificently it might lead to their making easy conquests of the guests they met. The dress was limited to clothes of plain non-figured stuffs dyed with their crests, and collars of some white material, while their coiffures had to be made in the Shimada style ornamented with one kogai (hair-pin), one comb, and one smaller hair-pin only. This style of dress is adopted even in these times…”

Entertainment, like most things in Japan, followed an established series of steps. Once in the pleasure quarters, a man went to a tea house where sake, abundant food, and warm hospitality put him in a festive mood. Entertainment was provided to brighten the ambiance and improve his appetite: a geisha joined the guest. Dancing, music, enjoyable conversation, and soon he was in a wonderful mood and on his way to a house of courtesans, escorted by the geisha or the hosts of the tea house. Such parties were very popular since home life was strictly regulated but at the same time wives were, and still are, willing to tolerate their husbands’ entertainment.

Geisha had a significant impact on urban fashion. In his account of the life in Edo in the 18th century, Buya zokudan, Baba Bunko writes that blue parasols owe their popularity to the city’s geisha. “Young girls who were not of the profession were taught to play the shamisen and chant jôruri and, like geisha, were sent to work at samurai estates or at the tea houses where the samurai congregated when they were away from home. A woman referred to as their ‘mother’ accompanied them. Near the beginning of the Genbun era [1736–41], there were three famous and beautiful geisha, Emon of the Sangoshichi team, Oteru of the Chitose team, and Oen of the Daisuke team. They took care above all with their hair, using fine combs and wearing ornaments and silver hairpins.

When it was hot, fearing a sedge hat would ruin their hair, the three made an arrangement with one another to carry parasols of blue with crests and black handles. They started this because they had heard a Chinese story in which a Tang sovereign was shaded with a parasol of thin blue silk. The fashion spread, and not only women but men as well began carrying umbrellas made with blue paper.” As you can see, the profession of geisha was gaining popularity and attracting an increasing number of practitioners along with chaperone mothers and entrepreneurs. Geisha houses were popping up and competing with each other. The originality and fresh sense of style typical of city geisha engendered new fashion trends and fads.

In the Edo period, the governing class used the term geisha yoriai to refer to parties at which geisha entertained. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the legacy of this custom persisted in the strong preference among the nation’s politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen for making deals and decisions in gatherings at the machiai-jaya (rendezvous teahouses) centered in the Shinbashi district of Tokyo, where geisha performed. So essential were the machiai-jaya to decision making among politicians that behind-the-scenes negotiations came to be termed machiai politics. Thanks to this connection, quite a few of the Meiji era’s most noted politicians were married to women who had been geisha.

One reason for this trend was that at this time, geisha were the only women (apart from very few female intellectuals) with the knowledge to converse on equal terms with politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen. As women became more educated and made careers for themselves, this aspect of the geisha’s role has become less important. Nonetheless, geisha remain the last bastion of a number of traditional Japanese accomplishments, including shamisen playing, the singing of traditional songs and narratives, Japanese classical dance, the taiko drum, the Japanese flute, formal etiquette and deportment, the art of donning a kimono, and more.

Iki: aesthetics of an urban modernism

By the second half of the 19th century, under the influence of the West, the Japanese government redoubled its efforts to elevate morals and imposed additional restrictions on courtesans. Geisha, who were in charge of the cultural portion of the entertainment, took centre stage and gradually became a style icon in Japan’s society catching up with the times. They helped create a new aesthetic ideal, iki, which may have determined the image of today’s Japan and which can be regarded as the country’s contribution to international modernism.

In the 19th century, Edo, with a population of 1.3 million, became one of the biggest cities in the world. There, among its simple citizens, especially the inhabitants of the pleasure quarters, a new aesthetic ideal was born. Unlike its predecessors, such as wabi and sabi, iki was never practiced by warriors, aristocrats, or priests. Instead of theoretical or intellectual sophistication, iki is all about practical everyday manifestations of sophistication. It belongs to simple citizens and geisha. According to Makoto Ueda, in terms of aesthetics, it was special urban chic, beauty with a touch of sensuality. As to the morals, an iki devotee has money but doesn’t warship it, partakes in sensual pleasures but doesn’t let carnal passions shape his life; in other words, it is a person of good taste. A similar trend in Europe around that time was dandyism, except that the latter was a male prerogative.

Edo citizens admired iki fashion, enjoyed iki situations, built relationships with freedom typical of iki, and wanted to identify with iki in every way. Ukiyo-e artists depicted iki characters in the iki style. Iki found expression in such genres of literature and art as kibyōshi (books with yellow covers, predecessors of modern comic books), sharebon, and ninjōbon, and was often their main subject. Other manifestations of iki can be found in the popular music genres of that epoch, such as dramatic melodeclamation jôruri.

Baron Kuki Shūzō, a Japanese philosopher, the author of the famous study, The Structure of Iki (1930), and the son of a former geisha, believed that the first indicator of iki was erotic attraction, the interplay of physical and emotional distances between the sexes. Those distances should not disappear altogether. As an example, Kuki cites Zeno’s paradox where Achilles can’t catch up with the tortoise. The second indicator of iki is fortitude of character based, according to Kuki, on the ideals of Bushido (“the way of the warrior”). On the one hand, subtle manifestation of sensual attraction; on the other, resistance to the opposite sex: refusal to give in easily. Finally, the third element of iki is humility, or sophisticated indifference, based on Buddhist views. Kuki emphasizes the quasi-feminist aspect of iki, above all the self-sacrifice of the woman who never gives up. He draws a parallel with dandyism, citing Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, and resolutely correlates iki with the image of a geisha from Fukagawa, a region that shaped spontaneously, unlike closed, government-licensed Yoshiwara, and was home to geisha who participated in the life of Edo like the rest of its citizens.

According to Kuki, natural manifestations of iki include stretched-out words and sudden pauses in speech, a slightly relaxed posture, light-coloured clothes, women wearing yukata (a home or summer kimono without lining) after bath only, slender, willowy barefoot women, elongated faces, light makeup, simple hairstyles, emon nuki (a way of wearing kimono with the collar lowered in the back, leaving part of the neck open), hidarizuma (a manner of walking, with the left edge of the kimono held in hand), and subtle hand movement. Artistic manifestations of iki include parallel lines (an unsurpassed reflection of the dichotomy of the sexes); some colours, such as mousy gray, brown (the colour of tea), and blue; the architecture of a Japanese tea house; and some traditional singing styles. Simplicity is also an essential attribute of iki. It is the kind of simplicity encountered in the work of contemporary artists, revolutionary relative to the genre art preceding it.

The above description provides a complete image of a geisha at the peak of the profession’s popularity at the beginning of the 20th century. As mentioned above, iki is a situational, practical aesthetic of the everyday where art is expressed not in objects but rather in behaviour, simple everyday choices, aesthetic experiences bringing satisfaction. Sophisticated artlessness may be an oxymoron but it suits that concept well.

Today, iki has become an integral part of Japanese life far beyond Edo, present-day Tokyo. According to Kazuo Nishiyama, it is “a unifying trait of the Japanese.” Their sensibilities have engendered numerous aesthetic ideals, but today, many of them can only be encountered in literature and in the artistic vocabulary. Iki, on the other hand, remains as relevant as ever, to this day an active part of Japanese discourse. Perhaps because it evades extreme expressions: it is never too vulgar or excessively abstract.

The aesthetics of the everyday is based on experiences rather than on creation of new artefacts. This is completely in line with our original thesis: Japanese art is intertwined with everyday life. In that context, geisha have historically played an important role. Their very existence, their ways and pastimes, such as tea ceremonies, creation of flower arrangements, playing shamisen and other musical instruments, traditional singing and declamation, classic Japanese dancing, etiquette and deportment, the art of donning a kimono: all of that is a reflection of tradition influenced by modernism (a modern reflection of tradition). It has spread far beyond Japan. Admittedly, Kipling’s famous line, “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,” is no longer relevant. Perhaps for the Japanese, an encounter with a geisha is, above all, a journey through the beautiful everyday and a reminder of how to be Japanese.

In my personal opinion, true beauty is an intellectual endeavour. It illuminates your inner world and expresses itself in your deeds and everyday choices.