Tag: featured

I wrote about my new trainee Sae. She has proven to be hard working and reliable. She wakes up early to clean the geisha house and to sew the collars that we need to regularly change on our under kimonos. She attended kimono sewing school for a while so has actively taken on the role...

Every tourist equates Japan with geisha. But most are hazy about where geisha actually are. They might know Kyoto has geisha, but many don’t know that Tokyo does too. Actually there are probably 30 or 40 geisha districts still in Japan, generally defined as being a place where there is a geisha office (kenban) coordinating...

Becoming a geisha In my geisha house I will be taking a new hangyoku (maiko) trainee in this month. What kind of girls become geisha trainees in this day and age? Usually they are girls who are attracted by the Japanese arts: girls who like kimono and who would like to learn Japanese dance. But...

  There are all kinds of misconceptions about what a geisha is and what she does. Geisha are traditional entertainers. “Gei” means “art” in Japanese and literally means “person of art”. We are dancers and musicians, much like opera singers or ballet dancers. Geisha also perform on the big stage. Usually each district has a large performance...