Geisha Symbolism

In particular places such as Kyoto's exclusive Pontocho district and Tokyo's Akasaka nightclub strip, the Western visitor can still see the traditional Japanese geisha and glimpse what seems to be an exotic relic from the remote past. The geisha, conspicuous by her costume, her walk, and even by her mode of transport (the rickshaw), has become for many a symbol or the old Japan. In one recent descriptive travel book on Japan, for example, the following picture is painted:

In the half darkness of twilight, the geisha--shimmering in her embroidered kimono, her tall headdress bearing a half circle of combs, her chignon raised to display above the kimono collar a tapering powered neck-- steps out of her cage with precaution and enters a small garden, skipping from stone to stone. The sliding door splits open to admit her.1

So familiar is the romantic image of the geisha that most Westerners assume that the ceremonial entertainment of the male guest is a common ritual for Japanese man, and that geishas perform a more elaborate form of the same rites of initiation that common prostitutes do in other countries.

The geisha is certainly an exotic creature even today, but the reality of the geisha's position in modern Japanese society is far different from what it was in the 19th and 18th centuries, when geishas numbered in the tens of thousands and played an integral role in Japanese culture. Today, true geishas are rare and the geisha experience is the privilege of a wealthy few, with the price of s dinner party ranging upwards of five hundred dollars for the evening. On the other hand, the geisha is not an "ancient" Japanese tradition at all, but a relatively late refinement of the licensed prostitution that developed in the Yoshiwara ...

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...o geisha take on the capacity of sisters to one another, but they call the women who run the teahouses "mother". Geisha are by no means the only Japanese who live and work in social groups defined by kin terms, but this phenomenon does appear most explicitly in the traditional occupations: carpenters, miners, sumo wrestlers, and gangsters, for example. 13

But as Dalby goes on to note, the geisha culture is marked by the "primacy of sisterhood", and represents a kind of counterpart to the bonds of brotherhood in such fraternal Japanese cultures as business corporations and company unions. The modern geisha's services are beyond the means of the average Japanese man today, but the geisha continues to represent a cultural ideal: the ideal of the witty, educated woman who can talk frankly with a man about life, sex, art, politics, or anything else his wife cannot.