Geisha

by Mineko Iwasaki

  The Iwasaki okiya had three lavatories, which was quite extravagant at the time. There were two downstairs, one for geiko and guests and one for the help. And another upstairs for the residents. All three had adjoining sinks and I was responsible for keeping those spotless as well.

  The task suited me perfectly. It was work I could do all by myself. I didn’t have to talk to anyone else while I was doing it. And I felt very grown up and productive. I was very proud of myself when I finished. Kuniko made me a special breakfast for my big day. We finished eating at about nine o’clock.

  Following breakfast, Auntie Oima dressed me in a new practice kimono of red and green stripes against a white background and a red summer obi for my first meeting with my teacher. She gave me a colorfully printed silk bag packed with a fan, a (dancing) tenugui, or scarf, a fresh pair of tabi (fitted white cotton socks) wrapped in silk covers that she had sewn herself, a toy, and a snack.

  Mistress Kazama was the name of the dance teacher who trained the Sakaguchi family. I had met her many times at Mother Sakaguchi’s house. I knew she had taught both Yaeko and Satoharu, and assumed that she was going to be my teacher as well. Instead, Auntie Oima told me that we were getting ready to go to the house of the iemoto (grandmistress) the Kyomai Inoueryu iemoto, Yachiyo Inoue IV. She told me the iemoto was going to be my teacher.

  Everyone finished dressing in formal attire and we set off. Auntie Oima led the way, followed by Old Meanie, Yaeko, and myself. Kuniko was in the rear, carrying my little pack. We went to Mother Sakaguchi’s house and she and Mistress Kazama joined our tidy procession. It was only a few minutes’ walk to the iemoto’s studio, located in her home on Shinmonzen Street.

  We arrived at the studio and were ushered into a waiting room near one of the rehearsal rooms. The atmosphere of the rehearsal room was very quiet and very tense. I was suddenly startled by a loud sound. It was the distinctive noise that a closed fan makes when it is struck against a hard surface.

  I was watching the lesson when the teacher reprimanded one of the students by slapping her on the arm with her fan. I bolted at the noise, instinctively looking for some place to hide. I soon lost my way, and got stranded in front of the bathroom. After a few moments of panic, Kuniko found me and ushered me back to the others.

  We entered the studio. Mother Sakaguchi had me sit down next to her before the iemoto in the formal posture of respect and bowed deeply. “Ms. Aiko (her real name), please allow me to introduce you to this precious child. She is one of our treasures, and we pray that you take extraordinary care of her. Her name is Mineko Iwasaki.”

  The iemoto bowed in return. “I will do my best. And so shall we begin?”

  My heart was beating fast. I had no idea what I was supposed to do and stood there, frozen to the spot. The iemoto came over to me and said, kindly, “Mine-chan, please sit down on your heels. Straighten your back and put your hands in your lap. Very good. Now, the first thing we do is learn how to hold our maiohgi(dancing fan). Here. Let me show you.”

  A dancer’s fan is slightly larger than an ordinary one, with bamboo spines about 12 inches long. The maiohgi is kept tucked inside the left side of the obi with the top facing upwards.

  “Pull your maiohgi out of your obi with your right hand, and place it on your left palm as if you were holding a bowl of rice. Then slide your hand along the body of the maiohgi to the nib, and hold the end of the maiohgi with your right hand as though you were holding a bowl of rice. Holding the maiohgi with your right hand, lean forward and place it on the floor in front of your knees, like so, and, keeping your back perfectly straight, bow, saying ‘Onegaishimasu.’ (Please honor my humble request to be taught.) Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not yes. Yes.” She used the Gion pronunciation hei instead of the hae that I had been taught. “Now you try it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes.”

  I was concentrating so hard on placing my maiohgi properly that I forgot to request teaching.

  “What about ‘Onegaishimasu’?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled indulgently. “All right then. Now stand up and we’ll try a few steps.”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have to answer yes every time I say something.”

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded.

  “And you don’t have to keep nodding your head. Now follow me. Put your arms like this, and your hands like that, and point your eyes over there.”

  And that is how it began. I was dancing.

  Traditional Japanese dance looks very different from its Western counterparts. It is done in white cotton tabi socks rather than special shoes. The movements, unlike ballet, for instance, are slow and focus on one’s relationship to the ground rather than the sky. Like ballet, however, the movements require highly trained muscles to perform and are taught as fixed patterns (kata) that are strung together to form an individual piece.

  The Inoue School is considered the best school of traditional dance in Japan. The inoue iemoto is therefore the most powerful person in the traditional dance world. She is the standard by which all other dancers are judged.

  After an appropriate interval Mother Sakaguchi said, “Ms. Aiko, that should be enough of a lesson for today. Thank you so much for your kindness and consideration.”

  It seemed like a very long time to me.

  The iemoto turned in my direction. “Good, Mine-chan. The dance we have been learning is called kadomatsu. This is all we will do today.”

  Kadomatsu is the first dance taught in the Inoue School to children who are beginning their lessons.

  A kadomatsu is a decoration made out of pine branches that we display in our homes as part of the New Year celebration. They are festive and have a wonderful smell. I associated them with happy times.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “After you say ‘yes,’ you should sit down and say ‘thank you’.”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  “And then, before you leave the studio, you should say thank you one more time and then say good-bye and then make your final bow. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. Good-bye,” I said and returned gratefully to the secure side of Mother Sakaguchi, who was grinning with delight.

  It took a while before I connected understanding and doing, and even longer before I became comfortable with the geiko dialect. The version of the Kyoto dialect I learned at home was the dialect of the aristocracy. It was even slower and softer than the variation spoken in the Gion Kobu.

  Mother Sakaguchi patted me on the head. “That was wonderful, Mineko. You did such a good job. What a clever child you are!” Auntie Oima’s smile was barely hidden by her raised hand.

  I had no idea what I had done to receive such praise but was glad that they both seemed so happy.

  9

  THE IWASAKI OKIYA was one block south of Shinmonzen on Shinbashi Street, three houses east of Hanamikoji. Mother Sakaguchi lived on the other side of Hanamikoji, six houses to the west of us. The iemoto’s dance studio was one block west and one block north on Shinmonzen. The Kaburenjo Theater was six blocks to the south. When I was a child I walked everywhere.

  Elegant storefronts line the streets of the Gion, providing the services that the industry requires. Besides the hundreds of okiya and ochaya, there are florists and gourmet shops, art galleries and fabric stores, hair ornament and fan emporiums. The neighborhood is dense and compact.

  My life became much busier after 6-6-6. I began to take calligraphy lessons from a wonderful man name Uncle Hori who lived two houses down and koto, singing, and shamisen lessons from his daughter, who was a master of a form of jiuta (a style of singing and playing the shamisen particular to the Kyoto area) important to the Inoue School. The koto and shamisen are both stringed instruments that came to Japan from China. The koto is a large thirteen-stringed lute that rests on the floor when played. The shamisen is a smaller three-stringed instrument that is played li
ke a viola. It is used to accompany most of our dances.

  Besides taking daily lessons, I also cleaned the toilets every morning. And I went to dance class every afternoon.

  Now that I was a big girl, I had to act like the atotori. I wasn’t allowed to shout or use rude language or do anything that was unbefitting to a successor. Auntie Oima started to make me use the dialect of Gion Kobu, which I had been fervently resisting. Now she corrected me all the time. I wasn’t allowed to roughhouse or run around. People cautioned me constantly against hurting myself or breaking something, especially a leg or a hand, because it would impair my beauty and my dancing.

  Auntie Oima became serious about teaching me how to be her successor. Until then I had played beside her as she went about her tasks. Now she started explaining to me what she was doing. I started to understand what was going on and began to participate in the daily routine of the Iwasaki okiya in a more conscious way.

  My days began early. I still woke up before the rest of the household, and now I had a job to do. While I was working on the toilets, Kuniko got up to start breakfast and the maids got up to begin their morning chores.

  The maids cleaned the Iwasaki okiya from the outside inwards. First, they swept the street in front of the Iwasaki okiya and then the path from the gate to the entranceway. They sprinkled water on the path and placed a fresh cone of salt next to the entrance of the house to purify it. Next they cleaned the genkan(entranceway) and turned everyone’s sandals around so that the shoes were facing the door, ready to be worn into the outside world. Inside the house, the maids tidied up the rooms and put away the items all of us had used the night before. Everything was back in place before Auntie Oima arose.

  Finally they prepared the Buddhist altar for Auntie Oima’s morning prayers. They dusted the statues, cleaned out the incense burner, disposed of the previous day’s offerings, and put new candles in the holders. They did the same for the Shinto shrine that sat on a raised shelf in the corner of the room.

  People who live in Gion Kobu tend to be very devout. Our livelihood is fully vested in the religious and spiritual values on which traditional Japanese culture rests. Practically speaking, our daily lives are closely interwoven with the ceremonies and festivals that punctuate the Japanese year and we reproduce them as faithfully as possible.

  Every morning, upon arising and washing her face, Auntie Oima went into the altar room and said her morning prayers. I tried to finish cleaning in time to say them with her. This is still the first thing I do in the morning.

  Then, in the short time remaining before breakfast, Auntie Oima and I gave Big John a thorough petting. By this time the apprentices were up and they would help the maids finish their morning chores. Cleaning is considered a vital part of the training process in all traditional Japanese disciplines and is a required practice for any novice. It is accorded spiritual significance. Purifying an unclean place is believed to purify the mind.

  After the house was in order, the maiko and geiko began to wake up. They worked late every night and were always the last ones to arise. Their income was supporting the rest of us, so they no longer had to do any housework.

  Aba arrived and we had breakfast. Then everyone went her separate way. The maiko and the geiko went to the Nyokoba for lessons or to the rehearsal hall if they were training for a performance. The maids got busy with their remaining duties: airing the bedding, washing the laundry, cooking, shopping. Until I began school the following year, I “helped” Auntie Oima with the morning’s business.

  Auntie Oima and Aba spent the morning sorting out the schedules for all the maiko and geiko under their management. They reviewed the tallies of the previous night’s appointments, made notes of income due and income received, organized requests for appearances, and accepted as many engagements as the geiko’s schedules would allow. Auntie Oima decided which costumes each maiko and geiko would wear that evening and Aba had to see to the coordination and disposition of the ensembles.

  Auntie Oima’s desk was in the dining room on the other side of her seat at the brazier. There was a separate ledger for each geiko in which she kept a running account of each woman’s activities, including which outfits were worn to entertain which clients. Auntie Oima also noted any specific expenditure made on a woman’s behalf, such as the purchase of a new kimono or obi. Fees for food and lessons were fixed and deducted on a monthly basis.

  Most tradesmen came in the morning. Men were allowed in the Iwasaki okiya after 10 A.M., when most of the inhabitants had left. The iceman brought in the ice for the icebox. Kimono salesmen, caterers, bill collectors, and others were greeted in the genkan. There was a bench they could sit on while conducting business. Male relatives, like my father, were allowed to come in as far as the dining room. Only priests and children were allowed deeper entry. Not even Aba’s husband, Auntie Oima’s younger brother, was free to come and go at his own will.

  This is why the whole notion of “geisha houses” being dens of ill repute is so ridiculous. Men are barely allowed inside these bastions of feminine society, let alone permitted to frolic with the inhabitants after they arrive.

  When the evening’s schedule was set, Auntie Oima got dressed to go out. Every day she visited people to whom the Iwasaki okiya owed a debt of gratitude: the owners of the ochaya and restaurants where her geiko had performed the night before, the dance and music teachers who taught them, the mothers of allied okiya, the local artisans and craftsmen who dressed us. It took the efforts of many people to present one maiko or geiko.

  This informal visiting back and forth is pivotal to the social structure of Gion Kobu. It is how the interpersonal relationships upon which the system depends are cultivated and maintained. Auntie Oima began to take me with her on her daily round of calls as soon as I moved in. She knew that the connections she was seeding in those meetings would serve me for the rest of my professional career, or my life, if I chose to spend the rest of it in the Gion as she had.

  Most of the household gathered back at the Iwasaki okiya for lunch. We ate traditional Japanese fare (rice and fish and vegetables) and only ate Western food like steak and ice cream when we were taken out to a trendy restaurant for a treat. Lunch was the main meal of the day, since geiko can’t eat a heavy meal before performing in the evening.

  Maiko and geiko are not allowed to eat at a private banquet, no matter how sumptuous the delicacies displayed before them. They are there to entertain the guests, to give not to take. An exception to this rule is when a geiko is invited to join a customer for a meal in a restaurant.

  After lunch Auntie Oima or Kuniko handed out the assignments for that evening to the assembled geiko. Then the women “got to work” researching the people they would be entertaining that evening. If one of her customers was a politician she studied the legislation he was sponsoring, if one was an actress she read an article about her in a magazine, if one was a singer she listened to his records. Or read his or her novel. Or studied the country the guest came from. We used all the resources at our disposal to do this. I spent many an afternoon, especially when I was a maiko, in bookstores, libraries, and museums. Younger girls turned to their “older sisters” for advice and information.

  Besides doing research, the geiko had to pay their courtesy calls in the afternoon, in order to remain on good terms with the owners of the ochaya and the senior maiko and geiko. If any member of the community was sick or injured, protocol demanded that they call on her promptly to voice their concern.

  Kuniko took me to my dance lesson midafternoon.

  In late afternoon the maiko and geiko returned to the Iwasaki okiya to dress, and the doors of the Iwasaki okiya were closed to outsiders for the rest of the day. The maiko and geiko took baths, fixed their hair, and put on their highly stylized makeup. Then the dressers would arrive to get them into their costumes. All of our dressers came from the Suehiroya.

  Most dressers are men, and they are the one exception to the no-men-in-the-inner-apartments-of-the-ok
iya rule. They were allowed up to the main dressing room on the second floor. Being a dresser is a highly skilled profession, one that takes years to master. A good dresser is critical to a geiko’s success. Balance is essential. When I debuted as a maiko, for example, I weighed 79 pounds. My kimono weighed 44. I had to balance the whole getup on 6-inch-high wooden sandals. If one thing was out of place it could have spelled disaster.

  Kimono are always worn with either wooden or leather sandals. Okobo, 6-inch-high clog-like wooden sandals, are a distinctive part of a maiko’s outfit. The height of the sandal is a counterbalance to the dangling ends of the maiko’s long obi. Okobo are difficult to walk in, but the mincing gait they ensure is thought to add to the maiko’s allure.

  Maiko and geiko always wear white tabi socks. The big toe of the tabi is separated, like a mitten, so that the toes can grip the sandal easily. We wear socks one size smaller than our shoe size, which lends a neat and dainty appearance to the foot.

  The otokoshi (dresser) I was given when I was fifteen was the male heir to the house of Suehiroya, an establishment that had been taking care of the Iwasaki okiya for many years. He dressed me every day for the fifteen years of my career, except for the two or three times that he was too sick to serve. He knew all of my physical idiosyncrasies, like a displaced vertebra I acquired in a fall that made it painful for me to walk when my kimono and numerous accoutrements were not fitted correctly.

  The whole point of the geiko enterprise is perfection, and the dresser’s job is to ensure that perfection. If anything is missing, slightly out of place, or seasonally inappropriate, the dresser is the person who ultimately bears the blame.

  The relationship goes far beyond the external. Because of their intimate access to the internal workings of the system, the dressers have become the standard brokers of various relationships within the karyukai, such as the elder/younger sister pairings. They serve as escorts in appropriate situations. And lastly, they are our friends. One’s dresser often becomes one’s confidant, a person one turns to for brotherly advice and counsel.