Older Sister \"Why Are You

¶ … older sister "Why are you studying geisha? Geisha are no different from anybody else," Liza Dalby replied "not quite." Perhaps this reply holds in it the entire fascination of Western Civilization to one of the defining elements of Japanese society, at least in an Occidental perception: geishas. Starting to explain geishas' role in society, their place, their relation to art (music, poetry, dancing), to culture and tradition, to prostitution and wives, one needs to state from the very beginning that geishas' role fits in the Japanese society as ambiguously as anything else. Japan is a country of contrasts and a country of ambiguities. You can have extreme politeness and close rudeness, a relaxed perception on life evolution with the stress of doing your duty properly -- all alongside. Similarly, you can have geishas who are not prostitutes, but who entertain men and often take lovers to act as their protectors, who have a rather low rank in a social scale, but are otherwise greatly appreciated and who are often cultured enough to be anything else other than geishas.

Without even attempting to cover the personality of geishas and their role, a few nouns are likely to help in defining geishas, both as a concept and as persons. First of all, we may state the fact that geishas are performers. Their role is to entertain at private parties, often for exorbitant sums of money. In Kyoto, in the traditional geisha neighborhood, filled with lots of restaurants and private houses, one can often see in the streets (especially after eight or nine in the evening), geishas can be seen walking around the street in their tight, exquisite kimonos and lavishly done hairstyles, entering the restaurants where they are appointed. Dancing, singing and reciting, alongside witty and smart conversation are some of the trades that geishas are taught ever since the beginning of their lives in the geisha schools. Notoriously, one of the most famous geishas of all time, Sada Yakko, who lived in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, went on to become a remarkable actress, with tours that astounded the Western world at the beginning of the 20th century. Reputably, her conversation would stand the test of any of the potentates of those times.

The sexual interferences of geishas' activities are perhaps the most notoriously ambiguous. As the author herself stated in a recent interview, "Most geisha have patrons, yes, for economic as well as emotional reasons"

. In fact, the choice of patrons is essential in order to ensure the positioning of a geisha both in the "flower and willow world" and in the Japanese society. The choice of patrons is in fact a choice for influence and it is often the case that the patrons help economically. Going back again to Sada Yakko, one of her patrons was Count Ito, prime-minister of Japan at the time and foreign minister later on. Even if the sexual favors lasted only a period of time of a couple of years, the friendship between them ended only with the Count's assassination in Korea. Count Ito was to become a genuine help in Sada's enterprises.

This situation still continues to a certain degree even nowadays. As Liza Galby states in her book, it is essential to understand that the main geisha services is not sex-related, but that sexual favors may come as a complementary to the companionship duties that the geishas are not perform. Sex is, however, entirely up to the geisha herself and the geisha statute needs to clearly differentiated from that of a courtesan or a mere prostitute.

Nevertheless, the ethical question still remains open to debate: can geishas, who are offering paid services, be assimilated to some degree to the prostitute regime or should that only occur when the services provided are entirely of a sexual nature? Liza Galby, as myself, tends to state out that "their sex life is very much their own private business." In this sense, the geisha business has nothing to do with the paid sex business and, as previously stated, may only come as geisha's personal choice. Geisha should be first viewed as an artist and performer, someone who trains the entire life into committing to artistic entertainment, much like kabuki artists, for example. However, given the ambiguous status often related to them, one can often wonder to what degree prostitution also intervenes in the business.

It is also interesting to refer to the relationship to Japanese wives. Again, we previously need to refer to some of the characteristics of Japanese society. Until not so long ago, the main role of the Japanese wife was to take care of the household, everything ranging from raising the children to taking care of the family's finances. Their mission was not to entertain, but to manage. From this point-of-view, this is where the geishas intervened. They offered the husbands the possibility to have wistful conversation, while spending time with their friends and co-workers.

In my opinion, transparent also from the pages of Liza Galby's book, the role of the geishas as related to Japanese wives is a complementary one. A geisha offers the opportunity for the Japanese husbands to have a relationship with women outside the marriage, without this necessarily referring to sex, but rather to time spent with another woman other than the wife. It gives the possibility for husbands to talk to geishas about their problems, to have witty conversation etc. Similarly, many bars in Tokyo and Japan nowadays have evolved towards this form of entertainment.