Geisha - Perhaps the most mysterious women on Earth

At least once in life you’ve heard the term ‘geisha’. The term is quite popular but there are only few persons who really know what a geisha is. Here are some answers to the question: ‘Do you know what a geisha is?’ -Sam, 22 years old: ‘Yes, I’ve heard about them, I think they are prostitutes in Japan, aren’t they?’ -Wynonna, 37 years old: ‘I don’t really know much about them, I only know they are women, they live in Japan or China and they entertain men’ -Reese, 27 years old: ‘Easy! They are hookers who sleep with different men every night. Am I right?’
People’s opinions on this topic were always controversial. Most of us think that geisha are prostitutes or easy women, even if we never read anything about them. This makes geisha even more mysterious. In reality, the things are quite different than how we imagine them. The term ‘geisha’ comes from the Japanese ‘Gei’ which means ‘art’ and from ‘Sha’ which means ‘person’, so a possible definition of a geisha would be ‘an artist’. Who could have said that a geisha is an artist? Perhaps nobody! However, geisha are Japanese women with real artistic skills since they have to perform different arts, such as music, dance and games.
Many books have been written about them, one of the most representative one being ‘The memory of a geisha’ by Arthur Golden. Their history is very complex and not many people know it. Geisha appeared long time ago, under the name ‘saburuko’. Some of the saburukos were girls of families left destitute during the Taika reform and charged for sexual services while others, the more educated ones, only charged for their company and time. In 794, when the Emperor Kammu moved the capital to Kyoto, geisha became a flourishing culture, focused on certain standards of beauty. Shirabyoshi and other good female dancers were wanted by many people during that era. In the traditional Japanese culture, people focused on sexual pleasure more than on any other pleasures. This is why, men were not supposed to be faithful to their wives but to seek pleasure somewhere else: to courtesans, while their wives were supposed to be modest and to take care of the house and children.
In the 16th century, some ‘pleasure quarters’ called yÅ«kaku were built with the purpose of allowing men being entertained by geisha. The highest geisha-like class was called Oiran and was represented by women who were both prostitutes and actresses and who performed erotic wild dances. It was only in the 18th century when the best entertainers, called geisha, appeared. They were not supposed to entertain people by means of sexual services but by means of professional dancing, singing or by playing some instruments.
Surprisingly, the first geisha were not females. They were males who had to entertain the customers with their skills. Geisha women aroused after the male entertainers. They were women trained in the art of conversation and flirting. The first female geisha appeared in 1750 and she was a gifted shemisan player, called Kikuya. Prostitution was legal until 1900s so after Japan’s modernization and the dissolution of the samurai class, official geisha started emerging and this became a recognized occupation. Amazingly or not, during this time some geisha sold their virginity to the highest bidder. However, after World War II this job couldn’t have been practiced anymore because all women were supposed to work in factories or other places. After they were allowed to rework in the field, only few of the geisha returned to their jobs and tried to remain to the traditional Japanese way of entertainment in order to remain ‘geisha’.
Geisha didn’t disappear; they still exist nowadays and entertain their clients in teahouses. However, for Europeans, they represent a big mystery.
Here are some interesting facts about geisha: - Geisha lived in a life of beauty. This was the main element which guided their lives, along with the discipline and the talent
- By ‘en large’ wealthy men were only supposed to admire the beautiful geisha, not to touch
- During her childhood, a future geisha had to go to school in order to become well-trained on the job and also to work as an assistant or the servant of an already experimented geisha
- Being a geisha involved learning to be anonymous, to preserve the mystery
- When a geisha retires, from different reasons, she has to organize a ceremony, called hiki-iwai