With her emerald green kimono, ghostly white face and bright red lipstick, Kosen stands out in the sparsely decorated tatami-mat room. And when she begins to dance, she has the group of men seated at her feet utterly transfixed.
Behind her, Yachiho plucks the strings of a shamisen as her melancholy ballad fills the room before escaping through the paper window shutters into the night. The scene is repeated elsewhere in this Kyoto neighbourhood, inside teahouses identified by a simple handwritten sign, accessible via slatted doors that slide open only for the invited.
This is the modern-day world of Japan’s beguiling female entertainer: the geisha. The profession has worked hard to change its image in recent years — switching from women who were regarded as victims and prostitutes, to those who are seen to be engaged in the more genteel arts of classical song and dance.
Which is why Kyoto’s geisha districts are distinctly nervous about a forthcoming Hollywood film, produced by Steven Spielberg, which will dramatise Arthur Golden’s bestselling 1997 novel Memoirs of a Geisha.
The story tells of a young woman’s rise to the top of the geisha world in pre-war Japan. The book, which sold four million copies, provoked a bitter row when a woman, claiming she was the inspiration for the book, accused Golden of destroying her reputation.
Mineko Iwasaki claimed the author had used her name without permission and that his book was riddled with factual inaccuracies and defamatory remarks about her private life.
In the novel, the central character, Sayuri Nitta, loses her virginity to the highest bidder — a practice known as mizuage — and then falls in love with the chairman, a wealthy businessman.
Golden insisted that Sayuri, a poor girl sold to a geisha house in Kyoto’s Gion district, was a composite of several women he had interviewed and was entirely fictional.
Peter MacIntosh, an expert on geisha who is advising the film’s director, Rob Marshall, admitted there is widespread anxiety within the profession about the film’s impact. ”It’s not being made for a Japanese audience and it looks like they’re going to juice it up a bit. Anyone who knows something about Japanese culture might actually be appalled by the whole thing.”
The geisha’s traditional white make-up, for example, has been deemed too scary for American audiences.
Most of Gion’s geisha establishments have refused the cameras access and the bulk of the movie will feature an unidentified teahouse district meticulously recreated in the foothills north of Los Angeles.
Today’s geishas are, however, much more concerned that audiences will leave the cinema unable to differentiate between the women in the film and their present-day counterparts. An evening at a teahouse promises intimacy but typically delivers nothing more erotic than a bill running into hundreds of dollars.
The 250 geisha and maiko apprentices who live and work in Kyoto’s five geisha districts regard themselves, above all else, as performers.
The days have gone when girls as young as six were sold to teahouses to be exploited and abused.
Now, prospective maiko must complete their formal education, obtain written parental consent and demonstrate an interest in the arts.
It was an interest in music and dance, not in finding a wealthy patron, that brought Kosen to Gion six years ago. ”I haven’t given finding a patron a moment’s thought,” says the 20-year-old, a maiko apprentice at the Kaden teahouse, who will become a fully-fledged geisha next year.
”My aim is to get better at what I do: playing the shamisen, singing and dancing. I do want to get married and settle down eventually, but I’m so busy at the moment I don’t even have time to look for a boyfriend.”
Ikuko Takeda, a former geisha who runs the Kaden teahouse in Miyagawa-cho, acknowledged the popular appeal of the women she nurtures from their teens into their mid-20s.
But she was irritated that geisha codes were being broken in the rush to capitalise on the success of Golden’s novel and in anticipation of the film.
She is also irritated by several geisha exposés in recent years. ”It isn’t right for someone to give away all of their secrets,” she says.
”If customers thought they were going to appear in a book one day, they would stop coming. Teahouses are supposed to be discreet places where they can relax and be themselves.” — Â