Women of the Pleasure Quarters Page 2

  There were five geisha areas or hanamachi (flower towns), of which three clustered together on the eastern side of the River Kamo which rolled, wide and brown, a couple of minutes walk away from the inn where I was staying. These three—Gion, the most famous and classy, Gion Higashi (East Gion), and Miyagawa-cho—were bordered to north and south by two thoroughfares, Sanjo and Gojo (Third and Fifth) streets. Cutting through the middle, the nerve center of the area, was Shijo (Fourth) Street, crammed end to end with shops dealing in all the paraphernalia of the geisha world—hairpins, tortoiseshell combs, dangly hair decorations, fans, clogs, kimono fabric, white face paint, sticks of safflower lipstick, hair wax, camellia oil, and small beautifully molded cakes of sugar, rice, and beans.

  The river divided this small alternative universe from the modern city with its snarled traffic, air-conditioned department stores, clashing neon, and bustling people. Across the river from Gion was the fourth of the five hanamachi, Pontocho, a tiny picturesque alley lined with restaurants which in summer were extended at the back to make platforms lined with reed matting where one could dine, sip sake, and enjoy the cool breezes above the rolling waters of the Kamo. It was several days before I visited the fifth, Kamishichiken (literally “Seven Houses to the North”), in the northwest of the city. To my mind it was the most charming of all, a couple of quiet intimate lanes lined with dark prosperous houses, many with a lantern glowing outside, meandering in a gentle curve up to the stone lanterns and plum trees of Kitano Shrine.

  That evening I was to have my first appointment with one of the grandes dames of the geisha world. I had mentioned on the phone that I was a friend of a friend, an important and powerful businessman whom I will call Mr. Suzuki, and hoped that that would smooth my way. Far from seeking publicity, the geisha shun it. Their whole profession depends on their ability to keep secrets. Many have been the friends of the nation’s most powerful men, often for a lifetime. Such men choose to entertain at geisha houses because they can trust these women to keep their lips sealed, no matter what they see or hear. But I also knew that in Japan as elsewhere the most important thing is who you know. With the help of introductions from friends I had made over years of living and working in Japan, I was confident that little by little I could breach this closed world.

  At the end of an alley I pushed open a door and found myself in a small brightly lit room. There was a bar along one side and some leather sofas arranged to make a couple of alcoves. A small, regal woman in a kimono greeted me, offered me a whiskey, then turned back to banter with a group of noisy elderly men. Rather awkwardly I perched on a stool at the bar and began to chat to the barman. Finally the woman came to perch alongside me.

  “So you are here through the introduction of Ken-chan,” she said, using the affectionate, diminutive form. “I’ve known him for years, since he was a little boy. I used to bounce him on my knee.”

  It was hard to imagine the leathery Tokyo businessman I knew being bounced on anyone’s knee. Added to which, if that was the case, I realized with surprise, she had to be in her seventies. She was as tiny and frail as a butterfly, with the kind of looks that become, if anything, more beautiful with time—a fine-boned, delicate face, perfect skin without a trace of lines. Dressed in a modest indigo-blue kimono with a subtle pattern woven through it, her hair drawn back into a pristine bun, she sat very upright, poised and gracious.

  “So . . . what would you like of me?” She spoke in Kyoto dialect, ineffably polished and stylized, where everything is hinted at and nothing is said directly. Fresh from Tokyo, I found it difficult to pick up every nuance.

  Clumsily I launched into an explanation. As she knew, I was a writer. I was hoping to write about the geisha world. Hopefully I could meet geisha, some young, some at the height of their career, perhaps even spend time in a geisha house living among geisha like one of them, seeing life from the inside. I gathered she might be able to help me. I’d be very grateful if she could do so.

  I stumbled to a close. She sat in silence, looking straight ahead.

  “Mmm,” she said slowly after a long pause, pursing her lips. “But how can you ever understand our shikitari?”

  “Shikitari?” I prided myself on my spoken Japanese but this was new to me.

  “You see?” she smiled, tight-lipped. “You do not even know the word.”

  Many of the customs and practices in the geisha world, I was to learn, have their own terminology, a sort of jargon known only to insiders, incomprehensible to most Japanese. Other words which they regularly use—such as shikitari—are rare and sound rather archaic to the Japanese ear. It was only after considerable research that I discovered that shikitari means “customs, practices, the way of doing things.” It was indeed the shikitari which I wanted to learn about, among much else.

  “How long are you planning to stay in Kyoto?” she went on.

  “Several months,” I replied uncomfortably, adding hastily, “but I’ve lived in Japan for many years. I first came more than twenty years ago . . .”

  “I have been to London many times,” she snapped. “I have met all the top people—the aristocracy, musicians, singers . . . But you would still say that I cannot understand England, would you not?”

  I had to confess, I murmured as politely as possible, that that was not exactly the way that English people thought. For a start, she said, ignoring my response, geisha were of different sorts and different status. Some, like her, had been born in Gion. She herself was third generation; her mother and grandmother before her had been geisha. Then there were those—here there was the faintest, barely perceptible curl of the lip—who had come in from elsewhere. They, she implied, were a different class altogether. Of the five hanamachi, Gion, Pontocho, and Kamishichiken had long histories. They had always been geisha istricts. But I must bear in mind that East Gion and, worse still, Miyagawa-cho were different, unspeakably low, in fact quite beyond the pale; in the past, prostitutes—she breathed the word with distaste—had lived there.

  “I would not like to see Miyagawa-cho written about in the same breath as the others,” she said emphatically.

  Even Gion, Pontocho, and Kamishichiken were all completely dissimilar, with entirely different histories and shikitari. She had met many Westerners, she concluded, writers and journalists, who had come to Kyoto on the same quest as mine. They had all failed. They had all given up and so should I.

  “No matter how long you are here you will never understand the intricacies of our system.”

  Gloomily I took another sip of whiskey. I had never met a Japanese woman so formidable and steely. In the alcoves the men were shouting and laughing. Ties were loosened, faces flushed.

  “Mama!” shouted one. With the indulgent smile of a mother for a naughty child, the mama-san—my hostess—slipped away to join them, topping up their drinks and admonishing them teasingly. One, rather the worse for wear, came over to try his English skills on me.

  At that moment the door opened. With a rustle of silk and brocade, a creature like a painted doll appeared.

  “Okasan, oki-ni!” she cooed in breathy, high-pitched tones using the Kyoto word for thank you: “Mother, thank you.” Tottering unsteadily into the room on clogs a good four inches high, she stood nodding, smiling, and giggling, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “She has just become a maiko,” explained the mama. “This is her third day.”

  I was dumbstruck, as many people are, on coming face to face with a maiko. (Maiko literally means “dancing girl” but is usually translated “trainee geisha” or “apprentice geisha.”) Later, as the days and months passed, I was able to see the childish faces underneath the thick white paint. But that time, I could not stop myself staring in amazement and curiosity at this extraordinary confection. I was not the only one. For a moment there was silence before the chatter started up again.

  She was wearing a sumptuous black kimono with an intertwined design of bamboo leaves and stems in browns, whites, and greens around the he
m. The kimono sat flatteringly low on her shoulders, revealing a layer of brilliant red brocade at the throat which I took to be an under-kimono; in fact it was a separate under-collar. Around her waist, wrapping her like a corset from armpit to hip, was a thick cummerbund—the obi—of pale gold embroidered with flowers.

  She was not so much a woman as a walking work of art, a compilation of symbols and markers of eroticism, as far removed from a human being as a bonsai is from a natural tree. Geisha have been described as icons of femininity. If that is the case, it is a very stylized image of femininity, following conventions utterly different from Western notions of beauty and sexiness. There was certainly not the slightest pretense that this was a real woman. She was an actress, painted up to play a role; it would be as absurd to confuse the girl with the role as to assume that the star of a soap opera actually was the character she was playing.

  Rather unsteadily, with much rustling of fabric, she perched on the edge of one of the sofas; the enormous obi prevented her from sitting any further back. I glanced at the mama, hoping that I might slip over and join the group; but with a barely perceptible pursing of the lips she indicated that I should keep quiet and stay where I was. So I watched and listened, curious to see what this painted creature might have to say.

  “When were your parents born?” began the stringy, gray-haired man next to her, basking in her presence.

  She smiled, giggled, covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Showa twenty-nine,” she trilled, using the Japanese calendar in which years are numbered according to the ruling emperor (1944 by the Western calendar).

  The man roared appreciatively as if she had just uttered a scintillating witticism.

  “Showa twenty-nine, same as my son!” he beamed.

  Smiling, she picked up one of the bottles of beer which littered the table and offered to fill his glass. One by one she moved from guest to guest, filling their glasses, giggling, repeating “Oki-ni!” Her job, it seemed, was just to be there. Chatting was an optional extra. Soon the men had reverted to talking among themselves.

  Time passed. She rose to her feet. Bustling and clucking like a mother hen, the mama tugged, pulled, and patted her kimono into place and adjusted the heavy gold obi until the two long ends which crossed one over the other and hung to her feet were perfectly symmetrical.

  “Oki-ni! Oki-ni! Okasan, oki-ni!” sang the girl. Bowing and giggling, with a clatter of clogs and a tinkle of bells, she backed out of the door and was gone. The room seemed a little duller, a little gloomier without her.

  The Mama-san

  It seemed an auspicious beginning. But as the days and weeks passed, I began to fear that I would never get any further than this. I could see the geisha, I lived among them. But I was always an outsider, I could never step through the looking glass. And the more curious I became, the more the geisha world presented me with a blank face.

  Every connection I thought would be hopeful turned out to be a dead end. From time to time I was introduced to women who I knew were ex-geisha and the proprietresses of geisha houses.

  “I wonder if I might meet the geisha and maiko in your house,” I would murmur tentatively. “Would it be possible . . .”

  “Much too busy,” they would snap. “Geisha are busy all day. They go to classes, they appear at parties. They certainly wouldn’t have the time to talk to you. But call me next week, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Hardly daring to hope, I would call them the following week. The answer was always the same.

  But on the fringes of the geisha world I was making friends. Every day I went to the coffee shop for breakfast. By now the motherly owner and her jazz-loving husband were used to my eccentric foreign ways. Instead of the tiny container of cream substitute which they served to everyone else, they gave me, smiling at the oddness of it, real milk to top up my coffee and indulgently cut me thin slices of toast instead of doorstop-thick slabs. Sometimes I wrote my diary; sometimes I chatted to the owners or the other women.

  Then, tape recorder and notebook in bag, I would set off. Sometimes I would drop in to see Mr. Ishihara, the hairdresser. Maiko usually came in to have their hair done in the morning. I would sit in a corner and watch. He would start off with a long thick mane of hair and, while the maiko pored over a teenage magazine, he would smooth it with curling irons, comb in gobs of wax, part and knot and tug and tie, slip in a tail of yak’s hair and wads of stuffing, then add ribbons and string and pins until the hair had been transformed into an immaculate gleaming coiffure. He was not so much a hairdresser as a sculptor who worked in hair. Between customers he would sit down to chat. He knew everything one could ever want to know about geisha and their hairstyles, the history and the meanings of the different styles, and had written four books on the subject.

  As much as I could I absorbed the geisha arts. The word gei-sha literally means “arts person”; perhaps it could be translated “artiste.” Maiko spend five years studying dance and music before they graduate, and fully qualified geisha continue to study for the rest of their lives, honing and perfecting their technique. As I walked the streets I would hear the plangent plink plonk of shamisen riffs being practiced over and over again.

  Soon after I arrived the Pontocho geisha gave a series of public dance performances. The small theater, tucked on one side of the narrow lane which made up the Pontocho district, was packed out with women in dark-toned kimonos who looked much like the owners of geisha houses and their elderly escorts, who might have been husbands, friends, or patrons. While the spectators fluttered their fans, the all-female troupe gave an abbreviated performance of Chushingura (The Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin [Lordless Samurai]), a drama as familiar as a Shakespeare play or a performance of Swan Lake would be to a Western audience. For the geisha of Kyoto it was a particularly appropriate choice, for the most moving scenes take place in Gion’s Ichiriki-tei, the most famous and venerable teahouse in the country.

  Little by little my ear was becoming attuned to the melodies and rhythms of the music, at first rather dissonant for Western taste, while my eye was becoming sharper, better able to perceive the quality and crispness of the movements. One way of stepping inside the geisha world, I thought, might be to sit in on some of the maikos’ music and dancing classes. But to do this I needed an introduction. Taking a deep breath, I called the formidable mama, thanked her very much for her kindness, and asked if I might come and see her again.

  “Of course,” she replied, all icy politeness.

  Whenever you visit anyone in Japan you take a gift, beautifully wrapped in the shop’s brand-name paper and presented in the shop’s carrier bag. A mere glance at the choice of shop communicates to the recipient your savoir faire and your degree of respect. So it was an urgent priority to find a suitable gift. Should I take cakes or, as a Westerner, expensive French wine? Several guidebooks recommended a celebrated cake shop on Shijo with a long pedigree. So I went along, asked for their most famous cakes of the season, and bought a boxful. The cakes were of rice paste filled with red bean jam, beautifully molded.

  Carrying my offering, I arrived at precisely the appointed time. The bar was silent, dark, and empty apart from the barman, who was leaning on the counter, smoking a cigarette.

  “Wait a while,” he said, turning on some lights, and offered me a drink. He had a swarthy, rather flat, melon-seed face and sharp, watchful eyes. He might have been anything between thirty and fifty but had become fixed forever in the ageless role of “boy.” There were plenty of men around but they were all adjuncts, “employees” as one aging geisha put it, servicing the geisha—shopkeepers, barmen, men whose job it was to help the geisha dress, men who worked in the geisha unions.

  The barman seemed unnervingly knowledgeable about me and the difficulties I was having.

  “The geisha world is not a yes/no society,” he said, apropos of nothing in particular. “You offer a maiko a cake and she just says, ‘Oki-ni.’ She doesn’t say, ‘Yes, please,’ or ‘No, thank
you.’ ”

  I understood what he was driving at. If I made a request, no one would ever say, “No, that’s impossible,” neither would they say, “Yes, I’ll do that, I’ll help you.” They would always make encouraging noises and tell me to call them again, any time, and they would see what they could do. But no matter how many times I called, nothing would ever come of it.

  The mama was a case in point. I had heard from others that she was one of the most powerful geisha in Kyoto. She had been, like her mother before her, a famous beauty. Indeed, she was still extraordinarily lovely. Rumor had it that she had a danna, a patron, effectively a husband, who supported her whole enterprise. “They’ve been together for decades,” the innkeeper’s wife had told me. Yet I wondered where that steely core came from. In my decades in Japan I had met many Japanese women, almost all of them married, who were strong, confident, yet also eager to befriend me, a foreigner. I had never before encountered such suspicion and intransigence. It was as if these women had built a self-sufficient world in which I was just a flea, an irritation. They had no need of me; they wanted to brush me off.

  When the mama appeared, as exquisite and tight-lipped as ever, she took my carefully chosen cakes with barely a glance and put them aside, then asked me what I wanted to drink.

  “Ocha de mo ii desu,” I said. “Tea will be fine.”

  “That’s rude!” she snapped, rounding on me fiercely. “You say, ‘Ocha o itadakimasu,’ ‘I’ll have tea, please.’ ”

  Biting my tongue I apologized profusely and thanked her for being so kind as to correct me. There were no concessions to the fact that I was speaking a foreign language. The geisha were unforgiving of the tiniest error. Trying to communicate deference and humility with my body language, nodding, keeping my head bowed, I waited for an appropriate moment when, with the utmost politeness, I could put my request to her. I thought it would help my research, I explained, using the most formal and polite Japanese I could manage, if I was able to sit in on some classes at the Kaburenjo, the “Music and Dance Practice Place,” which housed classrooms, a theater, and the union offices and formed the nerve center of the district.