GEISHA

by Liza Crihfield Dalby ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1983

A graceful, acute, often moving study of geisha life that does credit both to Dalby's Stanford training as an anthropologist and to her Kyoto training as ""Ichiguku, the American geisha."" Her own story, indicatively, emerges bit by bit. In the same way, modulating and blending, she answers the most persistent questions about the geisha: are they prostitutes? are they chattel?--putting the questions in proportion and perspective, incorporating them into a ""web of significance."" (Readers will not need to be reminded of Roland Barthes' Empire of Signs.) We first hear about Dalby's geisha family in Pontocho, the ""flower and willow"" quarter on the bank of Kyoto's Kamo River: her shrewd ex-geisha oka-san, or geisha mother; her giddy one-san, or older sister, Ichiume (22 to Dalby's 25--and, horrifically, burned to death in a fire the year after Dalby left). ""The 'mothers' of the teahouses, where geisha are employed, are the real businesswomen and entrepreneurs. The geisha are the 'daughters' of these women, living their private and professional lives as older and younger sisters to each other."" To customers and other outsiders, ""Pontocho is an entire world created for the delectation of men. That is the point, of course, to make them feel that way."" (Wives, by contrast, are expected to forgo socializing, sexiness, careers.) It is a life of ""glamour and discipline,"" Japanese-style. ""What is the mysterious training a new geisha goes through in order to attend banquets? None other, I discovered, than gaining the experience to converse and joke with men, mostly older men."" (Favored customers are witty and charming in turn.) Each Kyoto geisha cultivates an art (gei art + sha person)--classical dancing, singing the traditional nagauta or kouta repertoire, playing the shamisen--to perform not only at banquets, but in elaborate showcase productions. (At a resort area, contrastingly, the geisha party ""reeks with prurience""--while ""Most Tokyo geisha take apartments"" and value the glamour over the art.) Dalby also expands on the historical development of the geisha from ""fashion innovators"" to (in the 1930s) ""curators of tradition""; on geisha chic, ""within the subtle limits of Japanese traditional women's dress""; on methods of payment, social ""hypocrisy,"" aging-with-style, men and sex. (One rich, lifelong patron is the norm--with perhaps a boifurendo on the side.) Today? Fewer recruits, a foreshortened apprenticeship, some raveling at the edges; but not yet a relic. More than a fascinating array of facts: perspicacious and haunting.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1983

ISBN: 0520257898

Page Count: -

Publisher: Univ. of California Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION