In the street outside the geisha house, I felt I had stepped into a Japanese painting - an empty cobbled lane, a single lantern casting a triangle of yellow light, a few cherry trees in tattered blossom, a soft slanting rain. I paused outside the door. Beyond, I could hear the rustle of silks, the soft pad of sandals, a woman's voice.
When I knocked, the house fell silent. Then the door slid open and the moon-white face of a geisha appeared. As she bowed, I found myself gazing, transfixed by her hair - thick, lustrous, jet-black, pierced with long pins and tied with silk ribbons.
"Come out of the rain,'' she said. The Japanese have 20 different words for rain. She used the term namida ame, which means "tear rain", the soft rain that falls when some tragedy has befallen you, when your heart has been broken. In the lobby, I removed my shoes and stepped barefoot across the threshold.It is 20 years since the publication of Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden's historical novel, which took readers inside Japan's pleasure quarters, and well over a century since the birth of the fictional characters it portrays.
I had come to Kanazawa, one of a handful of Japanese cities, outside of Kyoto, where geisha culture survives, to see how much the "floating world" depicted in the novel has changed.
Once one of the grandest cities in Japan, Kanazawa has settled now into provincial gentility. It has a reputation for traditional arts - for hand-painted silks and lacquerware, for ceramics and delicate gold leaf. Having escaped bombing in World War 2, much of its traditional architecture is intact, including the tea houses and inns, the traditional pleasure quarters.
A FLOATING WORLD
I was staying in a small traditional house on the edge of the quarter, near the river where reflections of willows and bridges hovered in the dark water like an oriental cliche.
The house was devoid of anything a naive westerner might recognise as furniture. There was a courtyard garden featuring two rocks in raked gravel, a doll-sized kitchen, several rooms with only tatami mats, and a loo that played a fanfare whenever I entered the cubicle - the only place to sit down.Across town, in the neighbourhood of Nagamachi, I went to visit the Nomura Samurai House, a historic home and garden, open to the public. Passing through empty rooms, I came to one of the only pieces of furniture: a Buddhist shrine.
This is where the family could keep the ancestors appraised of the family news, from engagements to lottery wins. Being dead, the ancestors were no longer in a position to ask questions. This presumably allowed the family to skate over more troublesome issues: heartbreak, divorce, bankruptcy, or the rash purchase of a chair.
In a small adjoining museum, next to gleaming Samurai swords, I found thank-you letters from Kanazawa's feudal lord to favoured warriors.
"We appreciate how you worked so hard to kill a high-ranking official at the Yokokitaguchi Battle," said one dated October 9 1566. "Thank you for bringing us his head."
THE ULTIMATE FEMALE
Working hard, of course, is a Japanese thing. Central to the culture is the pursuit of excellence, an almost fanatical quest for the ideal, from the world's sharpest blades to the freshest sashimi.
The pursuit of excellence is central to the culture of the geisha: they are meant to be an ideal, the ultimate female companion. Their training seems to be as demanding as that of a brain surgeon.
The floating world, of which geishas were part, was as densely stratified as a royal palace. Among the many gradations of escorts were the saburuko, or serving girls, the tayuu, or erotic performers, the yujo or "play women", and the oiran, the high-end courtesans.With time, geishas became more than just the appetiser and were sought out purely for the pleasure of their company. They also became fabulously expensive. In the 19th century, it is said a geisha evening could cost a labourer's annual salary.
But in spite of the exorbitant cost, there were strict boundaries. A geisha may have taken a lover from among her wealthy patrons but this was a personal choice, not a professional obligation - geishas were never prostitutes.
MY NIGHT WITH A GEISHA
Remarkably the floating world in Kanazawa - the world of kabuki theatre and tea houses and female escorts - survived until the '50s, when some fatal combination of TV, cinema, the modern world, and the changing tastes of young people swept much of it away.
Today, the old wooden buildings lean companionably on one another. The tea houses, minus their complement of young ladies, now cater chiefly for tourists while old warehouses and workshops have found a new life as artisanal studios, galleries and shops. But in the back streets, a handful of geisha houses survive, keeping alive one of the more innocent arts of the floating world.Emiya's clothes were probably all the chaperoning she needed. Her kimono was as elaborate and as complex as a philosopher's notebook. Moon-white with scarlet lips, Emiya's face had the quality of a mask. But her hair. I couldn't take my eyes off her hair.
Swept back from her brow in elegant, glossy waves, it was the colour of obsidian. In its depths, decorative hair-combs shone - lacquered, carved, jewelled.
Conversation may be part of a geisha's skill set but initially Emiya and I, through Yoko the translator, were struggling. Small talk felt as painful as my knees. In the uneasy hesitations, I began to hoover up the blowfish and slurp sake nervously. Then suddenly Emiya rose to perform the first of the night's entertainments.The older geisha turned out to be Emiya's backing band. She played the shamisen, a traditional three-stringed instrument rather like a long lute. Its acoustic body is usually covered in dog or cat skin. The shamisen is something of an acquired taste. Many people think it a waste of a family pet.
The first musical production might have been titled The Four Seasons. While the older geisha plucked and sang, Emiya danced, striking a series of postures in a kind of elaborate mime meant to represent the turning year. No doubt there were complex metaphors at work but as pure entertainment, it wasn't a great success. Spring looked like a slow motion shopaholic trying to fight her way into a Boxing Day sale while winter came across as a homeless person freezing to death - not a great deal of action but opportunity for some elaborate facial expressions.
Things picked up with the drum solo. Seated at a set of traditional taiko drums, Emiya wove a series of subtle and intricate rhythms. I began to feel a drum beating behind my eyeballs. The sake was kicking in.
A DARING QUESTION
When she returned to the table, Emiya refilled my empty cup. Suddenly - I think it was the sake talking - I asked how and why she had become a geisha.
For all the pleasure and interest of Emiya's company, this was a commercial relationship masquerading as a social evening. I felt uncomfortable in this structured pantomime, paying for a woman's company. I wanted to get beyond the rituals.
A silence fell on proceedings. She fingered a fan. My questions seemed clumsy and inappropriate, not a part of the delicate etiquette that governed these exchanges. But then she softened. I was a foreigner - clumsy and inappropriate is what we are.Suddenly geisha-dom was revealed as just another job. Like a musician, the geisha provided paid entertainment. Once it had been a way of life, and for many young women a gilded cage. But while still clinging to traditional dress and artifice, still evoking a patriarchal world, working as a geisha in modern Japan is simply a career choice.
Still, it is a career steeped in refinement. Emiya rose, turned the lights low and lit a candle on the table. She reached inside her kimono and withdrew a simple wooden flute, the traditional shinobue.
As she played, her shadow swayed on the screen behind her, like a dark twin. All thoughts of The Four Seasons were forgotten. Her playing was exquisite - haunting, feminine, melancholic. While Emiya played, Yoko, the translator, leaned towards me and whispered: "She has lost her prince. There has been a heartbreak."
In the stilted atmosphere of this strange evening, this revelation of emotion was startling.
When the geisha returned to the table, we chatted politely about Kanazawa's 16th-century castle and the exquisite Kenrokuen garden, among the finest in Japan. Then suddenly, just as I was getting into the whole geisha thing - the music, the sake, the more intimate atmosphere, the poisonous blowfish - our appointment was over. Holding me by the elbow, Emiya kindly steered me towards the door. Any unsteadiness wasn't the sake. Both of my legs had fallen asleep.There was more bowing, there were expressions of regret and thanks. Emiya pointed the way and called fluting salutations after me. Outside in the dark lane, I turned to wave. She stood in the doorway, the lighted room behind her. The melancholy rain, namida ame, washed across the yard. "You have wonderful hair," I called back to her.
Emiya smiled, raising a hand to one of the lacquered pins. Then she spoke, a little haltingly, for the first time in English.
"It is not real," she called across the yard. "It is a wig." - The Sunday TelegraphPLAN YOUR TRIP
The Art of Travel arranges unique experiences in Japan, from visits to gold-leaf lacquerware artists to martial-arts lessons. A geisha evening in Kanazawa with a night in a Japanese house costs from R16,000.6 FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT GEISHAS
1. The literal meaning of the word geisha is "person of the arts", a reference to her skill in music, calligraphy, dance, flower arranging, the tea ceremony and conversation.
2. In the past, geisha training began as early as five years of age. These days, in Tokyo, women usually start at 18, though in more traditional Kyoto, 15 is common.
3. Since they were tasked with entertaining clients waiting for the oiran (courtesans), the first geishas were often men. It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that the role became largely female.
4. If a geisha evening is notoriously expensive, it is no wonder. A geisha can easily spend R250,000 a year on kimonos alone, as well as the continuing expenses for training often required to maintain her status as a geisha. In the old days, wealthy patrons would sponsor a geisha. These days in Kanazawa, the municipal authorities, who are anxious to support traditional culture, subsidise them.
5. While it is common for a geisha to wear a wig, apprentice geishas, known as maiko, have to create the same elaborate effect with their own hair. This means that many maiko are obliged to sleep with their necks supported on small supports or takamakura, instead of pillows, to keep their hairstyles intact.
6. While we think of geishas in the past as being exploited, the women themselves did not always see it that way. In a traditional society that offered few opportunities for women, life as a geisha was a route to economic independence. "Geishas are not submissive and subservient," insisted Mineko Iwasaki, one of the most famous of 20th-century geishas. "In fact, they are some of the most financially and emotionally successful and strongest women in Japan."..