Geisha and courtesansA common mix-up, from books and accounts

The courtesans of old Japan are called yujo (women who worked in the pleasure quarters, including intimate services). People used to sum up the difference in one line: the yujo sells herself, the geisha sells her art. A geisha entertains guests with dance, the shamisen (a three-stringed instrument) and song. The okami of Miyakodori says the phrase was not a slur. It was a plain statement of two different roles.

Narushima Ryūhoku, a writer of the 1850s, wrote the same: a geisha sells her art, and it is the courtesan who sells herself. He added that people tended to see the two as one, but that geisha had pride, and many of them kept strict personal conduct.

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In Edo's Yoshiwara, the geisha did not step into the courtesans' work. They performed in the banquet room and kept the party lively and together. The book calls this the principle of the Tokyo geisha world.

Before recorded music, a party needed live shamisen and song. So the geisha with the best-trained art were the most popular. Many guests also played the shamisen, sang or danced, and joined the geisha in performing. The okami compares it to karaoke today. Few guests do this now, but some still do.

Geisha and courtesans were also told apart by how they looked. A geisha ties her obi (the wide kimono sash) at the back. A courtesan tied hers at the front. The okami says that as the two kinds of work were clearly divided, rules like this one grew up so the difference could be seen at once. As in the photo below, a geisha ties her obi in a knot called otaiko on her back.

The history of courtesans is older than that of geisha. Geisha took shape later as a profession of their own. The okami says that once the two were divided, geisha devoted themselves to polishing their art.

The book points out that the asobime, the entertaining women of earlier centuries, had done both. Seen against that, the split of courtesans for the one and geisha for the arts was a new arrangement.

The word geisha first meant a person with an art. In Yoshiwara it was used for the male entertainers who helped run a banquet, also called hōkan or taikomochi.

Later, women entertainers appeared who played the shamisen and kept the party going. They were called onna geisha, "female geisha". When the women came to outnumber the men, the men took the name otoko geisha. One book also says the geisha's first art seems to have been the shamisen, not dance.

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Yoshiwara was licensed in 1617 as the only official pleasure quarter in Edo (old Tokyo). Through the whole Edo period, the only women the authorities recognized as geisha were the geisha of Yoshiwara.

Geisha in districts such as Fukagawa and Yanagibashi also called themselves geisha and were known as machi geisha, "town geisha". Under the rules, though, they were shakunin. The book says the Yoshiwara geisha were recognized in return for a promise not to step into the courtesans' work, and that they took pride in carrying the art of the shamisen.

Yoshiwara lies close to Asakusa. The okami says its story is not Asakusa's own history. It is part of the roots of the hanamachi (geisha districts) of Asakusa and elsewhere, from before those districts took shape.

She adds that courtesans and geisha were not mainly separated by where they lived or worked. They were separated by role: by then it was already clear which work belonged to whom.

The okami says the first office of the kind now called a kenban (the geisha registry office) appeared around the time the Yoshiwara geisha were officially recognized. Geisha's professional names were written on boards and hung up, in a separate row from the courtesans' names, so the board itself showed who was a geisha.

The book says that in 1779 a courtesan house in Yoshiwara set up a kenban, "name board", where geisha's name tags were hung, and that this was the start of the kenban across Tokyo. It registered geisha and sent them to parties when they were asked for.

The okami's account and the book's account of how the kenban began do not match, so both are given here.

In 1872 the government banned the indentured service of courtesans and geisha. Courtesan houses were then renamed kashizashiki and courtesans shōgi, under a state system of licensed prostitution.

In Tokyo, geisha and shōgi were clearly divided from 1872. Every geisha had to apply to the Tokyo prefectural office for a kansatsu (a license), and the courtesans' work was forbidden to geisha by law. With this, the town geisha who had been only shakunin in the Edo period became officially recognized performers, like the geisha of Yoshiwara.

In the Edo period the name geisha belonged officially to Yoshiwara, but the town geisha used it too, and this went on until the Meiji era. The 1872 rules then let any woman with a license be a geisha, not only those of Yoshiwara.

So, the author writes, the name geisha was born in Edo and raised in Tokyo, and Tokyo is still the home of geisha.

Tokyo geisha and Kyoto geiko

For a while after the war, some women went out as geisha but took on the courtesans' work to make a living. In Asakusa, which had always been proud of the level of its art, they gradually disappeared, and they were gone once the penalties of the Anti-Prostitution Act took effect in 1958. The book says only true geisha remained in Asakusa.

Oiran is one of the names for courtesans. In the Kannon-ura area of Asakusa, oiran parades are staged at events such as the Ichiyō Sakura Festival. Today's Asakusa geisha and Miyakodori have no part in these reenactments.

The jikata (the geisha who play shamisen and sing) of Asakusa today know sugagaki, a shamisen piece once played at night in Yoshiwara, but they do not play it. What the Asakusa geisha carry on is the dance, shamisen and song of geisha.

What happens at an ozashiki