HōkanThe entertainer who brings the party together

The word hōkan is written with two characters. According to a book on Asakusa's geisha world, the first, hō, means to help and to bring people together, so a hōkan is someone who keeps a drinking party running smoothly. In Asakusa people say hōkan. Taikomochi is another name for the same role, but it is not how hōkan are addressed there.

When Miyakodori arranges an ozashiki, the phrase used for booking a hōkan is the same one used for booking a geisha: hōkan wo kakeru, "to call a hōkan."

A hōkan is sometimes confused with a hakoya. The same book says they are entirely different jobs. A hōkan is an entertainer who looks after the guests at the party. A hakoya (a geisha's dresser and attendant) works behind the scenes, carrying her shamisen case and helping her dress, and does not appear at the party.

The hōkan (Introduction)

In Yoshiwara, the licensed quarter of Edo, the word geisha first meant male entertainers. According to the books, from the middle of the Edo period geisha came to mean women, and the men had to call themselves otoko geisha, "male geisha." In time they were called hōkan or taikomochi. One book says that from the Ansei era (1854 to 1860) on, Yoshiwara had more than three hundred women geisha, while the men stayed at about forty until the end of the Edo period.

The books tell the change in slightly different ways. One says the male geisha were first specialists in instruments and song, later added imitations of kabuki actors and lighter acts, and were then called hōkan. Another gives two views: that the male geisha simply changed their name to hōkan, or that the hōkan of Yoshiwara were a different kind of entertainer, known for imitations, voice mimicry and talk.

The first people called geisha were men (Geisha and courtesans)

• ▶ Video (Miyakodori on YouTube)Were geisha originally men? (YouTube Short, English subtitles)

Tatsumi no Sono, a sharebon (a kind of popular book of the time) from 1770, has a scene in a banquet room in Fukagawa, a district of Edo. A guest asks to liven things up by calling a geisha. The serving woman asks back whether he wants a haori, meaning a geisha in a haori (a short kimono jacket), or an otoko geisha. The author of a book on geisha reads the guest's "geisha" as a male geisha, in other words a hōkan.

A picture of Fukagawa painted around 1775 by Katsukawa Shunsho shows a hōkan entertaining the guests, with a geisha in a black haori playing the shamisen beside him.

The author of a book on Tokyo's geisha world, centered on Shinbashi, sees the roots of the hōkan in renga and haikai poets, physicians and painters. These were people who used their knowledge of poetry and the Chinese classics, and their training in linked verse and the tea ceremony, to suit the moment and keep a gathering together. Some of them settled in Yoshiwara and became hōkan.

The same author writes that the male entertainers of early Yoshiwara taught the courtesans refined manners and the basics of poetry, the tea ceremony and flower arranging.

Another book on Yoshiwara in the Edo period also says that many hōkan had a grounding in the tea ceremony or haikai.

According to a 2003 book, the hōkan of the past were entertainers and also organizers who could put on a highly satisfying banquet on a limited budget. They were close to the ryotei, the okami and the geisha, and knew everything about the geisha district. That organizing role has gone, the book says. What remains is the entertainer, who lifts the party together with the geisha.

The books explain the name tayu-shu differently. The 2003 book says the ryotei and the geisha used it to flatter the hōkan, who brought them work. A 2009 book says the hōkan specialized in music and most held a professional name in a school of music, which is why they were called tayu-shu.

According to a 2009 book, the music used in kabuki theater was treated as the real thing in Edo, and schools of music that the theater dropped were at risk of dying out. The hōkan, the tayu-shu, took that music on, performed it in Yoshiwara's banquet rooms, and handed it to the geisha of the Meiji era (from 1868). That is how old styles of shamisen narrative song, such as Katobushi, Itchubushi, Miyazonobushi and Ogiebushi, were carried from Edo into Meiji.

Yuta Kawamura, third-generation owner of Miyakodori, says these old pieces are hardly ever performed at a Miyakodori ozashiki today. He has heard they were in the past.

According to a book on Edo's Yoshiwara, hōkan told funny short stories and sang and danced to excite the room. More than that, they were expected to have ki-bataraki, the habit of sensing what others need before they ask. A hōkan read the guests' mood and the courtesans' feelings, and kept the teahouses and boathouses in mind as well.

The author of another book watched film of a 1959 stage performance in which a Yoshiwara hōkan accepts a sake cup from a guest. His movements were quick and careful at once. From that, the author writes, one can see that what matters for a hōkan is to make himself unobtrusive.

Today the only hōkan registered with a geisha district are those registered with the Asakusa kenban. The registration is with the kenban, not with any cultural heritage program. A 2003 book counted four hōkan in all of Japan who belonged to a geisha association, all of them in Asakusa. Today six are registered with the Asakusa kenban.

For a long time the hōkan was called Japan's only male geisha. Now one of the six is a woman, a new wind in a role long held by men.

The hōkan (Introduction)

According to Yuta Kawamura, a hōkan comes into the room at the same time as the geisha. Like them, he greets the guests and enters quietly, without breaking the mood. He always comes in after the geisha, last of all. When a trainee is there, the trainee comes in last.

He does not perform the moment he arrives. Whether to introduce himself is something he decides by reading the room. He starts by getting to know the guests.

The okami of Miyakodori says hōkan do not wear the white makeup that geisha wear.

Hōkan have acts that only hōkan perform, such as an act using a folding screen. Even so, Yuta Kawamura says there is no one act that always gets the biggest laugh. A hōkan's work is to lift the ozashiki itself, more than to entertain with an act.

He names three differences between an ozashiki with a hōkan and one without: support for the guests, a livelier room, and backup for the geisha. A hōkan pays attention at every moment. When a laugh starts, he adds a line and makes it bigger. When a guest is quiet, he speaks to them. He and the geisha support each other, and they seem to bring out the best in one another.

According to Yuta Kawamura, at January ozashiki the hōkan perform festive acts such as the shishimai (lion dance). It is the time of year when geisha wear the black hikizuri (a trailing kimono).

At the Sanja Festival in Asakusa, geisha form groups and go around the ryotei and other places performing group dances. Today there is a group of hōkan as well.

According to Yuta Kawamura, the guests who call a hōkan are often people used to this kind of party, or people who want to know the culture. Once they have called a hōkan, they almost always call one again. Guests from abroad are first surprised: a male geisha? When they learn that registered hōkan are found only in Asakusa, and that the very first geisha were men, they want to call one.

Neither hōkan nor geisha say after an ozashiki that the room was hard to work. When a party did not go well, they take it as a sign that their own skill fell short.