What a geisha is, the two roles of dancer and musician, and the stages from hangyoku to ippon, with the hōkan.
Who geisha are and what happens at an ozashiki (a private party with geisha). This page covers the two roles of dancer and musician, the stages from trainee to senior geisha, and the hōkan, the entertainer who works alongside geisha at the ozashiki. It is put together from what we heard in Asakusa.
13 entries · 15 terms · Updated 2026-10-24
This archive is kept by Miyakodori, a ryotei in Asakusa since 1950 that keeps the form of a machiai (a house where guests call geisha for a private party). It rests on what we have heard directly in Asakusa (accounts), checked against books on the geisha world. Memories differ from person to person and from one era to another, so not everything here is certain. If you find something that differs, please tell us with “Ask the archive”; we will check and correct it.
↑ The overview is at the top of this page
Dance, shamisen and song are her arts, and so is conversation.
The word geisha is written with two characters: gei, the arts, and sha, a person. A geisha is exactly that. At an ozashiki she almost always performs for her guests, dancing, playing the shamisen (a three-stringed instrument) or singing. Conversation with the guests is one of her arts too.
A meal can be part of it, or not.
The heart of an ozashiki is the geisha's performance, and the conversation and party games that guests share with them. A meal can be added or left out. It is not a dinner with a show attached.
At Miyakodori, guests range from their twenties to their nineties. Some come for business, some as a family, some as a group of friends, and guests from abroad enjoy it as much as Japanese guests do.
An ozashiki is a gathering for the arts, conversation and games, and nothing more.
Some guests from abroad ask whether a geisha sleeps with her guests. The answer is no. What a geisha offers is her art and her company at the party.
Both talk with guests over drinks, but only a geisha performs a trained art.
In Japan, people often ask how geisha differ from the hostesses of Ginza clubs or kyabakura (hostess bars). They get compared because both are women who talk with guests over drinks.
The answer is one word: gei, the arts. A geisha almost always performs dance, shamisen or song at an ozashiki. To do so she goes to lessons every week and learns forms handed down over hundreds of years. That art is why geisha are called a part of Japan's traditional culture.
Geisha keep training in shamisen, ohayashi, dance, song and movement, with no end point.
Every week, geisha go to keiko (lessons) in shamisen, ohayashi (the drums and other instruments that accompany dance), dance, song and shosa (the way to move and carry oneself). Over hundreds of years, great performers of the past kept refining these arts until they became kata, set forms that anyone can practice. Taking lessons means receiving that work in the form of kata and making it part of one's own body.
Registration is what marks a real geisha; a formal dance license is not required.
In Tokyo, a working geisha is registered with the kenban (the geisha registry office) of her own district: Asakusa geisha with the Asakusa kenban, Shinbashi geisha with the Shinbashi kenban. This registration is one of the clearest signs of a real geisha.
Geisha take lessons in schools of Japanese dance such as Hanayagi, Nishikawa or Fujima. Some go on to receive a professional name from their school, but a formal license or teaching rank is not a condition of being a geisha.
Geisha work in two main roles.
At an ozashiki, the geisha who dances is the tachikata, and the geisha who plays the shamisen and sings is the jikata. This is the basic division, though a tachikata sometimes plays the shamisen as well.
Long ago, jikata also wore traditional Japanese hair.
The tachikata, whose role centers on dance, appears fully made up and dressed. The jikata wears no white makeup and appears with a modern hairstyle called yohatsu (Western-style hair). Long ago, the jikata also wore traditional Japanese hair.
For narimono, the percussion instruments, there is no fixed line between the two roles.
Narimono such as the tsuzumi (hand drum) and taiko (drums) may be played by a tachikata, and at times by a jikata. Some descriptions say percussion belongs to the jikata, but in Asakusa there is no such line.
The shamisen takes time to learn, so some begin with dance.
Some women become geisha aiming to be jikata from the start. Others first appear as tachikata and later move to the jikata role. The jikata we spoke with appeared as a tachikata for her first two or three years, kept up lessons in both, and gradually became a jikata. The shamisen is not something you can play right away, she said, so she learned dance first.
After a period of training, a woman debuts as a geisha, either as a hangyoku or as an ippon.
A woman who wants to be a geisha first trains for about six months to a year. During this time she is called a shikomikko (a trainee before debut) and is not yet a geisha. When she debuts is decided by the woman known as the "mother" of her house.
At her debut, a young woman appears as a hangyoku and an older woman as an ippon. A hangyoku is a young geisha still in training, dressed in a long-sleeved furisode kimono with flowered hairpins. After some years she changes to an ippon, a full-fledged senior geisha. The celebration of this change is called ippon hirome.
Kyoto has maiko and Tokyo has hangyoku: the same stage under a different name.
Maiko is the Kyoto name, and the one most people know. In Tokyo the young geisha in training is called a hangyoku, written with the characters for "half" and "jewel." A hangyoku wears a furisode, a kimono with long sleeves, with tucks sewn at the shoulders and sleeves, and flowered hairpins in her hair, a look that shows her youth.
An ippon geisha wears her hair in a different style with tortoiseshell hairpins, and a kimono with a trailing hem and ordinary short sleeves. While she is a hangyoku, a young geisha learns by watching the dance and the attentiveness of the senior geisha.
Today, registered hōkan work only in Asakusa.
The hōkan sets off the geisha and brings the party to life. He is also called otoko geisha, a "male geisha," and has an art all his own. Another name is taikomochi, but in Asakusa people say hōkan.
Today, the only hōkan registered and working are those registered with the Asakusa kenban. For a long time the hōkan was called Japan's only male geisha. Now a woman has also taken up the role, a fresh change in this old art.
Asakusa has far fewer geisha than it once did. Even so, there are geisha who go to lessons every week and take up the forms of those before them, and ozashiki are still held today. The other pages of this archive cover how geisha differ from courtesans, what happens at an ozashiki, and how Tokyo and Kyoto differ.
Update log 2026-10-24 published with 13 items
