The okami of Miyakodori: Asakusa seen by a former geishaAsakusa seen by a former geisha

The okami of Miyakodori was born in Asakusa and grew up there. Her mother was a geisha. She never lived outside Asakusa, and she says the geisha world was the ordinary world of her childhood.

According to Yuta, her grandfather was an actor of shinpa, a form of Japanese theater that began in the 1880s as a new kind of drama set against kabuki. Her grandmother was not a geisha, but she loved the traditional arts.

Kei worked at the Asakusa kenban (the geisha registry office) as a hakoya, a geisha's dresser and attendant. He has known the okami since she was in elementary school. "There was this sweet little schoolgirl," he recalls, "and she went and became a geisha."

Following that saying, her grandmother took her by the hand to lessons in Japanese dance and in kiyomoto, a style of narrative singing to the shamisen (a three-stringed instrument). Lessons in the tsuzumi hand drum and the taiko drum began when she was in elementary school.

Once she was a hangyoku, three lessons were essential: Japanese dance, narimono (percussion such as hand drums and drums) and the tea ceremony. She also studied shamisen for nagauta, kiyomoto and kouta. With five or six arts to study, she had lessons almost every day.

The okami entered the geisha world as soon as she finished junior high school. After three or four months as a minarai (a trainee who is not yet a geisha), she debuted in 1969 as a hangyoku. In her own words, a hangyoku is what Kyoto calls a maiko. A hangyoku is already a geisha. The length of training differs from person to person; today half a year to a year is common.

She says nothing in her long life as a geisha was as hard as those training months. She had just left school and knew nothing of the world. Even for a girl born in Asakusa, it was her first time at parties where drinks were served, and she was on edge the whole time.

Hangyoku and ippon are both geisha (Introduction)

• ▶ Video (Miyakodori on YouTube)The okami on becoming a geisha at 15 (English subtitles)

As a hangyoku, the okami ate breakfast, got ready, put on her kimono and went out. Lessons began around 10 a.m., and she went to about three a day: dance, ohayashi (the drum and flute ensemble), nagauta and others.

Back home, she ate an early supper and had her hair dressed in the traditional Japanese style. By 5 or 6 p.m. she was already out at work.

Yuta says that, though there were hard times, the okami remembers her hangyoku years as great fun. After the parties, the hangyoku went to the public bath together and then out to eat.

After her years as a hangyoku, the okami held her ippon hirome, the celebration at which a hangyoku becomes an ippon, a full-fledged geisha. Both hangyoku and ippon are geisha. Counting from her debut at 15, she worked as a geisha for 27 years.

According to Yuta, during her geisha years she appeared several times, mostly in Japanese dance at dance recitals, on the stages of the Kabukiza (both before and after it was rebuilt), the large and small halls of the National Theatre, and the Meijiza. Dance in Asakusa is mainly of the Hanayagi school, and the okami holds a shihandai license from the Hanayagi school.

Hangyoku and ippon (Introduction)

The okami calls the Asakusa of around 1969 "the postwar golden age of the geisha world." "People always say the bubble years were something," she says, "but they were nothing like that."

According to Yuta, she could stay only 30 or even 10 minutes at a party, showing her face and moving on to the next. "I was lucky enough to know the very best era as a geisha," the okami says.

• ▶ Video (Miyakodori on YouTube)Goro-san, then the most senior geisha in Asakusa, and the okami talk about the old days (May 2026, English subtitles)

The okami remembers guests who looked after the young ones. When a party ended at 9 or 10 p.m., one guest would call three or four hangyoku on their own and say, "Go on, eat something," and let them order whatever they liked. He came about once a week, and those were relaxed, noisy parties, a break for the girls. She also learned mahjong and hanafuda (a Japanese card game) from guests at parties.

In those days many guests were senior people from large and well-known companies. She says it was a great privilege to meet people she would never otherwise have met. Over the past 10 or 20 years, she says, more parties have been business entertaining, where everyone is a little tense.

Yuta says the words of hers that stay with him most are "My guests raised me." She means that she could give herself to her art because her guests supported her and valued what she did.

The okami says that no lesson is easy, dance least of all. But she was performing in front of guests, so she wanted to become truly good, if not a professional artist, then as if she were one. There were fine senior geisha in Asakusa and in other districts, and her wish to catch up with them is what carried her through.

Kei says that to a hakoya, every geisha is someone above him, and that even among them the okami stood apart from a young age. It was so in her geisha days, he says, not only after she became okami.

The okami explains that in Asakusa you cannot be a geisha and an okami at the same time, so she left geisha work to become okami of Miyakodori. The okami runs the house: she arranges each ozashiki and calls the geisha for it. She is the second generation of Miyakodori; the name Miyakodori was given by her predecessor.

As a geisha she had been the one called. As okami she became the one who calls. Many of the geisha were still older than her, and she says it took a lot of tact and restraint. All she could think was that she had to get used to it.

Today she is the only okami in Asakusa who has worked as a geisha.

According to Yuta, the okami holds to two things. One is that every guest goes home having enjoyed themselves. The other is that for a geisha, the art is everything. "The art is what makes a geisha," she says. "Because of the art, a geisha can stay a geisha."

Asked whether she lives up to this herself, she says she still has far to go. "English, and this work too, I think it is a lifetime of practice, a lifetime of learning."

Many old houses follow ichigen-san okotowari: they turn away first-time guests who come without an introduction from a regular. According to Yuta, Miyakodori ended this so that anyone can come. The okami describes it as "shaving down the threshold." She is glad the house has opened its doors, and she also feels the weight of it: "Because we opened, we have to walk steadily and make a path."

Yuta says the okami often talks about the geisha world of the past, and that sometimes she looked lonely when she did. The geisha world is still shrinking, most visibly in Tokyo. Yuta joined Miyakodori because he believed there were things that could be done now, while the okami is still here. The ozashiki the okami knew as a geisha in Asakusa carries on at Miyakodori today.