Tokyo geisha and Kyoto geiko and maikoNames, dress and dance schools compared

Some words of the geisha world differ between Tokyo and Kyoto. A full geisha is called geisha in Tokyo and geiko in Kyoto. An apprentice is a hangyoku in Tokyo and a maiko in Kyoto. A book adds that the house a geisha belongs to is an okiya in Tokyo and a yakata in Kyoto.

Another book writes the Kyoto word with different characters. It says the character form 芸妓 is a written word only, and that in speech people say geisha in the east and geiko in the west. In Asakusa today, though, some geisha do use the word 芸妓 for themselves. According to Yuta Kawamura, about as many use 芸妓 as say geisha.

• ▶ Video (Miyakodori on YouTube)Geisha and maiko: what Tokyo calls them

The book and present-day Asakusa disagree on whether 芸妓 is used in speech, so both are given.

Before her debut, a future geisha spends about six months to a year as a minarai, a trainee. In that time she learns manners and movement: how to pour, how to hand things across, how to walk on tatami.

She then debuts as a hangyoku and begins to appear at ozashiki (private parties with geisha). This is already a geisha, a young one still in training, whom the okami compares to Kyoto's maiko. After some years she moves on to become an ippon, a full geisha, marked by a ceremony called ippon hirome. The okami says a hangyoku learns by watching the older geisha, whose art and care for guests are ahead of hers.

What geisha are, from the start

Accounts give different lengths for the hangyoku years, so no single figure is given here.

According to a book on the Tokyo geisha world, the name geisha became established in the mid-Edo period in Yoshiwara and was carried into Tokyo in the Meiji era. Edo is the old name of Tokyo. The book says geisha in regional districts such as Niigata and Hakata took the Tokyo name, while the Kansai region, which includes Kyoto, still says geiko.

Geisha and courtesans are different

Gion's geiko trace their beginning to women of the tea stalls at the gate of Kanshin-in. Edo's geisha were born on the banks of the Sumida River. The book says both served close to the gods and Buddhas, and both were born beside water.

After that, the book says, they grew in very different ways. Its author writes that their styles are too far apart to judge on the same stage, and so writes only about the geisha of Edo and Tokyo.

A Tokyo hangyoku and a Kyoto maiko both wear furisode, a kimono with long sleeves. The okami of Miyakodori says the two are truly different all the same. A Kansai maiko lets her hem trail on the floor and ties the darari obi, a long hanging sash.

A hangyoku wears her furisode with tucks at the shoulders and sleeves (kata-age and sode-age) and flower hairpins in her hair, the okami says. A full Tokyo geisha wears a kimono with ordinary short sleeves, trailing at the hem, and tortoiseshell hairpins.

• ▶ Video (Miyakodori on YouTube)A hangyoku (left) and a geisha (right)

The okami says full geisha look less different from each other than hangyoku and maiko do. The kimono still differ. A Tokyo geisha wears a hikizuri (a trailing kimono) in Edo komon, a fine all-over pattern. In the okami's eyes, Kansai geisha rarely wear Edo komon. They trail kimono such as tsukesage or irokawari, which carry their pattern at the hem.

Irokawari is not worn in Kyoto alone. Asakusa geisha also change from a black hikizuri to an irokawari hikizuri around mid-January.

The okami says that hangyoku and maiko differ in figure and dress, but their kanzashi (hairpins) are the same. Of the white makeup, she says there may be small differences between Kyoto (Kansai) and Tokyo, but she thinks it is almost the same.

Kyoto has several geisha districts, including Gion and Pontocho. Gion dances in the Inoue school, an old school of Japanese dance.

The okami says it is a distinctive school, unlike the Hanayagi, Fujima and Onoe schools that most people know, and that the dance itself is completely different. This comparison is her personal view.

The comparison between schools is recorded as the okami's personal view.

The schools of Japanese dance that Asakusa geisha learn are Hanayagi and Fujima. A book from 2003 names the same two, and says which one a geisha learns depends on her okiya.

What happens at an ozashiki

That the okiya decides the school is the book's statement. Whether this still holds has not been checked.

A book says nearly all of the geisha world shown in magazines and on television is Kyoto's geiko and maiko. Not only visitors from abroad but many Japanese people today, it says, first picture a Kyoto maiko with her darari obi when they hear the word geisha. According to Yuta Kawamura, many guests at Miyakodori also think geisha are a Kyoto thing.

The author gives his reasons. Kyoto's districts cooperate with the press, spare no cost in raising maiko and keeping their streets, and the city treats them as a living cultural heritage. The long ties between Gion's Inoue school and the broadcaster NHK have also made events such as the Miyako Odori dances national news.

The reasons Kyoto became so well known are the book author's view.

According to Yuta Kawamura, films do not come up often, but some guests know the film SAYURI and ask about it. Now and then a guest from abroad believes geisha sold themselves, or were sold.

Miyakodori tells those guests that there is nothing of that kind in the work of geisha today.

Geisha and courtesans are different

After describing how Tokyo and Kyoto dress, the okami said that Tokyo is Edo, so perhaps it dresses with iki, a chic, understated style. Kyoto, she said, seems to aim less at iki and more at hin, grace and refinement.

She called this her "personal image". It is recorded as how the okami feels, not as a verdict.