Pensions keep alive the geisha tradition

ONCE the highest profession that a Japanese woman could aspire to - with men falling over themselves to bestow gifts of jewellery and expensive kimonos in return for a coy smile - the legendary geishas have fallen on hard times.

With their "willow world" contracting to a handful of traditional entertainment quarters in cities that are increasingly of skyscrapers, fewer geishas have patrons to support them and there is concern that a way of life that is synonymous with Japan could be extinct within a few decades.

"The number of people who can understand the willow world and the skills of the geisha is declining," said Hiroyuki Yamazaki, secretary general of the Kyoto Traditional Musical Art Foundation. "It used to be that a company president would become a geisha’s patron, but with Japan’s economic problems of recent years that is becoming more rare."

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Concerned for both the future of the geishas’ skills and to encourage young women to consider a career in the secretive world of tea houses, poetry and the music of the samisen lute, Mr Yamazaki’s foundation has announced plans to provide elderly geisha with a pension.

"We need to support the geishas because their fate will have an effect upon the city’s image," said Mr Yamazaki. "We need them to help attract more tourists to Kyoto, and to maintain this very important traditional Japanese cultural asset."

Working with the prefectural and city governments, the foundation plans to give working geishas over the age of 60 monthly pensions of 50,000 (250) from April next year.

According to Mr Yamazaki, about 60 women in Kyoto will be eligible to receive the payments, including one who is still working at the age of 93.

Often misunderstood in the West, geishas used to join an okiya, or geisha house, at a young age and learn to play a variety of musical instruments, sing, recite poetry and perform traditional dances. They are dispatched from their okiya to up-market restaurants to provide entertainment, usually to men. There is no physical side to the relationship with customers.

In the past - as portrayed in Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha - wealthy men have vied to become their patrons, wooing the head of the okiya with expensive gifts.

Kyoto has five geisha districts, but there were seven such areas in the Edo period, which ended in 1867, and more than 1,000 geishas. Today, there are a mere 193.

Other traditional towns have seen the swing in the geishas’ fortunes, with the coastal resort of Atami, south-west of Tokyo, looking to broaden the appeal of geishas by offering young women - those with the highest disposable incomes in modern-day Japan - the opportunity to wear the wigs, hair ornaments, make-up and layers of kimono before taking a leisurely stroll through the town’s entertainment quarter.

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The Kyoto foundation’s pension scheme - which will supplement the national pension - will be open to geisha across the rest of Japan and has been welcomed because it will allow them to continue their music classes and provide security in their old age.

"Every day, I have lessons in dancing or the taiko drums or samisen," says Atsumi, a geisha working in Hakone, a mountain resort town at the foot of Mount Fuji. "Each one is not so expensive, but as we all have to practice every day, it can become pricey.

"I have been doing this for 22 years now after I started at the age of 18," she said. "But things are very different to how they were when I first started.

"Very few people have patrons now because it is just too expensive. I think the idea of a pension scheme is very good because it means we won’t have to worry about the future quite so much," she said.

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