The First White Geisha

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Scott Swan, Get up Close to the Geishas of Japan and Discover the History of This Mysterious Practice. The history of geishas stretches back nearly 400 years. Scott Swan meets one geisha who says she's the first white woman in Japanese history to join the tradition. WTHR, Jan 22, 2021.
https://www.wthr.com/article/spo ... d-a3c8-81d525f8f897

Quote:

(a) Sayuki "was accepted as the first white woman in Japanese history to become a geisha.

" 'I became a geisha 12 years ago,' said Sayuki. 'I'm the first white woman in 400 years of geisha history.'

(b) " '400 years ago, the geisha [芸者; both gei and sha are Chinese pronunciations; same as geigi 芸妓] were men,' said Sayuki. 'They were much like jesters were in the days of Henry the Eighth. They were funny men and did comic skits. One of the women in the district decided she was just as good at the instruments as the men were and started wearing men's jackets which was very radical at the time. She declared herself a geisha too. So, she must have been quite a character I think. She was the first one. After that, it took about 60 years before most of the geisha were women rather than men,' said Sayuki.

"Sayuki now has permanent residency in Japan, a requirement to being a geisha. She is now both geisha and geisha mother [mother of the house; Japanese: okāsan お母さん(P); 御母さん 【おかあさん】; contrast otōsan お父さん] in Fukagawa, the oldest geisha district in Japan.

"She has three geishas living in her home.

(c) "Tazusa たづ紗 [meaning unknown] is one of the women living in Sayuki's home is in her 20's. She is known as a maiko 舞子 [not her name, but title for a, any, geisha apprentice], the Japanese word for geisha apprentice. * * *

"Tazusa is a university graduate who spent time studying English abroad. * * *

"'There's [One has to use 'there's, followed by nouns in plural form, because there is NO a word as there're] many girls who come back from being abroad and they realize they are missing something Japanese. They don't know enough about Japanese culture. Foreigners ask them and they can't answer. They come back and want to be more Japanese,' said Sayuki.

(d) "Music is one of the foundations of being a geisha. Sayuki is a flute specialist.

" 'We have a drum teacher. Dance teachers. We have some kind of lessons,' said Sayuki.

"Geishas can take three hours to get ready. That includes putting on the iconic white makeup.

" 'There were some tradition of white makeup even 1,000 years ago,' said Sayuki. 'It would be an aristocracy in Japan. But, for the geisha, the old style houses were candlelit. So, the girls with the whiter faces stood out from among the crowd."

(e) "Once the geishas are ready, they catch a ride to the evening banquet which take place at exclusive restaurants.

" 'At a geisha banquet, you get to see the most beautiful of traditional architecture,' said Sayuki. 'You see the art and paintings on the walls. You see the beautiful geisha kimonos. You experience Japanese cuisine and Saki [sic; should be sake] and dance and music. It's a totally intense Japanese cultural experience."

(f) "Sayuki acknowledges there is still a misconception about geisha.

" 'I think in the west, there's been a lot of confusion between geisha and courtesans,' said Sayuki. 'In old Japan, there was an old description called courtesan which was a high-class prostitute. Because foreigners couldn't tell the difference between a geisha and a courtesan dressed in kimono, there was a lot of confusion and caused by that. Courtesans no longer exist in Japan. In 1957, anti-prostitution law [売春防止法, which prohibits prostitution but penalizes solicitation by a prostitute, not the prostitute or the john per se] was introduced. Geishas were always musicians and dancers. Geishas were not allowed to sell their bodies. Geisha means artist, literally. And that's what it is. No more. No less. Geisha are artists. Dancers and musicians."

There are challenges facing this profession. Once there were 80,000 geisha in Japan. Now, there are fewer than 2,000 in the Olympic host country, according to Sayuki.

" 'Here in Fukagawa, five years ago the numbers were down to just five geisha in their 70's and 80's," said Sayuki. 'Now, we're going to be ten very soon.'


Note:
(a) WTHR is "an NBC-affiliated television station licensed to Indianapolis, Indiana."  Wikipedia.

Fiona Caroline Graham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Graham
(born in Melbourne, Australia [in 1961]; [passed entrance exam to enter] Keio University, earning a Bachelor's there; M.Phil. in 1992 and a D.Phil. 2001 in social anthropology at the University of Oxford; made her debut as a geisha in 2007 in the Asakusa district [浅草, 東京都台東区の町名] of Tokyo under the name Sayuki 紗幸 [幸 is pronounced as yuki only when appearing in names [of places or persons); namely yuki is classified as neither Chinese nor Japanese pronunciation], and as of 2016 was working in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo)
(i) Graham (surname)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_(surname)
(ii) Keiō University 慶應義塾大学 is the oldest university om Japan. "Founder FUKUZAWA Yukichi 福沢 諭吉 originally established it as a school for Western studies in 1858" in Tokyo.

The kei, ō, kichi are all Chinese pronunciations of 慶, 應 and 吉, respectively.
(iii) Fukagawa 深川 is a neighborhood 町 (not district) of Tokyo, in Ward of Kōtō 江東区 (Kyoto uses wards, not districts; 江東区 faces Tokyo Bay in its south; 江東 due to east of Sumida River 隅田川).  "The Fukagawa neighbourhood is named after its founder [ja.wikipedia.org uses 開拓], Fukagawa Hachirouemon  深川 八郎右衛門."  en.wikipedia.org for "Fukagawa, Tokyo."  (右衛門 is u-e-mon, where u is Chinese pronunciation of 右.)
(iv) Japanese adjectives fuka(i) 深 and asa(i) 浅 are Japanese pronunciations, with i added as an adjective ending.


(b) Japanese-English dictionary:
* gijuku 義塾 【ぎじゅく】 (n): "private school"
* sumi 隅 【すみ】 (n)" "corner; nook; recess"
     The English noun corner may be either a rook (in a room) or (street) corner. But in Japanese two words perform the function: 隅 for the former and 角 (pronounced kado かど) for the latter.
* keisei 傾城 【けいせい】 (n): "(1) (See 傾国・けいこく・1) beauty; siren; (n) (2) (See 傾国・けいこく・2) courtesan; prostitute"
* ko-uta 小唄 【こうた】 (n): "kouta; traditional ballad accompanied by shamisen"  (Kanji has both 唄 and 歌 pronounced the same, uta.

(c) Courtesan in Japan is

oiran  花魁
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oiran
("to be above common prostitutes, known as yūjo 遊女 (lit. 'woman of pleasure'). Though oiran by definition also engaged in prostitution, they were distinguished by their skills in the traditional arts, with the highest ranking oiran having a degree of choice in which customers they took. * * * The services of oiran were well known for being exclusive and expensive, with oiran typically only entertaining the upper classes of society, gaining the nickname 'keisei' (lit., 'castle toppler') for their perceived ability to steal the hearts and match the wits of upper-class men. Many oiran became celebrities both inside and outside of the pleasure quarters, and were commonly depicted in ukiyo-e woodblock prints and in kabuki theatre plays. * * * Though regarded as trend setting and fashionable women at the historic height of their profession, this reputation was later usurped in the late 18th through 19th centuries by geisha, who became popular among the merchant classes for their simplified clothing, ability to play short, modern songs known as kouta on the shamisen [三味線] * * * The popularity and numbers of oiran continued to decline steadily throughout the 19th century, before prostitution was outlawed in Japan in 1957. However, the oiran remaining in Kyoto's Shimabara district [Shimabara 島原 was not a district (in the sense of government division) but rather 花街 (red-light district)] were allowed to continue practising the cultural and performing arts traditions of oiran, and were declared a 'special variety' of geisha") (citations omitted).