TARGET GEISHA - by Lisa Haisha
I’m in the Higashiyama district of Kyoto, which I’ve been told is filled with beautiful landmarks, temples, and 17th century buildings built by the Shogun. Other than that, I have no idea where I am and no destination or agenda in mind except to absorb the culture and admire the art. I stumble along tiny cobblestone streets and ancient storefronts and curio shops peddling fine silk, textiles, and antiques.
In one window, an impressive
display of dolls dressed up like 18th Century Japanese nobility stares
out at me. I can’t resist, and enter through the little red carved
door. Inside, shelves are lined with hundreds of dolls. 
Everything smells
of linseed oil and wood. As if in a medieval artisans’ shop, half
a dozen craftsmen and women are carving or painting details on wooden
legs and arms; others are stitching the tiny clothes, or weaving the
hair. I ask a charming older woman who is painting a porcelain face
about the history of these dolls. The tiny woman with beads of sweat
on her brow tells me in broken English that these dolls are endowed
with magical powers. Since ancient times they have been used in rituals
to cure illness and protect the young. I’m intrigued and buy one.
Continuing my meander, I come across a charming old teahouse and enter to warm up a bit and absorb the beauty. The hostess bows and welcomes me, and immediately seats me at a nice table by the window. I order a cup of tea she recommends and gaze out the window to watch passers-by. It seems to me that people walk slowly here and are more introspective than in other parts of Japan.
I do witness the occasional punk-rock refugee from Tokyo: a small woman with heavy make-up and tattoos around her eyes and long teased red hair hustles past the window in six-inch heels. But right behind her glides a geisha like a swan – on her way to meet a customer, I imagine. I wonder what she dreams of at night when it’s dark and she’s alone. I have only read about geishas but never met one. Hmmm … that would be interesting. Geishas are trained to be the ultimate female companion. Their roles are clearly defined to entertain and serve the man by being an expert in conversation, pouring tea, dancing and playing an instrument.
My waitress brings me my tea served in a tiny bowl with a Japanese symbol in blue glazed on it. Next to my cup she sets down a miniature matching tea kettle. I was taught how to drink tea in Tokyo. One must slurp it, to show how much one likes it. The “Black Monkey” tea is delicious and the steaming aroma is strong. I slurp away. It gets the digestive juices flowing. The ancient Japanese belief is that one drinks tea to refresh one’s soul and water to quench one’s thirst. It seems everything here has some deeper meaning. Rituals and keeping traditional culture alive are taken seriously in Japan.
Our server brings me a cup of plain water to cleanse my palate before the next serving of tea, and I ask her about geishas and where I might meet one. “You cannot meet Geisha,” she replies. ”Very difficult.”
“ Why is it so difficult?”
“ They are on Hanami Street, in town called Gion. Very dangerous place. Girl by herself cannot do.” My curiosity is piqued.
“ Thank you. If it’s dangerous, I won’t go. I will go to the temples instead,” I say respectfully. “I appreciate your advice and concern.” She smiles, grateful that I understand.
I step outside and see a rickshaw with several twenty-something men calling out for riders and waving pamphlets in the air. I tell one who speaks a little English that I’d like him to play tour guide for a few hours, starting with the Golden Pavilion. “Good idea,” he says with a big smile.
As I’m being pulled through the streets of Kyoto, my driver/tour guide (Ryuichi) tells me he is a college student who pulls the rickshaw each summer; with the money he earns, he goes to Canada to study Philosophy and English. His dream is to one day teach at a Kyoto university. I would have never guessed that based on his dress and look.
I feel like a visitor in the nineteenth century as I watch my driver bound along the streets. While listening to him talk, I picture what his lean, toned body must look like beneath his long-sleeved white shirt and black karate-style pants. The strength it must take to pull me, like a mule.
While he runs, explains that he likes his work because it teaches him discipline and makes him strong. I watch his feet pound the graveled streets, and wonder if they ever hurt him in those thin rubber booties, like the ones surfers wear. He slows to a halt and helps me out of the carriage.
I’m astonished by the magnificent view. The Golden Pavilion sits on a bed of water, glowing as the sunlight kisses it. I admire the gracefully upswept, sensuous red-tiled roofs. A copper-gold phoenix stands at the peak, guarding the Temple. I think back to a story I remember from a novel by Yukio Mishima called Kaku-ji. A sensitive young priest had lost his inspiration, and set fire to this very temple because he felt the only way to regain his artistic passion and feel alive again was to see this spectacular building on fire. I try to picture the flames dancing all around and over the temple. It seems like heaven and hell mixed together. I just want to stay here staring so the image will stick with me forever, but Ryuichi gently pulls me away and begins telling me stories about other places I must see. I am lost in my day-dreams though, and barely hear him.
We are back on the road now, and I’m enjoying the scenery. Ryuichi stops at a little snack stand in front of a cemetery shaded by trees pink-and-white with cherry blossoms in full bloom. I'm lucky to see this sight, says Ryuichi; they only bloom like this for one week a year. He buys us each a bottle of Kirin beer.
As we rest, he tells me about the many artists from all over Japan who are inspired by Cherry Blossom Week; they bring their canvases, ready to capture the spirit of spring. The cemetery is crowded with painters and people visiting their deceased ancestors. Some visitors place fresh flowers on the tombstones and offer silent prayers. Every thirty seconds a gong rings – one big, loud GONG. The birds sing peacefully, and a black crow squawks. Little Buddha statues squat beside the gravestones, fronting long pieces of wood engraved in Japanese characters. Ryuichi tells me they say, Namu ah me da butsu: "Bless the dead."
We continue soaking in the atmosphere as we watch the many artists capture the mix of the beauty of the Cherry blossoms and the pain and sorrow of the families tending to their deceased relatives.
As Ryuichi pulls me home, we are both lost in deep thought. I breathe in the fresh spring air that is balanced so perfectly between hot and cold, while I allow the impressions of the day to sink into my soul.
In thirty more minutes Ryuichi deposits me at my hotel. He pulls out a Polaroid camera and asks if he can take a picture of us. We stand next to each other and he puts the camera up to our faces and he snaps the picture. “Good memory,” he says. We look deeply into each other’s eyes, trying mentally to photograph this moment forever.
“ What are you thinking about?” I ask.
“ I am thinking how lucky I am to be of service. I am very happy.” His statement perplexes me. We both laugh. Then he adds, “That’s the secret to happiness—being of service to others.” He has goodness radiating from every pore in his body. I can’t help but adore him. I want to comfort him and talk to him about his 57-year-old father, but I know it’s not the Japanese way and I don’t want to invade his privacy.
“ Sayonara.” Off he runs, with his rickshaw in tow. I miss him already.
Now, a couple hours later (six p.m.), I’m back in my hotel room, cleaned up and dressed in a little black dress and black heels. I step out and flag down a cab, and by seven I’m in Gion, on the Eastern bank of the Kamo-gawa River. This is the entertainment district. People move fast here; it feels modern, more like Tokyo. I head to the nightclub area, and observe the scene for a while to get a sense for where the action is. I notice many groups of two or more “salary-men” carousing drunkenly in the streets and entering buildings. The few women I see seem to be headed to work as hostesses or in other assorted evening jobs. But no geishas.
The street traffic is bumper-to-bumper, and rows of bicycles clog the sidewalks. Suddenly, I see a geisha exiting a taxi. She looks snug in her colorful, flowing kimono wrapped tightly around her tiny body, with her jet-black hair bound in a chignon. I follow her as she shuffles purposefully down the street. We pass buildings with long vertical neon signs hanging down their sides, trying to entice customers to enter, and girls wearing long pink coats lined with fur offering massages. And there are police too – officers in hard white helmets waiting to fine drunk drivers three thousand yen (about $30.00) on the spot. We pass 7-11 type convenient stores blaring smooth American R&B tunes.
The geisha enters into a ten-story building. She waits for an elevator as I approach her, and I catch a glimpse of her face. She looks tired, and her eyes betray only a vague sadness. She seems to be in her late twenties. The elevator door opens and she enters; at the last instant I decide to follow her in. She presses the button for the seventh floor without glancing at me. She then steps back to let me and others press our floor buttons. She seems more shy than arrogant. I try to say hello but no words come out of my mouth. Just when I’ve built up the nerve to speak the elevator stops and several fancy-looking women and well-dressed men enter and stand between us. At the seventh floor she steps out. Impulsively, I follow her into a nightclub called The Lion’s Den.
At the entrance she hands a man her coat, chats matter-of-factly with the manager for a moment in Japanese (her head always lowered, never making eye contact) then disappears into the dark room and out through a side door. I tentatively step inside and see a room crowded with Japanese men, and several foreign hostesses sprinkled throughout.
The doorman looks me over through purple-tinted sunglasses. His clothes are all black and fashionable; his hair is short and stylish. In decent English he asks me what I want. I’m about to ask the cost of entry when he inquires if I’m the “new” girl. Without giving it much thought, I say yes. He asks if I’ve done this work before and I reply of course, trying to look confident. He takes my coat and leads me to a table. The room is about a thousand square feet and decorated like a Seventies discotheque with colored mirrored balls and flashing lights. He confirms I’ll be making fifteen thousand yen (around $150) an evening – since I’m American. The pay scale (as I later learn) is different for every country. Americans are the highest paid and Russians the lowest at ten thousand yen (around $100) a night. My hours will be from seven p.m. until two in the morning. Then he tells me I look lovely and thanks me for arriving early.
My large table on the rim of the dance floor has two hostesses dressed to the nines, flirting shamelessly with five men. A guest and a hostess are singing Karaoke as a Russian girl named Arita pours me a cup of hot sake. One of the salary-men lifts his glass and toasts my arrival with a “Kompai.” He is so drunk he can barely pronounce the word. According to one of the English-speaking men, everyone calls him Pat Boone because he likes to sing Pat Boone songs and does it tolerably well. Then a stunning Brazilian woman arrives in a long brown evening gown, dancing the cucaracha with a dopey-looking salary-man.
Arita whispers in my ear, “He is a Dohan. That is a regular who takes a girl out to dinner before coming to the club, so she can get paid extra by the club. For some reason Filipino women have the most Dohans.”
“ Is sex involved?” I ask.
“ Only if you want to. But the club definitely doesn’t expect it.”
“ What is expected?”
“ To hold their hand if they want to and laugh at their jokes.” Arita takes my hand romantically, making fun of the whole thing. I gaze into her eyes like a puppy dog, indulging her, and we both laugh.
Vanessa, a pretty blond Canadian hostess interjects, “If a customer wants sex they go to Soapland on the third floor, where naughty girls give blow jobs and hand jobs.”
A drunken customer has been eavesdropping on our conversation and asks Vanessa, “Are you a naughty girl?”
“ I’m not a naughty girl in Canada but in Japan, that’s another story. I’m a naughty girl if the price is right,” she smiles. The men laugh.
“ What happened to the geisha who just arrived?” I ask, gingerly. “Do you know her?”
“ Oh, she has private customers. It is very expensive to see her, up to fifty thousand yen a night ($500.00) for three hours in the VIP room. They are highly trained. They never talk to us ‘average’ hostesses. And we’re not allowed to talk to them. You can get fired if you try
“ What is their training?”
“ Well, they start at fifteen years old,” Vanessa explains, as a ‘maiko’, a geisha in training. They can’t become a geisha until they have mastered the art of conversation, etiquette, singing, dancing, playing an instrument, flower arranging, and tea ceremony. It is very difficult. There are only a few thousand geisha still working today, compared to tens of thousands before. But they are highly regarded.”
Several hours pass easily in silly conversations, people-watching and karaoke. I realize this whole place is founded on lies. Fake names for the men, fake identities for the girls. The hostesses wear a range of clothing from elegant beaded evening gowns to sassy mini skirts, depending on which persona they’re assuming that night.
The club is heating up now because it’s almost midnight, and that means “Showtime.” Strobe lights flash around the room and sexy music plays as Luciana from Rio enters wearing a sequined bra top with the American flag on her right breast, and silver stars on a blue background on her left. Blue bathing suit bottom, fishnets, and six-inch pumps complete the costume as she shakes her hips and struts around the room, collecting yen from customers after they’ve copped a quick feel.
During the second dance, Luciana’s bathing suit top falls off to the tune of Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender.” She bumps and grinds in the customer’s faces, and halfway through the song she works her way back to center stage, dancing and flirting shamelessly with the crowd. Money flies onto the stage. When the song ends she bows, picks up the bills from the floor and beats a hasty retreat to the dressing room, never to be seen again that night. The whole show has lasted about fifteen minutes.
The girls tell me Luciana comes to the club for only a half-hour to
prepare herself and dance, and makes more in that half-hour than the
other girls do all week. A suave elderly customer finds his way to our
table and plants himself next to me. “Are you new girl?”
I shrug. “Can I ask you a question?”
“ Speak slowly,” he replies. “My English not so good.”
“ Have you slept with any of these women?” I pronounce each word carefully.
“ No.” He points to his nose, to indicate himself. “ Married. I just coming to having fun. Enjoying women and singing. What else can I do? Going home to wife with no love and watching TV?”
“ Have women tried to get money from you, or offered you sex?”
“ Oh, many time. Almost every woman here have dying mother at home that need money immediately. But most don’t want to having sex. They just wanting the money.”
“ Do you ever give it?”
“ Once, to sweet Australian girl. She was my ‘number one girl’. She always making me laughing and very sexy. I giving her ten thousand dollar for her college about one year ago. She write me sometimes to saying thank you. But most girl in Japan having sex for Louis Vuitton. If woman don’t have Luis Vuitton they feel sick inside.” He laughs, and I laugh with him. “In Japan, woman is nothing without Louis as partner.”
“ You know the women laugh at your jokes for a pay check. How come you pay so much money to sit here and get complimented when you know it’s all fake, an act?” He looks confused. I continue, “They are just acting, pretending to be your friend.”
“ Oh, I’m enjoying. Just enjoying. My wife same thing, don’t want to hear problems, just wants paycheck. Same thing. In Japan, married just for respect, no love. This love in nightclub for temporary – sexy dance, laughing, and beer.”
I watch a grinning customer sandwiched between two beautiful exotic women, singing karaoke and dancing. And I begin to get it. The fantasy is real enough in the moment to mask the pain that waits outside. The men leave their stressful work and go to dinner or straight to the club and stay until the club closes or until they are drunk enough to go home and pass out. Then they wake up to all their problems and deal with them all day at work. But they can’t handle the empty down time. So they need to constantly distract themselves. These women are like therapy to them, “instant love.”
This is a country with thriving companies that exist to “lease”
people for holidays and special engagements; People who will pose as
one’s family members. Some lonely people rent a husband or wife
(depending on one’s gender), a couple of kids, cousins, grandparents,
nieces and nephews.
A Japanese man stands in front of my table and serenades me with Joy
to the World, in Japanese. The owner joins him and playfully pretends
he’s a conductor. After he finishes, I join my table in clapping
for him. He begins a corny ballad, having a great time, pouring his
soul into each word. I realize that for these men, this is how they
get emotionally recharged, like the priest who had to burn down the
golden temple to feel alive again. It is closing time, and I say my
good-byes.
“ Thank you for coming,” the owner smiles. “You will work out great. See you tomorrow.”
I smile back. “Thank you.”
“ Did you enjoy job?”
I tell him the customers were gracious and the hostesses sweet. I put on my coat and leave this world forever. As I head out back to the street to catch a taxi back to my hotel, I spot another geisha going through her purse looking for something. I figure this could be my last chance to talk to a geisha, so I hurry in her direction.
“ Konbanwa,” I say politely. “Good evening.”
She looks at me with an uncomfortable expression and hails a taxi. After she climbs in, I slide in next to her. The taxi driver closes the door (taxi drivers in Japan control the opening and closing of the doors with a lever near the steering wheel). The geisha looks at me nervously. Her caked-on white make-up is fading after the long day, but it only makes more of her natural beauty shine through. “I would love to have tea with you. I am interested in – ”
“ No English,” she interrupts softly. The taxi driver looks over his shoulder at us, waiting for instructions.
“ Chotto motte kudasai,” I say. He nods and waits.
I speak to her slowly and respectfully in my limited Japanese. “May I ask you one question before I leave? I won’t have another chance to meet a geisha. I am writing a book about Kyoto and Japan is far away from my home.”
She studies my face for a minute, processing, then nods, “Okay.”
“ Domo arigato.” I continue in Japanese, asking her: “Why did you choose to be a geisha? Was it your choice? Your parents?”
She wiggles uncomfortably in her seat, and loosens her tight belt. She considers her response for about thirty seconds as I stare at her white-pancaked face. She replies in Japanese: “Japanese people love money. Money brings many sad faces and emptiness in the soul because they have no time to live, to see a flower, to watch a bird take a bath. They are busy making money. So most Japanese are rich outside but empty inside. Many suicides. I help them to feel alive. Not by sex but by passion. My parents did not have money so they needed me to work when I was fifteen. I don’t enjoy working so hard but I listen to Nietzsche’s words. He says that ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’ I have a why.” She bows her head gracefully, letting me know politely but firmly that our conversation is over.
I sit there staring at her, moved by her depth of character, her melodic voice still reverberating in my head. I bow back to her, and thank her again. I pull out ten thousand yen to tip her for her generosity but she refuses, so I give it to the taxi driver instead for her ride home. The geisha smiles, and I smile back wanting to give her a hug, to touch her but that would be too forward for her. Asians don’t hug strangers, I know. The driver opens my door and I slip out of the taxi. I watch it disappear with the geisha into the night.