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Geisha of the 1920s and 1930s faced a crisis of cultural relevance.
Critics were many and they carped loudly. Some said that modern geisha were clumsy or were too flashy and only cared about “making their faces pretty” (Miyake 1935, 157). They accused geisha of ignoring their patrons in favor of gossiping among themselves. But in the next breath they griped that geisha were tedious, because they “don’t have much to talk about” (Miyake 1935, 165). Still others complained that modern geisha lacked the high level of skills in music, dance, and etiquette of their Edo-period forbears. In 1935 when a cadre of enthusiasts compiled a book that examined the current state of geisha entertainment, they filled thirty-six pages with a list of her “weak points” (Miyake 1935, 151–87). What united all these critics was the consensus that, in the words of the poet Hagiwara Sakutarō, “geisha are boring” (Miyake 1935, 101).
It was self-congratulatory, of course, for Hagiwara to claim that geisha were too dimwitted to entertain men like himself. Geisha shot back that in fact it was clients who had gotten worse. “Most of the guests […] these days are people who come up from local provinces and know no tastes [sic] on true merry-making of the metropolitan inhabitants,” one responded. “The cause of the degradation of girls at present should be attributed to the downfall of taste on the side of guests” (Fujimoto 1919, 35).
A Gion geisha posing outside a teahouse called Daidō (大道). Undated, personal collection of the author
The bickering and grumbling were merely symptoms of a greater problem.
Interwar geisha faced stiff competition from a range of new titillating, urban entertainment options: cafes, dance halls, department stores, billiard parlors, theaters, movies, and stylish restaurants.
With all these tantalizing new options to choose from, could geisha really entertain a modern people?
Pontocho geisha in the Kamogawa Odori Program (1937). Personal collection of the author
Geisha of Morioka prepare for a live radio broadcast in Sendai.
Personal collection of the author
Dance halls swiftly became a major popular entertainment venue for male clients all across Japan, and were one major threaten to the geisha world.
Union Dance Hall in Tokyo (1930). Personal collection of the author
Interwar Kyoto boasted an impressive range of new, modern ways to have fun, and most of them did not require hiring a geisha.
By 1928, for instance, eleven movie theaters clustered right near Gion’s doorstep, luring clients away with flickering dreams (Saitō 2020, 66–7). Meanwhile dance hall fever broke out, and even some geisha districts scrambled to lobby the city for an official permit. Stylish new cafes also beckoned away clients, promising flirty waitresses and menus with exotic food and drinks. When Kyoto’s first two cafes opened in 1912, few could have imagined that just two years later there would be nineteen (Saitō 2020, 82–6). But the cafe waitresses were fun to talk to, pretty as could be, and required no complicated negotiations.
Even the geisha's partisans could understand the cafe's allure. As one complained, cafe waitresses "dance the tango and sing you a song while holding a cigarette. They also neck and hold hands [with customers]. All that might be abhorrent to older and middle-aged men, but the young people of today...are tired of old things” (Ichiharu 1932, 15).
A geisha party in Osaka. Undated. Personal collection of the author
The Pontocho geisha Matsuchiyo, rumored to have quit and become a yatona
Personal collection of the author
There were also plenty of other beguiling female entertainers for hire, from dance hall partners to what in the Kansai region were known as yatona (雇仲居). This was a kind of simplified geisha, who wore kimono and received some basic training in etiquette and deportment, but lacked the geisha's rigorous lessons in music and dance.
One yatona school in Kyoto, for instance, offered a curriculum that included how to pour tea and to serve kaiseki cuisine, how to hand a client his hat, and how to properly open and close a Western door ("Yatona no gakkō" 1926, 43).
A yatona may not have had all the geisha's high-level skills, but many clients struggled to tell the difference anyway. One frequent geisha client declared that, "these days you cannot tell the difference between a geisha and a yatona just by looking at them. Even if you attend a party you can hardly tell which is which." ("Geisha no sugata" 1926, 12).
There were further benefits: a yatona charged less and was not bound by the complex rules and arcane customs that governed the geisha world (Katō 2017, 84–90). This made her an attractive alternative, particularly, as one geisha partisan groused, in an age when “manufactured diamonds are preferred to real ones” (“Geisha no Kyōsō" 1930, 20). If rumors were true, even a few geisha decided to try it out. Stories circulated, for instance, that a well-known Pontocho geisha named Matsuchiyo had quit and turned to yatona work ("Pontocho geiko kara" 1927, 61). Yatona were, on average, slightly older than geisha. In 1926 while nearly seventy percent of geisha fell between the ages of twelve and twenty-four, almost the same percentage of yatona were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine (Kyotoshi tōkeisho 1926, 278).
Undated. Personal collection of the author
In short, with so much competition from such a wide range of new entertainment options, the geisha's future looked bleak.
Many said that geisha must either evolve or go extinct.
In a common refrain at the time, a speaker chastised the geisha of Kyoto’s Miyagawacho district as nothing but a shell of their Edo-period forebears. Once fashion pioneers, he lectured them, you are now overshadowed by movie stars and even everyday housewives. Read the newspapers! he said. Learn about sports, politics, and the arts! Sprinkle your conversation with new words from abroad! (“Geiko no shokubun” 1932, 40). In 1931, an instructor at Gion’s geisha school even suggested broadening horizons by sending geisha to perform as a dance troupe in Hawai'i for six months (“Gion geiko buyōdan” 1931, 22–4). The idea was abandoned, but it suggests the rising dread even within the profession that without some definite changes, geisha would soon become living fossils of a bygone era.
By the early 1930s, it seemed that the geisha's golden age had passed. All through the first two decades of the twentieth century, the number of geisha in Kyoto had only increased year on year. In 1906 there were 982 geisha; just one decade later the number was 1,941, a nearly 100% increase. Then in 1929 it all fell apart. A global financial catastrophe made geisha entertainment seem an unecessary extravagence. Without enough work, geisha began leaving the profession in droves and recruitment dramatically slowed. Between 1928 and 1933 the number of geisha in Kyoto dropped by more than six hundred and never recovered (Kyotoshi tōkeisho, 1906–1933).
Given all these headwinds, it was not surprising that geisha themselves began looking for other work. A survey done at the time suggested that young women did not aspire to a profession well known for its unsparing training and strict, old-fashioned customs. Many instead found more enticing a range of modern employment options (Terazawa 2014, 130; Tanaka 2011, 133).
Despite diminishing numbers because of tough economic times and new job opportunities, geisha nevertheless remained ubiquitous in every part of Japan. After a sharp decline following the 1929 economic depression, the number of geisha in Kyoto stabilized throughout the 1930s at around 1,500. Among them were these two Shimabara geisha — Yoshitsugu and Yoshiko — who launched their careers in the summer of 1935 against the backdrop of many celebratory posters.
Gigei Kurabu (August 1935). Personal collection of the author
Many geisha who remained, however, were determined to modernize their profession.
What that meant specifically, and how far they could go varied by the temperament of each geisha district. But in Kyoto, at least, Pontocho dashed ahead of all the others.
A small, narrow alley running only a single city block and often derided as a “narrow eel’s bed,” Pontocho was nevertheless determined to take the lead. It had ambitious geisha willing to take chances, and a business association that hitched its hopes to the modern age.
Even as Pontocho galloped ahead, geisha in every district — even staid Gion — and in every part of Japan experimented with ways to meet popular taste and to keep their profession relevant. They tried new clothes, new dances, and new music. They read the newspapers, listened to popular songs on the radio, bought the latest phonograph records, and stayied up all night after work to catch the 9:00 showing of cinema heart-throbs like Hasegawa Kazuo (Minako 2009, 141). Some even began dancing to phonograph records of the latest popular hits (Asakusa 2013, 66). Others quit to became movie stars and recording artists of their own (Kobari 2022, 104–13).
Geisha, both in Kyoto and in Japan more broadly, then, did not just passively observe the changing society around them, or settle back into simply curating a culture fading into irrelevance. Instead, they actively participated in bringing their profession (and themselves) into the modern age.
Preserving tradition, in other words, was not the geisha's primary occupation. In fact, the further she associated herself with the past, the greater the likelihood her customers would dwindle away to the cafes and movie theaters. To survive, geisha would embrace the modern age.
Two Pontocho geisha in stylish summer attire along the banks of the Kamogawa River, 1931
Gigei Kurabu (July 1931). Personal collection of the author
The next section, The Modern Odori, examines how Kyoto geisha used the dance stage to make a modern splash.
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