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Cherry blossoms would always take pride of place, but no interwar Kyoto spring was complete without two annual geisha dance spectaculars: the Miyako Odori (都をどり) in Gion, and the Kamogawa Odori (鴨川踊り) in Pontocho. Both Odori began in 1872 when city elders asked the two geisha districts to entertain visitors seeking respite from the industrial and commercial displays at the Second Kyoto Exhibition (Okada 2010). The dances proved so popular that they soon became an annual part of the civic spring calendar, beloved not only by city residents, but also well-known among travelers from abroad.
Many months in advance of each year's performance, geisha, teachers, and business leaders would decide on a theme. Pontocho and Gion would then hire the best set designers and writers they could afford, and with script in hand teachers perfected the music and choreography, while costume designers busied their needles. An Odori could have as many as ten different scenes, often taken from popular legends, history, kabuki plays, and — by the late 1930s — headlines from the China battle front. Certain crowd-pleasing elements might repeat every year. Audiences in Gion, for instance, never tired of the spine-tingling call that started each year's performance: Miyako Odori wa....yoooii-ya-saaaa~! But to keep audiences coming back every year, the bulk of the stage sets, costumes and choreography had to be new.
A dress rehearsal of the grand finale — Cherry Blossoms of Yasukuni Shrine — for the 1933 Miyako Odori. This photo gives a good sense of the spectacle that Odori audiences came to see. In addition to the changing scenery, costumes, and dances on the main stage up front, geisha musicians played on both the right and left wings of the theater. This immersed audiences in a thrilling experience of sight and sound. Personal collection of the author
Cover of the 1926 Miyako Odori program for first-class ticket holders. Personal collection of the author
Through much of the 1920s, the Miyako Odori and Kamogawa Odori followed a fairly predictable pattern. Although the music, costumes, and choreography were new every year, the performances repeated the same basic themes: beautiful scenery in and around the Old Capital, and beloved folktales and kabuki stories familiar to all. Aside from imperial enthronement celebrations, audiences rarely encountered any references to contemporary events or saw scenes of modern urban life, nor did they encounter experimental music, dance, or stage production.
That began to change in the late 1920s, however, when Pontocho started remaking itself into the city's “modern” geisha district. As part of that effort, Pontocho's Kamogawa Odori began self-consciously enlivening its performances with modern choreography, avant-garde stage set designs, and Western music. Organizers also borrowed from the visual glamor and frank eroticism of the silver screen and the popular stage. The 1928 program hinted at this transition, noting that the Kamogawa Odori had long been "quite a classical dance of pure Japanese taste, but now those engaged in the preparation are very anxious to give it a touch of modernism in order to meet the demand of the times.”
These innovations aimed to demonstrate that geisha were not an anachronism in a modern society, but were, in fact, a glamorous part of the era's consumerism, spectacle, and popular leisure. Pontocho aimed to be, as the 1927 Kamogawa Odori program declared, Kyoto's geisha district spiced with "an East-West flavor."
Two dancers in the Kamogawa Odori of the 1920s. Undated, personal collection of the author
In contrast, the Miyako Odori's very name deliberately evoked the Old Capital. In 1932 Gion could boast six decades of Miyako Odori performances and nearly two hundred years of geisha culture, but even that was not enough. Instead, that year's Odori program pushed Gion's origins back one thousand years to the ninth-century reign of Emperor Seiwa. The point was not just that Gion was old, but that it was linked to the city's imperial past.
Gion's Miyako Odori was, however, no antiquarian project. By deliberately advertising its allegiance to the Old Capital's "classical" Japanese taste and values, and by demonstrating what the 1938 program called Gion's longstanding "loyalism and patriotism," Gion aimed to prove itself an ideological ally of the modern imperial state and its expanding global ambitions.
Geisha and maiko in the 1927 Miyako Odori program. Personal collection of the author
By the 1930s, then, the geisha of Gion and Pontocho used their annual Odori to defy predictions of their imminent demise, and to make the case that geisha still mattered.
Yet these annual Odori grew so distinct from each other that even casual observers could sense that these performances promoted two quite distinct visions about the future and meaning of geisha entertainment in a modern society.
Before going into detail, a brief snapshot provides a convenient contrast between interwar Pontocho and Gion:
Kamogawa Odori program (1934). Personal collection of the author
The twelfth and final scene — “The Country of Flowering Cherry Blossoms (Spring in the Land of the Gods)” — of the 1934 Kamogawa Odori included this lively set design inspired, as the program proudly noted, by the Russian avant-garde art movement called Constructivism. Musicians also took up Western instruments to further enhance the modern mood. Combining unusual musical arrangements, innovative choreography, avant-garde set designs, and a dash of popular patriotism, this grand finale vividly demonstrates Pontocho’s efforts to put on a self-consciously modern spectacle.
Meanwhile in Gion just one month earlier, the 1934 Miyako Odori included this placid scene — "Enjoying the evening cool on the river bed of the River Kamo" — showing the staid traditionalism that Gion deliberately cultivated throughout the interwar period.
Personal collection of the author
The contrast between the Pontocho maiko Mameraku (right) and her Gion counterpart Hisafuku (left), likewise illustrates how these two leading Kyoto districts promoted the geisha profession to modern, urban consumers.
Cinched up in a long decorative obi (darari obi), topped with an elaborate hairstyle (ware shinobu), and teetering on tall wooden clogs (okobo), Hisafuku quite literally embodied an emerging "traditional" aesthetic in Gion that rejected the lithe, exposed female body so prominently featured in many forms of modern entertainment and advertising. Often depicted from the back, the maiko's outfit turned an individual girl into an icon of "traditional" girlhood (Bardsley, 2021).
By contrast, in her stylish summer hat and fashionable one-piece dress, Mameraku suggests the kind of playful informality and contemporary flair that Pontocho hoped would attract young new clients and refresh the geisha's image. Although Mameraku entertained clients wearing the same proper regalia as her Gion colleagues, her picture here suggests that her work has not erased her own fun-loving personality and "modern girl" flair.
In two sections below, we will examine more carefully the contrast in how these two leading Kyoto geisha districts used their annual Odori performances to keep geisha relevant in a modern society.
Gigei Kurabu (July 1932). Personal collection of the author
Pontocho and the Kamogawa Odori
The Pontocho geisha Mamechiyo
Undated, personal collection of the author
Pontocho always struggled to overcome its reputation as a second-rate Gion. “There’s no doubt that Gion’s the place," one author proclaimed in his 1929 survey of the nation's geisha districts, "and you will never get the true Kyoto [geisha] atmosphere in Pontocho” (Matsukawa 1929, 497). In similar fashion, a writer in 1925 had dismissed the district as hidebound by its outdated customs, and criticized its annual Kamogawa Odori as tedious. ("Miyako Odori, Kamogawa Odori" 1925, 17). Combined with falling revenues after the 1929 global economic depression, and competition from new forms of popular entertainment right on its own doorstep, Pontocho entered the 1930s facing an uncertain future.
The district's business leaders responded by rebranding Pontocho as Kyoto's "modern" geisha district. The head (torishimari) of the district's board of directors, Izumo Fusajirō (出雲 房次郎), and his successor Terai Tetsurō (寺井 徹郎), insisted that the district "could not accept the status quo" ("Pontocho no kaburenjō no ikisaki" 1930, 22). They therefore pushed a range of innovations designed to show that Pontocho was going to keep pace with changing times.
That included encouraging geisha to experiment with new styles of Western dance (see "Geisha and Popular Entertainment"), hiring an engineering firm to build a striking new Odori theater and geisha school (kaburenjō) that melded Western and Japanese aesthetics, and founding the Pontocho Girls Revue to train the daughters of geisha in innovative styles of dance inspired by Western trends and the popular stage. And given the enormous crowds that flocked to the Kamogawa Odori, business leaders and geisha used the annual event to sell the district's progressive image by experimenting with new themes, stage sets, costumes, and music.
Bundled together, all these innovations aimed to integrate Pontocho into the modern culture of shopping, dining, theaters, and popular leisure growing up in the area immediately surrounding the district. These reforms also appealed to potential clients who otherwise might be put off by a widespread image of geisha entertainment as stuffy and antiquated.
Built in 1926, the brick, steel, and concrete Pontocho Theater and geisha school (kaburenjō) was a stunning investment in the district's modern ambitions. Standing prominently on the banks of the Kamogawa river, and towering over Pontocho's wooden teahouses and restaurants, the theater was an instant civic landmark. Through its innovative mixture of Western and Japanese aesthetics, the theater also prominently declared Pontocho's ambition to lead geisha into an exciting new century of global engagement.
Investments like this caused even those who still preferred Gion to concede that Pontocho was a good deal more relaxed, welcoming, and modern (Matsukawa 1929, 497-8).
The Pontocho geisha theater in 1928. Personal collection of the author
As part of its modernization, Pontocho organized young daughters of the district's geisha into a "Girls Revue." This format allowed for playful, dynamic dances and innovative costumes not considered suitable for maiko, while also evoking other hugely popular, all-female stage revues, such as Takarazuka Revue and the Osaka Shōchiku Kagekidan (OSK).
The Pontocho Girls Revue became so popular on its own that in addition to appearances in Kyoto, they were also invited to perform in Tokyo. A 1934 fundraiser in Kyoto for officers and soldiers serving in Manchuria makes clear the full range of their novel repertoire, which included a mixture of traditional dances, a tango, a jazz number, and a "Skaters Waltz" (Masawaki "Pontocho zomeki").
Kamogawa Odori Program (1936). Personal collection of the author
During the 1930s Kamogawa Odori artists, musicians and choreographers experimented with a wide range of innovations. Set designers incorporated influences from avant-garde trends in the arts, musicians adapted western tunes and instruments, and choreographers borrowed ideas from modern Western dance and the popular stage. As the 1929 program announced, this "mixture of the classical essence with a modern creation, [and] the blending of old and new rhythms" gave the Kamogawa Odori its unique flavor.
That flavor, moreover, took inspiration from the general public. As the 1931 program explained, the Kamogawa Odori was not just the pride of Pontocho, but of the entire city. It was therefore natural that the "fundamental ideas for the choreography should be inspired by the general public." Rather than prioritizing the past, or walling themselves off from the common Kyoto citizen, these innovations of the 1930s integrated the Kamogawa Odori and the Pontocho geisha into the city's modern popular culture.
"Cherry Blossom Party" scene, 1931 Kamogawa Odori. Personal collection of the author
1928 Kamogawa Odori Program. Personal collection of the author
While every year featured predictable scenes of pine trees, flowering mountain vistas, and seascapes, beginning in the late 1920s many Kamogawa Odori sets began showing inspiration from avant-garde movements in art and design, and depicting scenes of contemporary urban life. This spring 1928 stage set (left) showing "The Capital of Culture," for instance, depicted an idealized modern cityscape complete with sparkling electric lights, high-rise buildings, airplanes taking to the skies, and other wonders of the modern age.
By 1933, the Kamogawa Odori reached a fever-pitch of daring.
While over in neighboring Gion, geisha were dancing before the autumn leaves of Tōnomine and the snows at Chihaya Castle, Pontocho geisha were raising the bar — and more than a few eyebrows. That year’s theme, “Love Symphony,” suggested a hint of the erotic, and the Kamogawa Odori did not disappoint. One startling set — “Awakening Spring” — painted in an avant-garde Expressionist style, quickly gave way to the showstopper: “The Glass Bath.”
The steamy glass bath stage set from the 1933 Kamogawa Odori
Personal collection of the author
Spectators gawked at a stage set (above) showing a Spanish-style bath, which legend said the lecherous warlord Toyotomi Hidetsugu (1568-1595) had secretly built at the Jurakudai Palace in Kyoto. Seven slinky geisha appeared on stage draped in gauzy silk and danced to a Spanish tune on Western instruments while vocalists floated out a song: “you can see their [bare] skin in the glass bath!” This “modern style dance,” one member of the audience enthused, was “deeply erotic” and “left younger members of the audience drooling” (“Dō de atta ka” 1933, 32).
The following year a "Harvest Dance" scene teased the audience with twelve dancers singing what the program called "a song somewhat erotic, yet perfectly innocent and harmless." If that weren't enough, the next scene retold a story of "hot love" on a cold night in old Edo!
That is, by the early 1930s, Pontocho was clearly aiming beyond simply upstaging their rivals in Gion. The district's geisha and businesses wanted to show how they fit within a broader mass culture of play and spectacle. “To the rising generation the old-fashioned dance seems to be too classical, or rather antiquated,” the 1934 program explained, but “modern people, especially young folks, admire this sort of dancing immensely.” All these changes left one observer to report in 1935 that “people used to say there wasn’t much difference between the Miyako Odori and the Kamogawa Odori, but you don’t hear that anymore” (“Yōgakki ni hajimaru” 1935, 19).
To better appreciate the prewar Kamogawa Odori's glamour (and to see some glittering, dancing chickens at 0:45!), click the link for 8mm silent clips from the 1937 production. The year's theme was “Dance Festival.” The brief film shows excerpts from every scene except the first, and suggests the lavish stage production values that so enraptured audiences year after year.
A ticket to the 1932 Kamogawa Odori. Personal collection of the author
Gion and the Miyako Odori
If Pontocho geisha crafted a self-consciously modern Odori, Gion, by contrast, deliberately staved off any overt concessions to the modern entertainments that were bewitching so many.
Every year the Miyako Odori had new sets, new music, new costumes and new choreography, but it always stayed within the predictable formula of previous years. Audiences arrived knowing they would enjoy snowy landscapes, spring blossoms, and autumn-tinted scenes that evoked a nostalgic charm for what the 1934 program called "the days gone by." Program notes frequently used the phrase "as in previous years" (reinen dōri), and audiences knew that the geisha and maiko would never present anything salacious or experimental. As the 1929 program promised, "as in previous years we present the four seasons, and have specially selected dances in pure Kyoto style." Gion would have no "Love Symphony" and no glass baths.
A Miyako Odori dancer (odoriko). Undated. Personal collection of the author
Cover of the 1925 Kamogawa Odori program for first-class ticket holders. Personal collection of the author
Gion began crafting this image early, building an imposing new theater (kaburenjō) in 1913. Made of hinoki cypress by master carpenters in what the 1928 program proudly called "a pure Japanese style," the building accommodated the district's geisha school and a 500-seat theater for the Miyako Odori. It was a statement every bit as symbolic as Pontocho's brick, steel and concrete theater built thirteen years later. The contrasting architectural styles of the two rival geisha districts vividly marked the different approaches Pontocho and Gion took to adapting geisha entertainment for the modern age.
The Gion theater. Undated. Personal collection of the author
The Miyako Odori remained remarkably consistent throughout the interwar period, partly because of the long tenure of Gion's head dance instructor, Katayama Haruko (片山 春子; also known as Inoue Yachiyo III, 三世井上八千代). For sixty-six years, between 1872 and her death in 1938, she supervised the Odori's choreography while also serving as head master (iemoto) of the Inoue style of dance taught to all Gion's geisha and maiko. Her prestige and unique position within Gion gave her enormous influence in turning back any pressure to update its decades-old formula. Age may have also played a role: when Pontocho starting experimenting with new styles in the late 1920s, Katayama was entering her 90s.
But Katayama's approach was also good for business. Gion's conservative style helped promote the district as a playground for the city's economic and political elite. This proved especially helpful when war came in earnest and military officers with hefty expense accounts and plentiful rations shielded Gion from the worst privations (Stanley 2013; Aihara 2012, 8). As a result, throughout the interwar years, the Miyako Odori did little to upset its cozy relationship with the city's elite by experimenting with themes either risky or risqué.
Gion's longtime head dance instructor, Katayama Haruko, performing "Mushi no ne" in 1934, one month before her 96th birthday. Gigei Kurabu (November 1934). Personal collection of the author
Nearly six decades after the first Miyako Odori in 1872, the program continued to tell the history of the Odori's origins in the close cooperation between Kyoto's prefectural government and Gion's leading lights.
A photo montage (right) printed in the program every year emphasized the intimacy of Gion and the governing elite. From left to right, this shows: the dance master Katayama Haruko (片山春子), Kyoto Prefectural Assemblyman and later Governor Makimura Masanao (槇村 正直), Kyoto Prefectural Governor Nagatani Nobuatsu (長谷信篤), and the proprietor of Ichiriki teahouse in Gion, Sugiura Jirōemon (杉浦 治郎右衛門). By framing the Miyako Odori's beginnings as a story of mutual cooperation between Gion and the governing elite, the district claimed a preeminence over the city's seven other geisha districts, and solidified its claim that Gion alone was synonymous with true geisha hospitality.
1933 Miyako Odori program. Personal collection of the author
Detail of undated postcard, showing first-class patrons, including a group of Western visitors who were supplied with chairs to ease their comfort, and bilingual programs to enhance their enjoyment. Always conscious of their good opinion, a chagrined reporter in 1930 observed a number of foreign guests either bolting the performance early, or rushing away as soon as the Odori had ended. He nevertheless attributed this not to boredom, but to the fact that many foreigners were staying in Kobe and had to catch a train back to their hotel ("Gaijin to Miyako Odori" 1930, 31).
Personal collection of the author
This detail from a Meiji-period postcard (left) showcases not the Miyako Odori performers and the dazzling stage sets, but rather the elite audience. Odori organizers were especially pleased to point out that the Odori's fame had spread abroad, and that every year high-class Western visitors made it a point to see the performance. The 1919 program, for example, specifically noted that the previous year Great Britain's Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, had attended. As the 1928 program put it, "The Miyako Odori's reputation is not just limited to Japan. Those from Europe and America have named it 'The Cherry Dance,' making it globally famous." The opportunity to represent "Japanese culture" to aristocrats and elite Western visitors was a source of pride.
Programs in both Japanese and English for first-class ticket-holders further added luster to the Miyako Odori, demonstrating Gion's refined atmosphere and burnishing its reputation for attracting an exclusive clientele both domestic and foreign.
Despite the focus on attracting high-class clients, the Miyako Odori was something more than just a business strategy. It also offered a justification for geisha labor in the modern world, and one distinctly different from Pontocho.
If Katayama Haruko's long tenure ensured a consistent aesthetic, the work of a conservative kokugaku scholar named Inokuma Asamaro (猪熊 浅麻呂) bolstered the Miyako Odori's ideological bent. For nearly thirty years between 1914 and 1943, Inokuma wrote the Odori's lyrics, and he stuck to a predictable range of themes praising the city's beautiful sites, its places of Shinto worship (Buddhist temples were in comparison relatively scarce), and its role as the emperor's beloved home for a thousand years. The greeting he penned was also reprinted annually, praising Gion for keeping to the "old ways and not changing."
This conservative framework, shaped by Katayama and Inokuma's long tenures, was also reflected in the very name of the performance itself. "Miyako Odori" (dance of the imperial capital) won out over a rival suggestion: "Miyabi Odori" (dance of elegance). This emphasis on Gion's ties to the ancient imperial city — Miyako, rather than Kyoto — laid the foundation for the novel claim that Gion's geisha were conserving "pure" Japanese culture against an onslaught of the decadent West.
A scene from the 1941 (above) and 1937 (below) Miyako Odori. Both personal collection of the author
Dancers at the 1937 Miyako Odori. Personal collection of the author
Before Gion began reshaping its identity in the 1920s and 1930s, no one searching for the soul of Japan had ever suggested it lay in the nation's geisha quarters, nor had anyone ever tasked geisha with preserving Japan's cultural identity. To the contrary, many interwar clients were abandoning the geisha precisely because the entertainment felt outdated and irrelevant (see The Geisha in Crisis). But through settings that evoked the city's imperial past and reverence for the emperor, and by keeping to a predictable formula that largely ignored Kyoto's modern development, the Miyako Odori found a modern rationale for geisha as caretakers of a "pure," "traditional" Japanese culture. "The Miyako Odori is not just the pride of Kyoto," the 1919 program noted. "It is the pride of Japan." This was a formula that appealed to the elite caretakers of a new imperial state and its growing global ambitions to establish Japan as a cultural and political counterweight to the West.
Finale of the 1928 Miyako Odori. Personal collection of the author
The Miyako Odori repeatedly showed its allegiance to the imperial past by featuring historic sites with strong imperial connections, or by retelling stories of unwavering imperial loyalty. 1928's finale (left), for instance, took place in front of Kyoto's Heian Shrine, a relatively new part of the Kyoto landscape that honored Emperor Kanmu, who had brought the capital to Kyoto more than a thousand years prior. Two years later organizers chose the theme "imperial capitals," featuring various places ancient emperors had called home before settling in Kyoto.
The seventh scene of the 1931 Miyako Odori. Personal collection of the author
Meanwhile, scenes hearkening back to the Edo period under shogunal rule often centered on people who had defied the Tokugawa, or had at least given the old shogunal regime a black eye. The 1931 Miyako Odori, for instance, retold the beloved story of the 47 Ronin: samurai who in 1703 had resisted the shogunate's handling of a dispute between their lord and a shogunal court official, and avenged what they took to be their lord's unjust punishment and death. The seventh scene (left) evoked the tale's loyal samurai crossing the snowy Eitai Bridge in Edo "with a firm vow in their hearts," and carrying with them the severed head of the court official who had caused their lord's downfall. The ten geisha onstage wore over their hair tenugui cotton towels emblazoned with the symbol (iroha fuda) of the story's main heroes, each of whom bravely faced the shogunate's wrath for their loyalty and heroism.
In similar fashion, two years later in 1933 the Odori's theme was "loyalists who have protected the nation in the period before the Meiji Restoration." The second scene (right) featured a grove of plum blossoms at Tokiwa Shrine in Ibaraki, which honored Tokugawa Mitsukuni, a direct descendant of the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu. But, as the program noted, Mitsukuni had often written of "the importance of loyalty to the Imperial House [...] which eventually paved the way for the destruction of the Tokugawa family to which he belonged."
Rather than honoring the Tokugawa shoguns, then, the Miyako Odori's Edo-period scenes often hailed the men who had highlighted its supposed failings, and had laid the foundations for a return to imperial rule.
1933 Miyako Odori program. Personal collection of the author
The Miyako Odori never praised Tokugawa rule, but it did celebrate Edo-period culture. After all, the geisha profession itself was born and flourished in "pleasure quarters" and geisha districts like Gion throughout the Tokugawa realm. As the 1937 Miyako Odori program asserted, "the people thronging Edo appreciated the arts to the highest degree, and this was a period when our country was at its peak." By separating shogunal rule from Edo culture, the Miyako Odori could embrace the shogun's capital without legitimizing the shogun's power.
Furthermore, embracing Edo allowed Gion's geisha to deflect criticism that their work was irrelevant to a modern society. As living links to a supposedly "pure" Japanese culture divorced from the outside influences of foreign cultures, Gion could inoculate a society succumbing to what conservatives considered the fevers of Western modernity.
Sixth scene of the 1937 Miyako Odori showing Mt. Fuji and the shogun's city, Edo
Personal collection of the author
The Odori Go to War
The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in the summer of 1937 gave the following year's Miyako Odori and Kamogawa Odori fresh material to work with, and another opportunity to assert the geisha's relevance to the imperial nation. Although Pontocho and Gion both embraced the patriotic moment, they did so using the contrasting aesthetics they had refined over the preceding decade.
The Gion geisha Otsuka Dan (left) and Otsuka Danko (right) pose with a map of the China battlefront, a newspaper, and a model battle cruiser. Personal collection of the author
Kamogawa Odori program (1938). Personal collection of the author
From start to finish, the 1938 Kamogawa Odori was a patriotic firecracker. The curtain opened on a cloud of cherry blossoms framing Mt. Fuji, the scene intending to portray "the spirit of Japan," while everyone on stage and in the audience sang "The Patriot's March." Another vignette showed "the power of the Imperial Army's cannons against the walls of the enemy's castle" in North China, which then gave way to the Pontocho Girls Revue singing a chorus: "we won! we won! we won! The sun is beautiful and the birds are singing! We have vanquished the enemy; the flowers are smiling and the brooks are singing!" The finale (above), titled “The Pride of Japan,” had the entire cast dance under Japanese, Manchurian, Chinese Republican, Italian and Nazi German flags as a warplane and two battle tanks stood triumphantly behind. “Mt. Fuji and cherry blossoms are the pride of Japan, shining in the morning sun,” the geisha sang. “The emperor’s power, glittering high and bright, lighting the world.” It had all the glitz and glamour of a cabaret number, and all the crowd-pleasing effervescence of a modern stage production. By turning the latest headlines into a show-stopping performance, Pontocho reaffirmed its identity as the "modern" geisha district.
Miyako Odori (1938). Personal collection of the author
Gion, on the other hand, used the war to emphasize again the district's longstanding commitment to imperial loyalty and its connections to the emperor's sacred city. In light of the war and heroic efforts of the empire's citizens, airmen, sailors, and soldiers, the 1938 program announced, "we have chosen to highlight famous places in Kyoto that honor and revere the kami and the emperor." So the sixth scene (above) celebrated the “loyalists and patriots” who, the program explained, had used Gion's geisha teahouses to plot the shogunate's overthrow and the restoration of imperial rule. Their geisha companions were likewise “loyalists themselves, which is taken for a pride [sic] of the Gion quarters.”
Like Pontocho, the 1938 Miyako Odori's finale also encouraged the audience to join in singing "The Patriot's March" as a blizzard of Rising Sun flags fluttered on stage. However, the finale remained firmly rooted in Gion's genteel, "traditional" aesthetic. The background of Heian Shrine, honoring Emperor Kanmu and his founding of Kyoto, had already been featured in the 1924 and 1929 Odori, and was used to once again reaffirm Gion's reverence for the imperial house and the geisha's deep connections to the emperor's ancient capital.
In short, the war energized the two Odori with fresh and timely themes. But more than that, Gion and Pontocho capitalized on the war to again argue that geisha — whether "modern" or "traditional" — were deeply embedded in the contemporary world. Far from sequestered in an unchanging past, geisha of the 1920s and 1930s used the Odori to throw themselves into the broader society's infatuation with its glittering urban culture and its dreams of imperial glory.
Thus, while Pontocho's "modern" appeal and Gion's “traditional” aesthetic might have at first glance seemed contradictory, both Odori defied predictions of the geisha's demise, and demonstrated concrete ways geisha labor could help make the nation modern.
Pontocho geisha in 1934 listening to a speech as they establish their own chapter of the Greater Japan Women's Defense Association in 1934. Gigei Kurabu (August 1934). Personal collection of the author
For all their traditionalism, even Gion's maiko and geisha embraced the modern world. Some, like the Gion maiko Ichiraku (above), stepped out in fashionable clothes inspired by a rage for Chinese-inflected fashions in the late 1920s. Others (right) flooded the new pool halls, and other sites of popular entertainment
Both personal collection of the author
The Odori format was itself, after all, an expression of a modern culture of spectacle, and was sustained year after year by new forms of mass communication, transportation, tourism, and Japan's engagement with other centers of global modernity. Printing presses churned out a barrage of bromides, magazine spreads, programs, newspaper reviews, and picture postcards. Live radio broadcasts and phonograph recordings spread Odori performances to audiences far beyond Kyoto. Modern rail service and tourist infrastructure ensured domestic and foreign visitors could step off a train and within minutes enjoy an Odori performance while following along in a bilingual English-Japanese program, and reveling in stage settings that made expansive claims about Japan's place in an emerging global imperial order.
Whether they presented themselves as "modern" or as "traditional," Kyoto's geisha Odori were the product of a modern, urban culture enraptured by spectacle, mass consumption, and popular patriotism. Geisha and their Odori were, therefore, intimately tied to the making of a modern city.
The next section, Geisha and Popular Entertainment, shows how geisha used the prewar Odori to insert themselves into the clamor of new popular amusements.
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