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- all the young girls were sold into the profession, sometimes geishas would have daughters and they would continue the profession in a hereditary fashion.
Despite the harshness of it all, for some young women, the geishahood was their salvation and was certainly far better than being sent to a common brothel. Some families felt that by selling their daughters to geisha households that they were giving their daughters a chance to escape poverty and have a better life, a good education, decent food, a chance to meet important people and eventually to have beautiful clothing.
These young, illiterate girls, sometimes called �eggs� first had to perform maid�s chores like cleaning, laundry, cooking, serving meals and always paying close attention and learning from their strict elders. When these young women, who were indentured servants, eventually become full geisha, they would be responsible for paying back the money that the household had spent on them. They were bound by contract and forced to reimburse the geisha houses for their training, food and lodgings, medical bills, and fabulous wardrobes and accessories. Some unscrupulous owners of geisha houses would try to reap great rewards from their investment in a geisha by overcharging them for everything.
Within the geisha households, the geisha developed a rigidly structured hierarchical system with relationships based on the family or kin and used the terms �mother/daughter� and �younger/older sister�. This sisterhood was very important to survival in geisha society. It was a tying together of destinies [sansan kudo). Each geisha had a senior, more experienced, sister, who helped in her continuous training. In this way the traditional knowledge would be passed down. Strict etiquette governed their daily routines and young girls in training were both fearful and respectful of their elders. They were expected to bow their heads and meekly accept any criticisms. Within each system there was a mother (okasan) who was in charge of the teahouse and who had to be a real entrepreneur. She carefully observed the behavior of her geishas.
All girls started at the bottom as maids (shikomi), but once they showed some promise of talent, they graduated to be an apprentice geisha or geisha-in-waiting called a maiko. They began learning the geisha way of singing, dancing, playing musical instruments and all other training needed for their future profession such as flower arranging, participation in the tea ceremony and how to read and how to write beautiful calligraphy. They had to endure hours of arduous and strict training, and give unquestioned subordination to their teachers, who might even give them a blow with a folded fan if they made mistakes. They learned to play the shamisen (a three stringed banjo-like instrument as well as the tsutsumi (a small drum played on the shoulder), and a kodaiko (a small drum played with wooden sticks). The shamisen was the most important musical instrument. They loved it and it became an extension of their personna. The shamisen has a hollow wooden frame and is covered front and back with a stretched cat skin for the finer instrument and dog skin for cheaper practice models. It is played with a spatula-shaped piece of ivory or wood that is held in the hand. Shamisen music is played entirely as an accompaniment to the human voice. It was perfect for the geisha to try and coax their tone deaf customers to sing along with their wavering voices. The trainees had to learn the music perfectly and entirely by ear. Some played the shamisen until their fingers bled no matter whether it was in the cold of winter or the heat of summer. The training for singing and dancing was equally rigid. Their dances (nihon buyo or jiutamai)
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