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- back to wearing only traditional kimonos. They now settled into their new role as curators of tradition by trying to preserve the classic arts and kimonos. With the new competition from caf� girls, geisha teahouses and restaurants began losing money. The geisha were briefly popular again just before World War II as anti-Western and nationalistic fervour flourished and the geisha were considered uniquely Japanese. Geisha continued to cater to their clients throughout the war years until 1944, when geisha restaurants were shut down and many geisha were put to work in war-related factories while others fled to the countryside. After the war, the geisha, little by little, returned to the cities to resume their trade. However, when laws were passed in 1947 pushing up compulsory education up to the age of fifteen, the geisha profession was undermined. Since a young girl was prohibited from becoming a maiko until the age of fifteen, her important years of early training were eliminated.
The Anti-Prostitution Law of 1956 outlawed prostitutes but left the geisha unaffected and raised their profession to some respectability. By the 1960s Japan�s economy began to become prosperous and surprisingly the geisha continued to flourish. In fact, by the mid-1970s there was an estimated 17,000 geisha. However this did not last, with bribery scandals and the oil crisis of the 1970s, the geisha profession began its inevitable decline, although they continued to remain popular themes of novels and films.
By the end of the 20th centuiy the geisha began to lose their appeal and glamourous status as ideals of womanhood. They seemed dull, too steeped in tradition, too expensive, too conservative and frozen in time. They were no longer the trend-setters. The geisha had become an anachronism and seemed to be mainly popular with old men or old- fashioned men who longed for the nostalgia of bygone days and the flirtatious banter of the geisha. Young men of style and sophistication no longer wished to be seen with them. By clinging to their old ways, the geisha had ensured their own demise and have become a relic of the past.
In the past the geisha had arduous years of training to perfect every detail of their dress, manner and artistic talent, but the modern geisha no longer has the time or the will to study all day for a world that no longer exists and a clientele who does not fully appreciate the artistry of her talents.
Bibliography
Cobb, Jodi. Geisha: The Life, the Voices, the Art, New York, 1997
Dalby, Liza, Geisha, Berkeley, Los Angles, London, 1983
__________. Kimono: Fashioning Culture, New Haven and London, 1993
Deutsch, Sanna Saks and Link, Howard A. The Feminine Image: Women of Japan, Honolulu, 1985
Downer, Lesley. Geisha, The Secret History of a Vanishing World, London, 2000 Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha, New York and London, 1997.
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