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- sha means �person�. Therefore it can be translated as �accomplished person� or �person who lives by the arts�. They were professional entertainers and hostesses, who became an important part of traditional social life for men. They provided a beautiful and sensuous fantasy that all men desired. Their community came to be referred to as karyukai meaning �the flower and willow world�. They were extensively trained in many of the traditional Japanese arts and their services were exclusively for the realm of wealthy men. It was because of these glamorous women that much of the richness of traditional art and entertainment came to survive in modern Japan. The geisha became Japan�s unparalleled conservators of traditional costume, music, song and dance. In the old days, the geisha were considered a valued possession of a city and a measure of its vitality.
The poet, Hagiwara Sakutaro in 1927 wrote of them: �geisha were then the pioneers of popular fashion - elothes, aceessories, music, songsy novels - all these things revolved about the geisha as the centre of the world of style. Geisha were truly the 'flower of civilization9 of the Edo period.� from Liza Crihfield Dalby, Geisha, page 86.
Print artists of the Edo period (1615-1868) began to portray the picturesque streets of the pleasure quarters and the women who inhabited them in their popular woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e or pictures of the floating world. The beauties portrayed in their prints were chiefly the purveyors of dreams, the geisha, and the courtesans, and not the low-class prostitutes. Not only were the geisha illustrated in woodblock prints but they were also celebrated in romantic novels and even gossiped about in the press like a celebrity.
Servant to Geisha
In Japan during the Edo period, it was quite normal for large, poor families, especially in the countryside, to sell one or more of their female offspring for money to support the family and reduce the number of mouths to feed (kuchi berashi) within the family. If these young and penniless girls were clever, talented and beautiful or showed promise as apprentices, they were sold to geisha households [okiya] to work first as maids, as early as six to eleven years of age. This practice was looked upon a noble act as the girls were considered virtuous for �sacrificing themselves� so that the other members of the family could survive. It must have been extremely traumatic for these young girls to be torn from their families and thrust into an unknown life of harsh discipline and servitude in an unfamiliar place and with strict, and sometimes, very unpleasant company. They would grow up in a secretive world surrounded by a new family comprised entirely of other women, and would have to steel themselves and lose touch with their own emotional feelings. This conflict between duty versus human feeling (giri versus ninjo) became part of the geisha�s life in which she was expected not to fall in love.
The young girl was expected to remain in this bondage and not try to escape. It was the Confucian ideal of �filial Piety� to fulfill a moral obligation and family duty. If a young girl was to run away, she would be dishonouring the family. Her family would have to turn her back over or if she disappeared they would be responsible for reimbursing the geisha household. In time, if the young girl did become a success, she would often be expected to financially help out the family who had abandoned her. Not
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