Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - History of Geishas

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

What does it mean to be a geisha? How does someone become one? And how do they differ from sex workers?The geisha world is famously very secretive and private, and taking us into it today is Lesley Downer, who spent years befriending geishas in research for her book Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. My lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister, and you are listening to Bertwix the Sheets. And I'm so glad that you are. I have loads of fun doing this, and I'm glad that you are fun too. But before any fun can continue,

I have to warn you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And now, no one can write as angry letters or get... because they heard something that they were offended by, because fair doos, you were warned. Join me for an evening stroll betwixters through 18th century Kyoto.

While we walk the cobbled streets of the so-called pleasure quarter, with lanterns lighting our path, geishers seem to glide by us in their beautiful kimonos. Their stunning appearance, from their immaculate dress to the elaborate mask of makeup painted on their faces, is frankly putting the rest of us to shame. Not to mention their exquisite skills in music, dance, conversation. It's no wonder that these women are in hot demand from those who can afford them, which is not us, by the way,

we're just going to have to make do with each other. But what does it take to become a geisha? What is their history? Well, I am ready to find out if you are. Camonos at the ready, betwixtors. Let's do this. What do you look for a funny man? Oh, many, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, but beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. And welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kay Lister. The word geisha literally means art person.

And it's a reflection of the incredible skills that each geisha has to acquire in everything from traditional dance to playing musical instruments, to being able to deliver the most flattering and interesting conversations you will ever have. Yet there are a lot of misconceptions around the role of the geisha, particularly from those in the West. How do they differ from sex workers? What work and preparation goes into becoming a geisha? What is the future of this culture that does seem to be in decline?

Joining me today is Leslie Downer, author of Gaysia, the secret history of a vanishing world to help shed light on this fascinating culture. Leslie lived with the Gaishas and became their friend while writing the book, so as you can imagine, she can give us a pretty incredible insight into their world. And thank you so much to Liz for this week's suggestion. Hey there, Betwixt team. I'm Liz from Out Washington, Kentucky, and the US.

I really love how Batwicks dives deep into history, bringing in different authors and promoting their books. My suggestion for you this week is the history of Geisha. Memoirs of a Geisha is one of my favorite books. I love this story so much it sent me down a rabbit hole. Sorting out the fact from the fiction, what really grinds my gears is the fact that geishas are often confused with sex work. I like to blame the American soldiers in World War II

for referring to sex workers as Geisha girls. Yes, geisha's had a Mizuege, which was the only circumstance of them selling their virginity of the highest bidder. However, there is so much more to them than that. They are trained in traditional Japanese arts, an excellent conversationalist and a host. I can't wait to give this episode a listen. Now that's enough for me.

Let's get on with the show. That is a fantastic idea, Liz, and I was only too happy to look into it for you. And as always, if anyone else out there has an idea for an episode that you'd like to hear, you can contact us at betwixt at history hit.com. Now, without further ado, let's do it. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Leslie Dowder.

How are you doing? I'm very well, thank you. I'm thrilled to talk to you today because you have not only written about the Geisha culture and Geisha history, but you have lived amongst the Geisha community as well for quite long periods of time. And I've got so many questions that I want to ask you about that.

But I suppose the first question that I should ask is, what drew you? to research, write about, talk about, gaysha culture and history? Well, I've been involved with Japan since 1978. I went there then. I lived there for about five years straight off. Then I went on and came back home to England

and went back and forth between Japan and England for quite a long time and altogether lived in Japan for about probably 15 years and have written quite a lot of books about Japan. and one thing that drew me to the geisha culture was Arthur Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha, which I thought was not bad, considering it was fiction and he's an American man, but it made me very curious to find out

what was the true story of the geisha, and to what extent was he fantasising, and to what extent was he not? So I then got a commission to write a book about geisha and then was rather worried because I wondered how on earth I could break into this very, very, very secretive world. I realized I could only, I guess, break into the geisha world if I could transform myself into a geisha, if I could behave in a way that would be acceptable to them. So I began by

going to Kyoto and staying in a part of town called Miyagawa Chor. A lot of the story of my life, but also the story of my research into geisha is lucky accidents. And I didn't know that this was actually one of the five main Gator districts. And so there I was, quietly staying there, racking my brains as to how I could meet Gaysha. I also asked absolutely everybody I knew, both Japanese and Western in Japan, if they knew any Gisha, and made another of the rather extraordinary discoveries, which was that people that I thought would not know anything about Gisha actually knew them, and people that I thought definitely would know Gisha, swore that they didn't.

So it was worth asking absolutely everybody. Even if you've fallen into the city that has a high gaita population and you're meeting people that know, you can't just go and knock on the door of a gasea school and say hello. How did you introduce yourself? How did you gain the trust of what is a very closed community of people? So the key thing with the gaysha world is introductions. And I did have some very good contacts that I'd made over the course of my time in Japan,

who did introduce me to some elderly geisha. I should add here, first of all, geisha, you can carry on being geisha your whole life. So I met geisha who were maybe 60, 70, they're still geisha. Secondly, you hear about submissive geisha. They are not submissive, no way. They are tough old ladies, the older ones. The young ones are also very strong.

They're much stronger. The Japanese women I was used to were, housewives who are, you know, usually very nice to me, very sweet, very kind, would do whatever I wanted if I had some issue, they would solve it for me. Geisha were not like that. So I met this elderly Geisha to whom I'd had an introduction. And when I first met her, she gave me a scolding. I mean, I don't know, I didn't know, rather, the proper polite language to use with Geisha. My Japanese is pretty good for communication, but it's not perfect. And normally, I can get by with, you know, perfectly straightforward Japanese, that's fine. But this old lady said

to me, nope, you're not saying that properly. You're supposed to use these polite words. Secondly, I had taken a present of cakes, because you must take a present when you visit somebody, anybody. Yeah. But she just took them and put them aside. And I had to go back and see her quite a lot of times before I got anywhere at all with her. And finally, I discovered, somebody told me, the right cakes. And I went to the right cake. shop and I got the right cakes and gave them to her. And she at last was nicer to me, but I was hoping she would introduce me to glamorous young Miko, who were the trainee Geisha, but she never did. So every connection I thought would work, didn't work. And meanwhile, I was hanging up with the hairdresser,

the Geisha hairdresser. He was very nice. And I hung out with the wig maker. And I still hadn't really cracked the Geisha world. But I was used to having lots of time and not much money. I'm quite used to that. So I was living in a little tiny old, what I later discovered was actually a Geisha house in this Geisha district of Miyagawa Chaw. It had been a Geisha house. It was not a functioning geisha house. It was an ex-Gisha house. And I was going every day to have coffee in the coffee shop down the road. I went and had my breakfast there. And there were all these women sitting there. Some of them had rollers in their hair. Some of them, they were all sitting there, no makeup on. They all sat there. They read their newspapers or their magazines and I read my newspaper

or magazine and I made notes because I was writing up my notes of how I'd got on with the hairdresser and whether I'd learned anything. And I would sit at the counter and the lady that ran the coffee shop one day she leaned over the counter and she said, didn't you say you were wanting to write a book about geisha? She said, why don't you ask some of these ladies? They're all geisha. So then those ladies who by then knew me, because I'd been sitting there having breakfast with them, even if we hadn't really spoken, they all started saying, well, why don't you come around to my place, and I'll tell you. And then the end of that story is maybe a week or two weeks later, I was walking down that same street. And this geisha walked past me, and she said, hi. And I thought, hi,

do I know you? And then I realized it was one of the women from the coffee shop, but she was all dressed up with her wig on and her makeup on. And so I realized that with geisha, who are grown-ups, they can put on the costume, they can take off the costume. For anyone listening who is very new to this, actually not even just for people who are new to it. I think for most people in the West, or people that aren't familiar with Japanese culture, what is a geisha? Just as a real starter question for this conversation, because I think that what people assume it is, think it is is not the truth. So for your money, what is a geisha? Okay. It's very difficult for me to keep

my answer short. That's the problem, but I will do my best. You do not have to keep them short. We don't have forever, but... That's true. The word geisha is gay sha. Gay is arts. Gaye Shah, okay. It's not art, but arts. And shah is person. And the gay shah are artiste. They are dancers of a calibre like the Bolshoi ballet. I mean, they are professional dancers. They are professional singers. They're not all of these, but they can be one or other of these. They are professional singers of the calibre of, you know, opera singers.

Or they can be musicians of the calibre of somebody, a professional musician in the West. So they are a person who has an art, but they themselves are also works of art. They look beautiful. They have a certain way that they do. They make up very, very specific. and they have a certain way that they do their hair.

They are basically experts in the traditional arts of Japan. And as Japan, you know, becomes more and more modern, it never actually does become like the West, but Westerners may think it does, but they conserve those traditional arts. So that's sort of what they are. As to what they do, oh, it's a really long story, but they begin as trainees.

And those trainees are in Kyoto. they're called Michael, which means a dancing girl. And in the rest of the country, there are other geisha communities and other cities, but the famous one is Kyoto. Every city has a whole method of training geisha. But in Kyoto, let's stick with Kyoto for the moment, the Maiko are very spectacular to look at. Their hair is very long and it's teased into this kind of oiled, beautiful,

what they call a split peach hairstyle. And their makeup, it's like a white, mask. It actually doesn't come right to the hairline. It's a mask. It's a perfect oval around the face. So it's like you put on a mask. It's as if, I don't know, if you've ever put on one of those Venetian masks and you look at yourself in the mirror, you actually feel you're not you anymore, you're somebody else. In fact, probably you and I, if you, when you put your makeup on, which I haven't done today, but when you put your makeup on, particularly if you're going somewhere fancy, your makeup is your armour, isn't it? You kind of put it on, put on your fancy clothes,

and you're actually somebody else and you behave differently. But for them, even more so, they have this white mask. Then the eyes are, there's a lot of sort of pink on the eye. And then there's the sort of the eyebrows, these, the eyeliner. And then the lips are a kind of rose bud in the center of the lips only. It's not right to the edges. And the first year of their training, it's only the bottom lip which is painted, not the top lip. And after that, the top lip is painted as well.

And then they have these stupendously expensive and beautiful garments, layer upon layer of kimono, all of which are terribly expensive. This all costs a lot of money. So you have many layers of kimono. And in the case of Michael, they have long sleeves, which indicates that they are young girls. Once you become older, you have shorter sleep. When I say sleeves, I mean a sort of long piece of fabric hanging almost down to the ground from the arm. And then they have the obi, which is the kind of cumabund.

then they have ribbons, I guess, chords to tie the Obian place. Then they have high wooden clogs. I've seen those. Yeah. So when you meet one, these are actually 16-year-old girls, but you don't feel as if you're meeting a 16-year-old girl.

You're meeting this kind of transformed person, you know. They're walking works of art. They're extraordinary to look at, and they are trained in various art forms, singing, dancing, conversation, so many different things. But who would improve? employ them. I'm trying to think of like what event would you need a geisha for? So if you're a fabulous

artist, do they perform events? How does that work? Well, it depends whether we're talking about the present or about the past. Okay, let's talk about the past. Okay, in the past, in their heyday, there were maybe 80,000. Wow. These days there are probably, according to my research, about, say, 5,000 still. And we could actually talk about the present as well. Basically, if you are a pretty well-off man because this costs a lot of money. What you want to do is you are a businessman, you are a politician, in the past two, you know, you're a merchant, you're a politician, and to show your status, you would want to entertain your guests at a Geisha party. And the Geisha party takes place in a Geisha house. It's a different place from where the Geisha live.

The Geisha live in one place and then they go to Geisha parties. And the way you all organize your geisha party. It's a bit like the Groucho club or the Carlton Club. Basically, you don't just walk in. You have to know the right people. You have to be invited. So you, the man who's going to organise the party, you have to already know the owner of the geisha house. And you've probably known her for quite a long time. And she could even be your mistress, perhaps or maybe not. But anyway, you know her. She knows you. It's like being a regular at a pub. You go in and she knows you immediately. And you then say, I'd like to host a gaysha party, then she will say, okay, how many geisha, and you leave it up to her, because you trust

her and you also honour her by leaving it up to her. And she will then select suitable geisha. Usually it's one geisha per guest, so you have maybe 12 guests. You could be the prime minister, for example. The prime minister, Kishida probably does this. And I have been to geisha parties where there was another party in another room, which was where the prime minister was entertaining. Wow. But I wasn't told this till the end. Obviously, I don't get to stick my nose in. So you, say, for example, you have 12 guests, and then there'll be 12 Geisha.

And the Geisha, from the moment when the geisha's foot steps over the threshold of the place where she lives, the clock goes on. And there is an hourly rate for the Geisha. And she then progresses to the Geisha house. And usually one geisha sits with each guest, and she will chat, she will be charming. and funny. And the geisha, one job of the geisha is, you know, these are businessmen, politicians, and they're kind of not that great a conversation. The geisha can keep the conversation really light, really funny. But for example, the mother of the geisha house, who could be your mistress, for example, can also be with you on your own. And they're actually pretty blooming smart.

So, okay, you, the major businessman, could say to her privately, oh, I've got this big problem, I just can't decide. She is able to say, things like they're very good at this. She won't say, well, what I think is. She'll say, well, you know, there's this and there's this. And eventually, you are the businessman, you go, I've got it, I'll do this. And then

she will say, you're so clever. You're so clever. I have to say Western men also respond to this sort of treatment. Don't they? It works very well. It works very well. Anyway, so that's your geisha party. The geisha will also perform so they will get up and they will play and they will play instruments, they will sing, they will dance, very beautiful dancing, different from Western dancing, but they're still their professionals.

Then there's food. The geisha drink, but they don't eat. So you will be eating. And then eventually they will see you off and they'll wave. They'll stand at the door of the place where you've had this, this is lovely dinner, and then you will go. So that's that. There are also places in Kyoto today where the geisha will perform for the the general public. They didn't used to ever perform for the general public, but nowadays they do. So you can go to a hall in a Geisha district and you can see performances of dancing and performances of plays. They do the same plays as the Kabuki plays. But in their case, they are all women. Whereas in the case of Kabuki, it's all men. Back with Leslie and the Geisha after the short break. The origins of the geisha, at least from what my understanding is, is it does have its origins in the theatre. Or maybe I'm wrong with that. Where did the tradition of Geisha even come from?

Okay, there's always, there have always been women of pleasure. And there were lots of women of pleasure. They were called play women. And around 1600, the shogunate was just kind of solidifying. And the shogunate, the lord, decided to assemble these women in particular areas of pleasure quarters. And the purpose was partly because bad elements gathered around these women. And it was a good idea to have them under control. There were gates. And also, of course, the shogunate could charge taxes. Very handy. The other thing that happened was that there was a shrine maiden called Isumona Okuni, who in 1603, famous date, she was a shrine maiden and she was also a cortisanne, which was perfectly normal. So she did a dance in the dry riverbed of the River Camo in Kyoto. And it was

sort of on the erotic side. And people gathered to watch this eros. dance and she got a lot of customers. So all the other courtesans, what can you call them? Ladies of Pleasure, they all thought, well, this is a fabulous idea. So they all started dancing as well, doing dancers on the erotic side. And they also got lots of customers. One of her major things was cross-dressing. She dressed as a man as a samurai with a sword. And that was a real hit. That was a big hit. And then after not that long, the shogunate decided that this was disorderly. We don't like disorder. That was a big thing, wasn't it, in Japanese culture and perhaps still is today, the sense of order and everything being in its place. Yes, you could say that. Yes, you could.

So it was disorderly. So they said, okay, no more women dancing on stage. So then the people who organised it said, okay, we'll have beautiful young men. So they had beautiful young men dancing, erotic dancers. The problem was, the samurai really liked the beautiful young men. And that particular shogun also liked beautiful young men, so that was fine. But after he died, the next shogun decided disorderly. So they stopped that. And they then had adult men. Anyway, the word for this erotic dancing was kabuki, basically,

which means something wild and outrageous. And is that where the kabuki tradition? That's where the word kabuki came from. Wow. So then Kabuki was the adult men performing for the general public in plays. That's where Kabuki came from. And the geisha is the other side of the coin. It's the women performing for private audiences at private parties for doing pretty similar arts. That's the beginnings of what were the geisha. But actually what we have then is courtesans. And the geisha

themselves didn't emerge for another hundred years or so. Why is that so often conflated? Maybe the cortisans and the geisha, what's the interrelation between those two roles, as you understand it? So first of all, there were no geisha. First of all, in these early years we're talking about, there were a whole bunch of ladies of pleasure. And the top rank, the very top rank, were called Taiyu, or they were called Oirang, and those were ranks of courtesans, I suppose. But I mean, the thing is, there's a different attitude towards sex in Japan. There's a different attitude towards these ladies of pleasure. I mean, there was nothing wrong with being a lady of pleasure. You could get to be a lady of pleasure because you'd been sold. But you're a

But in that case, you were probably going to be sending your money back to your family, and you were considered to be very honourable and very impressive that you had, as it were, sacrificed yourself for your family. And if you were very successful and very beautiful, you could rise through the ranks and you could be a top ranking courtesan. It's a way that a working class person could actually get to be really successful. Or maybe not. Maybe you don't rise in the ranks.

But even if you didn't, you'd be in this other universe. So that's the courtisans. And the courtesans, to begin with, they sang and they danced, and they were witty and they were charming. And the other thing was the top courtesans, because of value added, they did not have to sleep with the clients, because that would obviously lower their value, wouldn't it? So they didn't have to. So what would happen would be that a man would go and he would spend a lot of money wooing a top courtesan, wooing and wooing, which would mean he'd have to do things like pay gestures, pay for food, pay for this,

this, pay for that, and at the end of the evening, she might say, well, been very nice to meet you, goodbye. And then he might come back the next day, and one of the things that was considered very cool in this society was actually bankrupting yourself, literally, bankrupting yourself for some woman, and you might not even get to get to her in the end. But veering off on that, what all these ladies sold and what Geisha also sell is not sex, it's romance. You have had an arranged marriage to somebody, you know, your parents chose because it's a very good match, and you would not sully your wife by thinking erotic thoughts about her. You would spend enough time with her between the sheets to carry on the family line, but other than that, she's a decent noble lady,

and you're not going to expect her to be witty or to entertain your guests, or even to be flotatious, none of those things. That's your wife. Your wife is to be respected. She's an honoured lady. So when you want romance, when you want flotation, when you want fun, you head to the pleasure quarters. That was what it was all about. It was about selling a dream, if you like, bringing a dream to life. So the guy that doesn't actually get to touch the quarter of the corner of the end has still had a bit of the dream anyway. I read that the pleasure quarters were described as floating worlds and that the reason for that was because there were worlds within worlds. It was like once you'd gone into these areas is you'd sort of level.

everything behind, like wife and kind of all this stuff. They sound very much like these little enclosed spaces of pleasure and hedonism, and then they go back to their normal life. Is that kind of how they worked? Yeah, that's not what floating world means. Floating world is a Buddhist term. Ah, right, okay. But no, it's right. You're right. You're quite right. But floating world, it's this world that we're in. It is impermanent. We're all going to die, possibly quite soon. I hope not. But basically, we all think this is terribly permanent, but it isn't. There's the Buddha's concept that nothing lasts. Everything passes. All will pass. That's the floating world. That's the meaning of the term. But that was taken by the people of the pleasure quarters. And the meaning

became, so who cares? You know, let's just have fun right now in the present time. Let's just enjoy the present because, you know, we could be dead tomorrow. What the hell? Let's have a really good time. but also for men there were these two universes. There's one, in fact, you could physically see it in Kyoto. You have the river, Kamel, and on one side of it, you have the world of work and the world of business, and that's where your home is, and your children, domesticity. That's where you have to slog your guts out and where probably your superior is mean to you and you feel humiliated and all sorts of bad things.

But then you cross the bridge, and the other side is carnival. And that's where the geisha quarters are. That's where the Kabuki Theatre is. That's where there is also actually fun. There's some more wrestling. There's jugglers. There's kind of animals. There's sights to be seen.

And that's where the Geisha quarters were. So you go there and you're in another world. So for the man, there's two worlds and there's two sorts of women. There's the wife connected with the domesticity. And what the Geisha would say was, Geisha never cook. I mean, I once went to visit this lady who was the owner of a geisha house and we sat down and she said, would you like a coffee?

And I went, oh, yeah, thank you. And I was, you know, a bit parted, and I was waiting. She didn't put the kettle on. I didn't like to say anything. I thought she said something about coffee. Well, I won't say anything. And then after quite a while, there was a knock on the door. And it was, you know, like the guy from Starbucks with some coffee.

The way they phrased it was, we don't want the stench of domesticity. So, Gaysha, are very proud. No matter how poor you are. You don't do any cleaning. You never do your own. You have maids. You don't do any cooking. You don't do any of that stuff.

You are another universe. You're the universe of all this stuff being done for you. So when the man enters that universe, not only can he forget about the world of work and his wife and so on, he can do anything he likes that night. And the next day it's forgotten. Anything at all, it's forgotten. It's like Never, Neverland.

I hope that the wives got to go to something similar, but I don't think that they did. Did they? They just had to stay at home. They didn't get to go to a floating world. They could go and walk around and have a look? Oh, could they? Oh, right.

Okay. I mean, to go inside a boudoir of a cordonaut. that was another thing, that cost money, but you could walk around. Yeah, and women did. For example, you know, the artist Hokkai, Hockersai's daughter was called Katsushka Oi, and she was an artist, and she did paintings of the Yoshiwara. Wives thought it was very interesting.

We're mixing up all our periods here, but never mind. Yes, I am. Sorry, I'm just so fascinated. You could also get woodblock prints of the Kordazans and woodblock prints of Geisha, and they were trendsetters. So the wives would pay real attention to what they were. they're wearing and Princess Kate wears something rather and everybody buys it. It was like that. People would just buy it. So they were celebs. They were like Taylor Swift, if you like. They were kind of huge celebrities. The really famous ones, people knew their names, people gossiped about them,

who they might or might not be having affairs with and so on. So no, women could also participate in some of that. Yeah. Did the Gashers have patrons that would fund their lifestyle that maybe they had to be sexually available to? Or is that just from memoirs of a geisha? Let's take a step back for a second. So we've got our courtesans and we get to about 1700 and courtesans have been doing all the dancing, all the entertaining, all the everything else. And around then, the jobs sort of separated into the very charming, beautifully dressed, heavily made up women who would do things like parade along the road on foot-high clogs and would converse and perhaps if you were really lucky and unbelievably, you know, willing to spend a huge amount of money, they might actually go to bed

with you. But then there was another job which was the geisha. It was the arts person. First, that was actually men and they were jesters and the word geisha initially referred to men. And then around the 1760, the first female geisha announced, I am a geisha. I make my living by my arts, not by selling sex. And there was a huge difference between the courtesans and the geisha. Appearance is very, very important. So the cordisans would have the really fancy hairstyle with loads of pins stuck in their hair and jewels

and really lavish robes. And their obi, their cummerbund, would have a huge, huge knot at the front. And the significance of that was, if you are really lucky, really, really lucky and really persistent, you might get to undo that knot. Oh, I like that. But the geisha had a modest hairstyle and modest kimonos.

You can easily spot who's a geisha in woodblock prints by that. And their come upon their obi was tied at the back. And also, geisha are always portrayed with a shamisen, which is the sort of trademark instrument of the geisha. So the geisha, they would play the beautiful music on their shamazen. So basically the geisha were the entertainers. And so the job split between the kortisans. who, I don't like to say, sold sex, but ultimately you could say it was possible.

It was in the job description. Yes, exactly. But Geshe was not the job description. That doesn't mean that they were virgins. I mean, just as it's not part of my or your job description, but that doesn't mean that we are necessarily virgins. True story. But it's the same thing.

The word geisha is nothing to do with sex. But the courtesan, some of the job description, was to do with the possibility. You mentioned earlier that there was a peak of geisha culture and that it's been, I suppose, in a decline, if it's gone from 80,000 to 5,000. When was that peak? And what happened to start the decline? Gradually, the geisha became more and more chic. So initially, the courtesan started to seem kind of a bit overpainted, a bit overblown,

too much makeup, too much fancy kit. And there were geisha in the pleasure quarters, but there were also geisha in the town. And there's a part of Tokyo, which is the east end. It's called Fukugawa. The geisha there, they were the chicest of the whole lot. You know, they downplayed stuff. They were very cool. And if you were a really cool young guy, you did not want to be seen with a courtesan.

You wanted to be seen with a geisha. Coming back to the question of, did they have patrons? You wanted to be the patron of a geisha. And also those geisha, if they felt like it, they could have sex with the patrons or with whoever they felt like. It was up to them. Nobody made you, but they could do it if they wanted to do it. So gradually the geisha became more and more popular, and they were trendsetters. And when Japan became westernised, it happened rather fast.

It happened in the middle of the 19th century. The very first people to try high-heeled shoes were geisha, and the very first people to try things like bustles and bonnets were geisha. They were really kind of flashy ahead of the crowd. And the absolute pinnacle I gather is about the 1920s. That's when there were about 80,000. And World War II put a damper on the whole thing, big damper. They had a last party, and then they all took off their kimonos, and they went and worked in factories

and helped out with the war effort. They sowed balloons. The idea was to float balloons across the Atlantic to America with explosives attached, but didn't work, obviously. And then after the war, they had to begin again, but also after the war, the Americans were in charge, and the Americans were on the puritanical side. And also, this is when the image of Geisha was being prostitentiated. came up because any young girl, the girls were desperate. Japanese women were desperate. They were starving. And they knew that the one word that the Westerners knew was geishagar. So they'd approach

the GIs. They'd go, Gaysha gao, Genghsha. And so therefore that sort of association of, you know, geisha with sex came from there. And then other things, as the years go on, these days, women can do lots of other things. You know, once upon a time, there weren't that many choices. But now you can be an eye surgeon. You can be a company director. You can be all sorts of things. There's not just either be a wife or be a Geisha or be a maid or something. It's not like, there's many more choices. Also, younger men, I think Geisha have a bit of an image of being a bit of an sort of old farts thing rather than a young person thing. And younger blokes might rather go skiing in Switzerland, for example, or they might rather go to Paris or they might rather go to, you know,

Hong Kong. So that's one reason why numbers don't seem to rise that much. but they don't fall that much either. I looked up on Google. I looked up how many geisha, and I think Google is wrong because I did my own research some years ago and Google said 1,000. And when I did research not that many years ago,

there was a whole list of exactly how many gaysia there are with their names in each district, in each city, and it was about 5,000. And then when I was there as well, I met, I'm quite friendly with this bloke who was one of the male geisha, who was a really funny guy. When I first knew him,

when I was first doing my research, He did some very somewhat shocking burlesque shows. And then when I met him most recently, he's really doing incredibly well, I must say. He was a working class bloke and he was off to go golfing. He'd risen that high in the ranks. And he said, people are interested these days in traditional arts. So there are women who want to become gayish because they want to learn, just like, you know, you want to do ballet. Just because it's modern times doesn't mean you don't still want to do ballet.

And there are the Japanese that still want to do Japanese dancing, Japanese singing and the one, you don't have to become a geisha to do that, but it is one way that you can do it. I had no idea that men were still practicing as geishas today. I didn't know that. The word is taikomochi, which means bearer of a drum. He said the numbers have increased. They've increased from, I think, five to six, something like that. So it's not looking at a mammoth. But we are, we're looking at 20% increase. Yeah, absolutely. Yes, yes. That was 10 years ago, So you lived amongst the Geisha community for quite a long time. What did you find most surprising about that culture?

I suppose it's a world that is very, there's a lot of Western prejudices that are projected onto them. There's a lot of things that people think about them that aren't true. What surprised you about that culture? Okay, when I go back and see Geisha to this day, and I have Geisha friends, and I am out walking down the road with them, and I feel really proud. I feel really proud to be seen with these very, very strong, very independent women. I mean, these are women who make their living by their own efforts. They do not depend on men for living.

They can have a patron, a dunner, if they're lucky. You asked about the patron if they're lucky. They'd like that. But quite a lot don't. And some are very old and they're still, they're teaching the shamazen, the musical instrument. What they think is important is not the same as what, certainly not what Westerners think is important. what they think is important is their art. Like, they're still studying.

It's like if you're doing ballet and a famous ballet teacher comes to town, you're going to rush to have classes with him. And when I was there, I met women in Tokyo, and there was a famous teacher coming through, and they were rushing to have classes with him. So that's what they're interested in. I think the attitude that they have is entirely different from what Westerners think of them as being.

My final question, although I could honestly, I could talk to you about it's forever. You've been fascinating. I have to ask you what the future of Geisha, is there going to be a long-term future? How is this group of people going to adapt to changing times? What do you see? Or what do Geishas tell you they see is in the future? I don't see why it shouldn't continue, partly because if you are successful

and you can make a very good living. And there's no reason why, if you can be a successful dancer, why you can't be a successful Geisha. There is one woman who I knew when I was first doing my research called Koito. and she had a website and she has become extremely successful and she has reared her own stable of trainee geisha

so she's moved from being, she was just a geisha and now she has, but all these women, they all have their own kind of women, their own young girls who they train up to be geisha who then move out and get their own houses.

You need to have your patrons. You need to be good, just like with anything else. You need to be good. And if they are good, then they will get customers. I suppose the problem, problem is that, as I said, men can do other things with their money rather than go to

Geisha. But then again, it still carries an awful lot of prestige. And geisha are also compromising in quite a few ways. One is there's something called Fulisode. Fulisode means the long swinging sleeves of the trainee geisha. And these Fulisode are women who have not done the full five-year training. And so they just learn a few dancers, particularly they enter. entertain foreigners. I've seen these at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Tokyo, and all the Westerners were all going, oh, how beautiful. And I sat there thinking, yeah, but I've seen the real thing, and I know that these girls are not very good. Like with anything, if you know more about it, you can tell who's good and who isn't. But they do make a living doing that. So that

also shows that there is demand. Another thing they do is quite a lot of, I think, Chinese tourists, and also some Japanese like to get dressed up as geisha themselves and have their picture taken. So you can do that. You can do that on the very street where I used to stay in Kyoto. And again, you can spot those. If you know, you know immediately these are people who have been dressed up as geisha, these are not really geisha. I think because it's a successful thing, and it also goes with things like Japanese food, I mean, they can expand out, they can work at restaurants, they can perform at restaurants, rather. But there are actually geisha in most of the cities, most of the larger towns and a lot of also resort towns. There are different grades of geisha. There are kind of somewhat lower

level geisha who might be more possibly available for sex in the resorts. There are these wonderful wonderful resorts. I don't know if you've been to Japan, but where you can go and you bathe up to your necky in incredibly hot water, and it's absolutely wonderful. That's the Japanese idea of having a really wonderful holiday, just go to a hot spring resort. And there may well be geisha around at these resorts. I also met some of those when I was doing my research. I went to several, a lot of different places and met a lot of different geisha. Up in Kanazawa, which is a city on the Japan-Seek the local council decided that Geisha should be supported because they weren't making enough money and that it would be helpful because it's good for the city's image, they thought.

So they decided to put money into the Geisha community and to encourage young girls to apply to be Geisha. So there's different things happening in different places, but I don't see why it should die out. Leslie, you have been incredible to talk to this day. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Well, I have a website, which is Leslie Downer.com. I've written quite a few books. My book about Geisha at the moment, you can probably get it secondhand on Amazon, and you can definitely get it as an e-book. It's called Geisha, the Secret History of a Vanishing World. And I've recently been working on a history of Japan for the shortest history series. It's the shortest history of Japan. It will be

out in September. Thank you so much for talking to me today. I've enjoyed every second of this. Thank you. and thank you so much to Leslie for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. I know that I say that every single time. Every podcaster says that every single time, but it really does help us. And if you want us to explore a subject or just say hi, then you can email us at betwixt

at history hit.com. We've got episodes on everything from the history of the menopause to medieval torture methods, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delagie and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets of The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.