Women of the Pleasure Quarters Read Free Page A

way. Far from seeking publicity, the geisha shun it. Their whole profession depends on their ability to keep secrets. Many have been the friends of the nation’s most powerful men, often for a lifetime. Such men choose to entertain at geisha houses because they can trust these women to keep their lips sealed, no matter what they see or hear. But I also knew that in Japan as elsewhere the most important thing is who you know. With the help of introductions from friends I had made over years of living and working in Japan, I was confident that little by little I could breach this closed world.
    At the end of an alley I pushed open a door and found myself in a small brightly lit room. There was a bar along one side and some leather sofas arranged to make a couple of alcoves. A small, regal woman in a kimono greeted me, offered me a whiskey, then turned back to banter with a group of noisy elderly men. Rather awkwardly I perched on a stool at the bar and began to chat to the barman. Finally the woman came to perch alongside me.
    “So you are here through the introduction of Ken-chan,” she said, using the affectionate, diminutive form. “I’ve known him for years, since he was a little boy. I used to bounce him on my knee.”
    It was hard to imagine the leathery Tokyo businessman I knew being bounced on anyone’s knee. Added to which, if that was the case, I realized with surprise, she had to be in her seventies. She was as tiny and frail as a butterfly, with the kind of looks that become, if anything, more beautiful with time—a fine-boned, delicate face, perfect skin without a trace of lines. Dressed in a modest indigo-blue kimono with a subtle pattern woven through it, her hair drawn back into a pristine bun, she sat very upright, poised and gracious.
    “So . . . what would you like of me?” She spoke in Kyoto dialect, ineffably polished and stylized, where everything is hinted at and nothing is said directly. Fresh from Tokyo, I found it difficult to pick up every nuance.
    Clumsily I launched into an explanation. As she knew, I was a writer. I was hoping to write about the geisha world. Hopefully I could meet geisha, some young, some at the height of their career, perhaps even spend time in a geisha house living among geisha like one of them, seeing life from the inside. I gathered she might be able to help me. I’d be very grateful if she could do so.
    I stumbled to a close. She sat in silence, looking straight ahead.
    “Mmm,” she said slowly after a long pause, pursing her lips. “But how can you ever understand our
shikitari
?”
    “Shikitari?”
I prided myself on my spoken Japanese but this was new to me.
    “You see?” she smiled, tight-lipped. “You do not even know the word.”
    Many of the customs and practices in the geisha world, I was to learn, have their own terminology, a sort of jargon known only to insiders, incomprehensible to most Japanese. Other words which they regularly use—such as
shikitari
—are rare and sound rather archaic to the Japanese ear. It was only after considerable research that I discovered that
shikitari
means “customs, practices, the way of doing things.” It was indeed the
shikitari
which I wanted to learn about, among much else.
    “How long are you planning to stay in Kyoto?” she went on.
    “Several months,” I replied uncomfortably, adding hastily, “but I’ve lived in Japan for many years. I first came more than twenty years ago . . .”
    “I have been to London many times,” she snapped. “I have met all the top people—the aristocracy, musicians, singers . . . But you would still say that I cannot understand England, would you not?”
    I had to confess, I murmured as politely as possible, that that was not exactly the way that English people thought. For a start, she said, ignoring my response, geisha were of different sorts and different status. Some, like her, had been born in Gion. She herself was third generation; her mother and