How to be a geisha: a 5-step guide
They’re icons of poise, calm and femininity – so how can you live like a Japanese geisha? Start with these 5 tips…
1. Love the art
Geisha are able to debut once they can perform flawlessly before an audience, but that is only the start. The rest of their lives is spent perfecting their skills. If you don’t love practising hard every day, it won’t work.
2. Be receptive to instruction
The geisha world is hierarchical, with centuries of tradition represented in the older geisha. As a new geisha there are only two possible answers: “Yes” and “I’m sorry”. Don’t even think of saying “but” – that will bring your geisha career to an abrupt end.
3. Love people
4. Cultivate yourself
It takes a long time to learn to wear kimono beautifully, and every geisha has subtly different make-up to enhance her face. It takes years to become truly geisha-like: being able to move beautifully and gracefully, and to look elegant no matter what the situation.
5. Be conservative with traditions and innovative with business
No tradition can continue if it is utterly fossilised. To keep the geisha tradition alive we need to protect the most beautiful of the traditions while keeping it relevant to the modern age.
Sayuki Asakusa debuted in 2007 as the first ever white geisha; she currently works in Tokyo. Her book Inside the Flower and Willow World will be published by Macmillan Australia this year.
Main image: Three young beautiful Japanese women called Maiko wear traditional dress (Shutterstock)
