A GEISHA'S JOURNEY

A Geisha's Journey


Readers’ Digest, August 2010.

Young Komomo dreams of becoming a geisha. She sacrifices her youth to enter a refined but very demanding life. Welcome to her secret world
There was so much I had to learn as a maiko, and so many duties to perform. Every day I 1. ________(face) with things I didn’t understand; sometimes it seemed as if the streets of Miyagawa-cho 2. ______(pepper) with land mines just waiting to explode in my face. It was like being at school 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

A maiko’s schedule is fixed. In the evening, I 3. _______(attend) ozashiki – a ceremony or party – from 4. _______ six until late. Ozashiki usually take place at one of the tea houses, although they are sometimes held in restaurants and hotels. Geiko 5. _______(hire) to entertain and perform for the guests, and we’re also expected to pour drinks and enter 6. ______ conversation.

A large part of my day 7. ______(spend) in practice. As a maiko, I was expected to learn to sing and play the shamisen, play 8. ________(rhythm) instruments, perform the tea ceremony, and, of course, dance. Dance practice was the one I had to concentrate on most. A maiko 9. ______(be+to) learn two different dances for every month of the year to perform 10. ______ the customers at ozashiki.

Learning just one dance took a long time. Each practice session was between 45 minutes and an hour, and I 11. _____(be) to go through three or four sessions to figure 12. ______ the basic steps of a single dance. Important dances like “The Ballad of Gion” or “Four Seasons in Kyoto” took me more than ten sessions to master.

As the youngest student, it was also my responsibility to look after the dance master. That meant I 13. ______(be+to+pour) her a new cup of tea when her cup was empty, and make sure she wasn’t too hot or too cold. To show my respect, I also 14. _______(be+ to +wait )until all of the older students, whom we call sempai, 15. ________(greet) her before I 16. ______(be) say hello.

When I first started out, I 17. ______(terrify) of my sempai; they were always getting mad at me and it seemed as if I couldn’t do anything right around them. Because of nerves, I 18. _______(be+sometime+ greet) them before the master, or the customers. The sempai 19. __________(be+get+angry) at me for not greeting the master or the customers first, 20. _____(make) me even more fearful of them.

Looking back, I would say that about 90 percent of my maiko education involved just trying to get through one difficult day after another. Every morning I would wake up around ten. After dressing in my less formal kimono, I had practice in the performing arts, and at lunchtime, I paid visits to each of the almost 40 tea houses in Miyagawa-cho, where many of the ozashiki are held.

At one of my first ozashiki, my sempai asked me in front of the customers what dance I would like to perform. When I cheerfully answered, she suddenly got mad. I realise now that her anger was part of my hanamachi education – in order to appear humble and modest, I should have declined to answer.

Strange though it may seem, becoming a full geiko had never crossed my mind. Over those years, I 21. ______(give) a lot of thought to what I wanted to do when my period of service was over. I already 22. _______(be)a lot of plans: study abroad, learn English, and perhaps research Japanese culture and folklore.

Then, two months before I 23. ______( suppose) to leave the hanamachi, I realised how much I loved this world with all its culture and tradition. I thought about all the things I still 24. ______(be+ to + learn)and felt ashamed that I had actually thought I would achieve everything I wanted in just six years. I made up my mind to become a geiko. I informed Koito-san and we decided I 25. _______(be+ become) a full geiko on December 8, 2005.

Before that, however, was the period of sakko, which in our geiko house lasts for 15 days. Sakko is the last hairstyle in the maiko stage. I would wear a black formal kimono for five days, then a coloured one for five days, and then the black one again.

Now that I have become a geiko, one of the observations I made was that ozashiki are completely different for geiko and maiko.

Maiko are often just seen as stereotypes; nobody bothers to look beyond the make-up to the real person beneath. A geiko, on the other hand, is seen as an individual with a name and a unique personality. For a maiko, the most important thing is to match the image that people have of us, but as a geiko, it’s OK for us to let our own character show.

After all my worry about becoming a geiko, I finally felt liberated.

ANSWERS – Grammar- 1. was faced 2. were peppered 3. would attend 4. around


5. are hired 6. into 7. was spent 8. rhythmical 9. has to 10. for 11. had 12. out


13. had to pout 14. had to wait 15. had to greet 16. could 17. was terrified


18. would sometimes greet 19. would get angry 20. making 21. had given


22. had 23. was supposed 24. had to learn 25. would become