Everything about the geisha life is as calculated as a work of art from the specific colors of the kimono to the carefully lacquered and painstakingly designed hairstyle. Geishas are trained for years in houses that seem a mix of sororities, finishing schools, and brothels in a cult of beauty, art, and love. Post-World War II Japan has left little room for such anachronisms, but Downer s research shows that geisha survive in the society, if barely. In the 1920's there were 80,000 geisha in the country. Now there are 195.
Japan is no longer a closed land of samurai and princes.
It has been Westernized, accommodating itself to our ideas of sex and love and popular culture. The geisha once invented perhaps to embody much of the missing romance and love in Japanese culture may still be needed this time to remember a romanticized past. Port Folio Weekly. All rights reserved.