MY L IFE as a G EISHA WHAT WOMAN CAN’T USE SOME LESSONS IN FEMININE ALLURE? SHOBA NARAYAN TR AV ELS TO KYOTO TO PICK UP SOME TIPS FROM THE MASTERS—THE CIT Y ’S RENOW NED GEISHAS. TRUST US —THER E’S MUCH MORE TO JA PA N’S Liberated lady? MOST ENDURING Geisha were created to pamper men— ICONS THAN but they were also the freest women in W HITE old Japan, and masters of the arts FACE-PA INT of calligraphy, flower arranging, music, A ND A dance, and drama. BEE-STUNG POUT Here, a present-day geisha in Gion, one of Kyoto’s historic quarters. HAVE COME to Japan to learn about al- lure. I’ve been around and watch her slide married for sev- across the broad avenue. enteen years, With her floral-pink kimo- and while my no and erect carriage, she marriage isn’t and one underneath), how looks regal. Alluring. Imperial Palace compound, falling apart, it to slurp udon noodles, how which is surrounded by a is fraying at the edges: a vic- to sip green tea, how to place HE DICTION- grid of neighborhoods, a tim of minutiae like leaky my chopsticks when I am ary defines allure style of urban planning in- taps, lost airline tickets, and done eating, and also how to as “the power to spired by the Tang Dynas- IPTA meetings. Nowadays treat a man. entice or attract ty’s capital city, Chang’an when I ask my husband a Suzuno-san says that Tthrough personal charm,” (now Xi’an). Bordered by fairly innocuous question peppering a man with ques- which has more to do with mountains on three sides, such as, “Does this green tions is a big no-no, some- gait and bearing than with this neat, green, low-rising dress suit me?” he gets this thing she tells all her maiko. beauty. The geisha are mas- city of 1.46 million people is deer-in-the-headlights ex- Questions put a man on the ters of allure. This, I believe, almost at the geographical pression. I want Ram to defensive. “I may know a lot is why we are fascinated by center of Honshu, Japan’s look at me without fear and about politics, but I won’t re- them. It isn’t that they are largest island. With its with adoration. So I have veal it,” she says. “Instead, I beautiful, although many of graceful Zen temples, come to Japan to learn will draw him out.” them are. Beauty is a wild crooked cobblestone streets, about feminine allure from This whole notion of card anyway, beyond our Shinto shrines, moss-cov- its acknowledged masters: playing dumb bothers me, control. Sexy, after a certain ered gardens, and the mean- the geisha. and I tell her so. Hasn’t she age, borders on tawdry. dering Kamo River, it is the Suzuno-san thinks I heard of feminism? Her in- Mystique is too much work. country’s spiritual and cul- shouldn’t even be asking terpretation is different. She But allure, as the geisha so tural heart. Kyoto is the questions. Suzuno-san is a plays dumb not because she magnificently prove, can be quintessential Japan, in Tokyo geisha. Like most is a woman and he is a man. taught and learned. Just like which every icon and art Japanese, she is slim and She does it because she is a etiquette. form that we associate with beautiful with high cheek- professional and he is her The Japanese call this iki, the country blooms into bones, Dior-red lips, and a client. It has more to do with an aesthetic ideal that im- perfection. chignon worn at the nape, hierarchy than gender. Japa- plies subdued elegance. Iki In A.D. 794, the dour Em- which the Japanese consider nese men play dumb with emerged in the eighteenth peror Kammu, freaked out the sexiest part of a woman. their clients too. century as a kind of reverse by a series of accidents and This is why geisha and maiko It is a smart answer, but it snobbery that the working natural disasters, moved the (apprentice geisha) wear doesn’t help me with my class developed toward the imperial capital from Nara their kimono low on the marriage. I can’t stop asking affected opulence of their to nearby Kyoto. He named neck, the nape revealed. my husband questions even rulers. Iki pits subtlety his new capital Heian-kyo, Suzuno-san is in her for- though I know it puts him against gaudiness, edginess Place of Peace and Tran- ties, maybe fifties. I cannot on the defensive. I can, how- against beauty, relaxed sim- quillity. Here, during the ask. Geisha don’t reveal ever, learn what Suzuno-san plicity against gorgeous for- country’s thousand years of their age anyway. She teach- calls respect for both hu- mality. Loosely translated, relative seclusion from es etiquette and bemoans mans and objects. Respect iki means being chic or cool, neighboring China and the rising informality of her the tatami by leaving your but its nuances are particu- Korea, courtiers composed culture. “These manners are shoes outside. When you lar to Japan—curves, for in- poetry, painted landscapes, part of who we are,” she cross a room, don’t just stance, are not iki, but drank sake, and held moon- says. “It is what defines us as blunder across. Go behind straightness is. Iki combines viewing parties in autumn. Japanese.” people so that their conver- sassiness with innocence, The elegant Lady Murasaki We meet at Fucha-ryori sations are not disturbed. sexiness with restraint. Gei- wrote The Tale of Genji, Bon, a lovely restaurant with Cover your mouth when you sha, with their giggly co- widely considered the tatami-lined cubicles inside giggle. When you enter a quettishness, are emblemat- world’s first novel (its influ- which patrons can have tatami room, don’t just walk ic of iki, or aspire to be. ence still permeates Japan). lunch in rice paper–screened in. Sit on your haunches and Kyoto represents the apo- The city’s fortunes wa- privacy. Over the next hour, I slide across the threshold, gee of the iki aesthetic, and vered according to the learn how to pick up a soup then bow deeply to your that is where my journey be- whims of warring rulers, bowl (one hand on the side host while still kneeling. gins. At its center is the vast and Kyoto was taken over by We finish lunch.M y in- successive feuding clans, terpreter and I drop Suzu- shogunates, and armed sam- no-san at her street corner urai until the capital moved before speeding off. I turn to Tokyo in 1868. This checkered history has con- tributed mightily to Kyoto’s COND´E NAST TRAVELER layered character. Within Ja- dainty woman who spent part pan, the city is viewed with a of her childhood in America. combination of envy and dis- Trained in the classical Japa- dain. Ask a Tokyo teenager THERE IS A nese arts, she tells me that there what he thinks of Kyoto-ans PROPER WAY TO is a proper way to do every- black and gold. It is thirteen and he will use words like snob- thing, including opening a feet long. Old Japan was de- bish and conservative. Kyoto DO EV ERY THING, fusuma, or sliding door. It goes signed for a woman wearing a people never talk straight, he INCLUDING like this: Kneel directly in front kimono—the squatting toilets, will say. They don’t reveal their of the fusuma; place your fin- temple steps, and furniture-less feelings, and consider you a na- OPENING A gertips in the handle; slide the houses. Now, they are all but tive only if you have lived there SLIDING DOOR . fusuma open two inches; place invisible in the streets. for generations. Theirs is Japa- the same hand on the frame, Two attendants dress me, nese reserve multiplied by ten. I A M SPEECHLESS about nine inches above the and then we adjourn to the AT THE LEV EL floor; push thefusuma open makeup studio below, where T TWILIGHT, THE halfway; change your hand the kao-shi, or face master, city comes alive. OF PRECISION and push the fusuma open the smears a white herbal paste all Swarms of jeans- rest of the way; stand up and over my face and neck. My lips clad office workers means arts person, and mai-ko back away. I am speechless at are drawn thinner than they are makeA way for kimono-clad ma- means dancing girl. For two the level of precision. This, I and are painted bright red, like trons hurrying off to buy pick- days, I will receive some of the think, is the secret of Japan: to a rosebud. Then comes a wig les and eel at the bustling Nishi- training that the geisha under- see greatness in small things with an elaborate hairstyle— ki Market. Every now and go for years. and smallness in great things. not the famous split-peach then, a geisha appears, stand- Geisha have always played a Yume Miru Yume, where one, suggestive of the vagina, ing incongruously under a key role in preserving the arts. Koko-san takes me, is a tiny but another updo. The hair- neon sign advertising lingerie. This was how they differentiat- makeup studio near a shrine. stylist adorns my wig with lac- For a modern feminist like ed themselves from the courte- Three women descend on me quer combs, tortoiseshell bow- me, it is difficult not to view the sans of the Pontocho pleasure like fluttering sparrows and clips, and hanging silk flowers.