Details

Synopsis

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This book unravels the story of the geisha from ancient times to the present day. It explores the essence of the city culture whilst providing an introduction to its history and conditions. Packed with fascinating anecdotes, this book is an unprecedented thesis on Japanese culture which places Tokyo's little-known geisha and pleasure quarters at the very heart of the city culture.

Category Level

Non-fiction
History

Editorial Review

"No work has provided such vivid descriptions of the spirit of the geisha culture, or of the pleasure quarters which supported Japan's traditional performing arts." Yumie Hiraiwa

Table of contents

• Introduction Tokyo's Pleasure Quarters: the hidden areas of the city
  Chapter 1 Lineage of Memories: performing the behaviour of the gods
  Chapter 2 The Yoshiwara: the replay of secret marriages between humans and the gods
  Chapter 3 The Establishment of the Town Geisha
  Chapter 4 The Flower of the Imperial capital (from the Meiji to the Taishō period)
  Chapter 5 Kalavinka: outshining the Bodhisattva
  Chapter 6 Two Types of Geisha: the famous and those of easy virtue
  Chapter 7 Fujiyama-geisha
  Chapter 8 The Turning Point for Tokyo
  To close Saishi and miko at Banquets

About the Author

Hisafumi Iwashita was born in 1961.After graduating from university, he went to work for the Shimbashi Enbujo theatre company in Tokyo, where he worked on the production of the Azuma Odori performance in the Shimbashi pleasure quarters (the original theatre land) and came into close contact with the elite geisha born in the Meiji era. In doing so, he became familiar with the essential qualities of the geisha and the top-class pleasure quarters. And, whilst Director of Planning he compiled a history of the theatre company, for which he carried out research on the Shimbashi pleasure quarters from the end of the Edo period to the present day. His notes from conversations with these elderly geisha would later form the basis for his publications on the pleasure districts.
After fifteen years he decided to leave the theatre, and, after dedicating himself for a while to such things as learning the Edo period style of joruri singing, he published his first major work, "The Geisha: how did the Japanese forget that one of the roles played by the geisha was to portray the gods?" in 2006, followed by a second work, "Qualifications of the geisha: night tales from the Shimbashi and Yanagibashi", in 2007. Iwashita has a unique familiarity with the story of the geisha since the Edo period and the current status of the top-class pleasure quarters such as Shimbashi, Tokyo's so-called 'unchartered regions'. Through books and the media, he continues to provide illuminating introductions to highlights of Japanese culture, focusing on the banquet.