Fading Flowers : Tradition: Japanese merchants pitch in as sponsors of training school for aspiring geishas in a merger of business and culture.

From a narrow street below a traditional noodle shop in Asakusa, rock songs compete in busy arcades while neon lights beckon moneyed travelers. A block away, outdoor shops stocked with discount goods line a paper-lanterned road leading to an ancient temple.

It is an eclectic mix of old and new, tradition and innovation. And the countervailing winds at work in Asakusa are personified in Yoshie Enomoto, a 75-year-old geisha who has entertained men in this Tokyo ward since World War I.

Despite the encroachments of modern culture, the essence of Asakusa remains unchanged, Enomoto says. The red sunset still floods the streets frequented by businessmen and tourists, setting the temple aglow. The principal difference from a half century past is that the streets are not quite so full today. And business is slower in Asakusa, Enomoto says, because there are fewer geishas.

Enomoto is determined to change that. She has joined forces with Teruko Tominaga, owner of the Towada noodle shop here, in a million-yen scheme to keep the “flower and willow” world of geisha from fading out entirely. The women are putting together Japan’s first formal training school for aspiring geishas.

Enomoto has become something of an icon of a treasured cultural tradition--but a dying profession--in Japan. Geishas still can be seen in Tokyo’s expensive Ginza area, where they entertain wealthy businessmen and politicians at exclusive restaurants with song, music, dance and conversation ranging from ancient literature to modern gossip. But these highly skilled courtesans are slowly being replaced by bar hostesses who, like geishas, take the place of wives and girlfriends customarily excluded from after-hours business socializing in Japan.

The absence of geishas in their distinctive flowered kimonos and white painted faces may be more apparent in Asakusa than in other neighborhoods, but their numbers are dwindling throughout the country. The Japanese government estimates that only a few thousand women still engage in the profession, compared to 80,000 in the late 1920s.

Like Asakusa itself, the two women are a study in contrasts: Tominaga, a tough businesswoman wearing a bright Western dress, speaks loudly, in blunt, confident tones. Enomoto, dressed in a silk gray kimono with tiny flowers, gracefully fans herself between soft-spoken words and polite smiles.

Tominaga acknowledges that her primary goal in backing the geisha school is to bolster the faltering business in the area. Enomoto says she is motivated by her commitment to geisha tradition and her desire to preserve the standards of that world from the perversions of modern times.

Their interests, as are their manners, are divergent but not alien. Since the first geishas appeared nearly four centuries ago, business and culture have been strongly intertwined.

“Geisha is a business. But geishas are not something to buy or sell,” Enomoto says. She proudly recounts that as a young geisha, she would tear and burn money before businessmen she found unworthy of her attention. “It is as much of an art as a profession.”

The profession of geisha (translated literally, “art person”) began with the rise of Japanese urban merchant culture during the Tokugawa period in the early 1600s.

The tradition grew with the prosperous merchant culture in the amusement quarters of larger towns and cities--first in Kyoto and Osaka, later in Tokyo. In theaters, restaurants and inns, professionally trained women would flatter men’s egos and entertain with conversation, dance and song. These women ranged from simple prostitutes to famous courtesans who required careful courting before they were likely to enter into sexual relationships. In the 19th Century, they became known as geishas.

The geisha system has traditionally been a form of indentured labor. However, in the last few decades, a growing number of girls have been attracted by the glamour of geisha life and have volunteered for service, often over the objections of their parents. But the total number of women entering the profession has declined as other career options have opened up for Japanese women.

Enomoto’s entrance into the geisha world is typical of many geishas in the past. Born into a prosperous merchant family, where she was tended by several maids and nurses, Enomoto was given at an early age to a geisha inn for a large sum of money when her father’s business went bankrupt. There she was taught, trained, fed and clothed for a period of years before she emerged into the geisha society known as karyukai, the “world of flowers and willows,” and began earning money to repay her parents’ debt and her past keep. (Flowers and willows are traditional symbols of feminine beauty and sexuality in Japan.)

But times have changed, Tominaga notes, and geisha tradition must change as well.

Girls hoping to become geishas used to live with experienced practitioners who trained them in the arts of dance, song, instrument, painting and calligraphy and paid their upkeep. After two years or so, the girls became maikos, or apprentices, who were allowed to dance for clients but did not practice other geisha arts. By the time a maiko became a geisha, she usually was the mistress of a wealthy male patron who provided her with money and expensive gifts.

Today, the few apprentices ally themselves with male “husbands” who handle their business affairs, rather than female geishas. Traditionally, only older and more independent geishas were permitted to enter into such relationships.

Enomoto says the Asakusa geisha school actually will train young women to be financially independent maikos, although they expect many eventually will enter into the more prosperous roles of geisha courtesans.

In the school planned by Tominaga and Enomoto, the Asakusa business community will sponsor 15 young women ages 18 to 25, paying for their lessons as well as their kimonos and makeup. From the time they enter the school, the trainees will earn a salary slightly more than a typical female office worker in Japan, now about $16,000 a year, Tominaga says.

Already, the two women have received 20 applicants for their first class, which is expected to begin in October and continue for three months. Applicants must pass a verbal exam, “to make sure the girls know that being a geisha is more than playing with boys,” Enomoto says. Appearance also will be considered in the admission procedure, but the grace of an applicant’s movement and the attractiveness of her smile are more important than sheer beauty, Enomoto says.

Enomoto admits that three months is barely enough time to teach the basics of how to speak, dress, walk and dance, as well as the two fundamental rules of geisha conduct--never repeat anything a client says about his business or politics, and never take any praise to heart.

Although many modern Japanese women welcome the demise of geisha tradition, some see the geisha world as an escape from the difficult path faced by today’s career women.

“I wouldn’t mind being a geisha,” says a teen-age girl in Asakusa with a daring smile. “I’d rather be a business executive, but a geisha has more independence than an office girl.”