Faux Geisha Tiptoe in Face of Tradition

The icons of Japanese elegance pitter-patter past the ancient temples of Kyoto, turning heads with their porcelain-doll makeup, brilliant-hued silks and steep sandals.

And that’s where the trouble begins.

To the uninitiated--and that includes most Japanese--these visions of traditional splendor look like the increasingly rare Kyoto geisha. But they aren’t.

In the latest incarnation of experiential tourism, blushing teens, bank tellers, nostalgic grandmothers and other workaday women are flocking to Kyoto and paying anywhere from $40 to $300 or more to undergo a “geisha transformation.”

These wannabes in full regalia regularly traipse through the ancient capital’s landmarks, to the amusement and annoyance of locals--and the quiet consternation of genuine geisha.

This infiltration of pretenders adds insult to injury to the authentic geisha business, which has fallen on such hard times that some teahouses have had to install karaoke machines to survive.

The Gion district, the prestigious geisha playground for the rich and famous, had 265 professional geisha in 1959; now there are 91, according to the Gion Teahouse Assn.

In all of Kyoto, where five surviving geisha districts each preserve their own specialties and traditions, only 197 geisha are still practicing entertainers, together with 52 young apprentices, known as maiko.

Geisha are entertainers who sing, dance, play the stringed shamisen, and amuse their clients with traditional games and witty banter. The first geisha were male, but the female geisha, who appeared more than two centuries ago, have come to be viewed worldwide as a symbol of Japanese refinement and exoticism.

Real geisha train for years to hone their skills, at a time when most young Japanese women are striking out for university or increasingly lucrative, independent careers. Geisha are not prostitutes, and these days they are as likely to marry well in Kyoto society as they are to form an attachment with a wealthy patron--or strike out in business for themselves, former geisha said.

Despite the declining number, no one believes that the geisha will ever face extinction, as each generation brings new connoisseurs and re-interpreters of tradition. In fact, the very emergence of the imitation-geisha phenomenon is proof of the enduring allure of the real thing.

At least 50 “geisha transformation” services have sprung up here since the city celebrated its 1,200th anniversary in 1994, officials said.

Kyoto natives claim that they can spot the fakes in an instant by their cheap kimonos, clumsy makeup and jarring modern manners.

Unable to pull off the pigeon-toed gait of teeny steps considered demure for women in kimonos, the pretenders have a modern gait that makes their kimonos flap. The real geisha’s street face is a haughty pout, and when she deigns to speak, it is in the charming Kyoto dialect. The imitators tend to erupt in slang, thick provincial accents or guffaws.

Acting out girlhood fantasies, many dress as maiko, who wear fabulously expensive, gaily patterned kimonos with flirtatious floor-length sleeves--but only until they turn 20, when tradition demands that they graduate to geisha status or retire.

Detractors complain that most of the make-believes are well beyond the proper maiko weight and expiration date. A few even are foreigners.

Plenty of people think that the fake geisha are a hoot--and profitable besides. But traditionalists cringe at the sight of gaggles of fake geisha snapping shots of one another with digital cameras, chatting on cell phones, posing for photos with tourists, or otherwise cavorting in unladylike fashion. And Kyoto is nothing if not the bastion of tradition.

“Everyone is against them,” fumed Seizo Toyota, an elderly taxi driver who recoiled in disgust when asked to take a visitor to a fake-geisha hangout. “They carry things that are unbecoming. They yak on in a Kyushu accent. And some of them are old ladies! They should be made to hang signs on themselves that say, ‘I am a fake.’ ”

Kenji Tsuda, general secretary of the Gion Teahouse Assn., said “even Kyoto people sometimes can’t tell the difference” between a fake and a real geisha. “Sometimes we’ve had telephone calls complaining that there is a maiko on the street smoking.”

Kyoto’s real geisha, concerned that their classy image would be trashed by the hordes of tawdry imitators, three years ago lobbied the city to ban the “be-a-geisha” business.

Of course, tradition demanded that the geisha not make their displeasure known directly. Instead, representatives from the five geisha districts, or “flower towns,” brought their complaint to the city tourist board.

“Young people are crazy about maiko, and we understand they want to try wearing kimonos and experiencing it,” said Hiroyuki Yamasaki, planning manager at the Kyoto Tourist Assn. “We looked into the legalities, but they were not violating any law.”

But the make-over studios agreed that to tarnish the glamorous maiko image would hurt the make-believe business as well, and they have voluntarily agreed to “observe proper etiquette,” Yamasaki said. Among other things, that means a pledge “not to use kimonos that are too old or awful” and to send an escort with the fake maiko carrying signs that made clear that the get-ups are costumes, he said.

But a stroll around town makes it clear that compliance is spotty, and it’s easy to see why tourist whims might trump tradition. Kyoto’s “old economy,” which for centuries prided itself on making the finest textiles and traditional crafts in Japan, is hurting badly.

The tiny stores that made pottery, fans, bamboo implements, dolls and dozens of other traditional items are disappearing, and with them often go their historic wooden houses, called machiya. Between 1988 and 1998, 30,410 of the prewar wooden structures were torn down, a 38% decline, according to a preservationist survey. Many are replaced with hideous concrete structures and prefabs.

The teahouses, the food and drinking establishments where geisha most often entertain, also are disappearing. Gion had 218 teahouses in 1950 and 123 in 1981, but it has only 80 today.

With cost-cutting Japanese corporations slashing their entertainment budgets, many elderly female proprietors are finding it difficult to persuade daughters or other young women to succeed them, Tsuda said.

It’s not only that there are better opportunities for women; the clientele also is changing, as many Japanese men don’t know how to enjoy the geisha’s traditional form of entertainment.

“The customers don’t know how to play,” said retired geisha Shizuko Hamano, 62, now a teahouse owner in the Miyagawa district. So most of Miyagawa’s teahouses have installed karaoke machines.

“You used to hear shamisen music here every evening, but you don’t hear it tonight, do you?” Hamano said. “It’s true that in every age, the old ways disappear, but it’s a shame.”

Some locals say the geisha transformation shops, and the free-spending young women they attract, are among the few bright spots in this otherwise lackluster economy.

Masako Nakagawa, who runs the Jidai-ya studio with her husband, a professional costume designer, also turns “salarymen” into fake samurai and saleswomen into 12th century Heian princesses.

One recent client was an 85-year-old woman, who told Nakagawa that she had adored maiko since girlhood and wanted to try dressing up as one before she died.

Some studios are full-service salons that offer hairstyling, makeup, a photographer-escort to follow clients around to the local sights, and even miniature digital-camera stickers of themselves as geisha. Others are merely photo shops.

The most unusual maiko transformation shop in Kyoto is the Hanafusa, a 130-year-old teahouse that is home to both real and pretend geisha. The proprietor, retired geisha Yukie Kudo, 51, boasts that she will turn every woman who comes to her door into the geisha of her dreams--regardless of age, looks or size.

First, the clients’ faces are plastered porcelain white. Their modern-cut hair is lacquered and swept back. Mouths are painted into pursed rosebuds, far tinier than their lips. Eyes are outlined in an arresting, theatrical red.

Wasp-waisted women have their midsections padded with towels to achieve the straight silhouette that kimono-wearing demands. Those who have their own padding are welcome to use the “king-size” kimono that Kudo recently had made to accommodate her growing clientele.

Next, the women are swaddled in layer upon layer of brilliant silk, pulled low to show off the back of the neck. Finally, they are trussed up in extravagant obis that trail rakishly behind them, as only geisha sashes do.

Despite its authenticity, Hanafusa is not popular with its neighbors.

“I hate them,” teahouse owner Michiyo Oishi, 51, said of Hanafusa’s tourist clientele. “The tourists cannot tell the difference, and we certainly do not want to be mistaken for them!”

As the shoji screens inside the Hanafusa darkened on a recent evening, a young tourist was taking off her makeup in one tatami room, while across the hall the teahouse’s resident geisha dressed for work.

Aya Ishimura, 25, said she entered Hanafusa for a make-over three years ago and decided that “this was a world that was close to my dreams.” She quit her office job in rural Tottori prefecture; began to study dance, shamisen, Japanese flute, drum and the tea ceremony; worked hard to pick up the Kyoto dialect; and then made a formal debut as the geisha Kikuryu.

A sign that tradition still has appeal: She is booked for parties nearly every evening, at $1,000 for a two-hour appearance.

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Times Tokyo Bureau researcher Makiko Inoue contributed to this report.