‘Life of a Maiko’: Pt.-II Being a Maiko
(written and researched by @gion-lady)
A maiko’s career stems from the stages: shikomi, minarai, (I will also discuss the San-San-Kudo ceremony) freshly-debuted junior maiko and senior maiko, before graduating to the next level and becoming a professional geiko.
Shikomi
(A maiko with a shikomi from her okiya in tow SOURCE)
Once accepted into the okiya family, she begins her training. A future maiko starts at the bottom of the ranks as a shikomi. This stage teaches her a strict sense of discipline. Shikomi tend to the needs of the other, more senior resident maiko and geiko in their okiya; household chores are toggled with her intense and rigorous classes in music, tea ceremony, and dance. Shikomi are not allowed to contradict or answer back to their okasan–house-mother of the okiya; the woman who oversees her geisha’s careers, respectively–or her seniors and must stay up all night into the early morning to wait on her maiko seniors as they return from entertaining in the ochaya. Wearing traditional kimono is sometimes new to girls from other cities; shikomi wear them often in order to practice dressing themselves correctly. An emphasis on all that is traditional encourages the discipline and meditative detail she’ll need to be a successful woman of the arts. The shikomi stage lasts from about 8 months to a year. Nearing the end of her time as a shikomi, she is ready for the exam she’s been training for. The exam can consist of dance, music and singing, as well as the other arts learned in her classes, and is a definitive in who moves onto become a maiko. Once she passes, she begins to move onto her next stage.
Minarai
(SOURCE)
The period of a minarai lasts about a month before her debut as a new, junior maiko. A minarai is finally given her first hairstyle as a new-coming maiko, called wareshinobu. A minarai practices applying her make-up: oshiroi white powder, beni lipstick and crimson accents to the eyes and face, and eyebrow charcoal; more pink pigmentation is applied to the face of younger maiko, and the minarai wears–much as she will within the coming year as a junior maiko–the beni lipstick on her lower lip. It is important for a geisha’s make-up to be flawless, and must not look different every time she applies, which takes a lot of practice! She practices the way to assemble her ohikizuri kimono, and begins to sleep with her head on an omaku (an uncomfortable wooden platform with a small pillow on the end, raised so that her elaborate wareshinobu hairstyle will remain intact). Maiko in Kyoto use their own hair, not wigs, to create the coifs of their various hairstyles, and only have them redone and washed once a week. Her aesthetic at this time is very ‘cute’ and dainty, with lots of showy colors and ornamentation, and her kimono patterns are more elaborate with designs and motifs above the shoulder than an older maiko would have. The cuteness of a minarai, as well as of the overall maiko look, is to symbolize her beginnings as a geisha; her long, trailing obi belt, draping silk sleeves and high woodenokobo (footwear, almost like a clog) seem to minimize her size, making her look child-like. She is just a ‘baby’ in the Flower and Willow world.
Minarai attend a few ozashiki (maiko and geiko entertain their guests and clients within the ochaya ozashiki; the word refers to both the event and the room in which it is held) with their senior maiko sisters, more to observe than to participate. A minarai may be shy, and may not yet be fully confident enough with the repartee between the clients and herself, and so it is her Older Sister’s responsibility to guide her and introduce her to all those she will be working with during her career. Establishing relationships is one of the most important things to a new geisha; her career depends on patronage and the collective support from all those within her hanamachi; a maiko will not make it very far without these connections. After the month’s time, a minarai breaks from her shell to debut as a new maiko.
San-San-Kudo and a Maiko’s Debut
(A maiko is almost ready for her debut, as an ‘Older Sister’ adjusts her hair pin SOURCE)
With her hair in the wareshinobu style, a maiko and her Onee-san (’Older Sister’) appointed by the okasan of their okiya participate in a ceremony that bonds them together called San-San-Kudo (’Three-Times-Three Exchanges’). The bond between them is much like a marriage; and in fact San-San-Kudo is practiced during traditional wedding ceremonies. This bond will last as long as both girls remain as geisha in their hanamachi, which has on occasion been ‘til death’. In a tatami room, surrounded by geisha mothers and other involved senior geiko and maiko, the new maiko and her Onee-san exchange three cups of sake in shallow cups, sipping three times for each one. San-San-Kudo is important, formal and solemn. The maiko bows to address her Onee-san, begging the favor of her care, and to the geisha mothers to lead her into becoming a successful geisha. Her Onee-san vows to take care of her little sister. The new maiko is given her geisha name, the name she will be known as while she works as a geisha. This name is usually derivative of the name of her Onee-san (for example, the geiko Ichiume passed her prefixIchi- to her younger sister, Ichigiku). Though it is expected of the maiko to upkeep respect and honor to her adopted geisha name, it is ultimately the Onee-san’s responsibility to keep her little sister from making mistakes or misbehaving. Any misconduct on the maiko’s part reflects poorly on her Onee-san.
(A maiko’s misedashi SOURCE)
A maiko’s debut–called misedashi–is one of the most important days of her life. This day occurs after the day of her San-San-Kudo ceremony. Long, wide pieces of paper with the names of the new maiko as well as her elder sister and her okiya, called shashigami, are distributed all throughout their hanamachi. The debut of a maiko these days is a marvel, an important event, and photographers and fans line the tiny street outside the okiya to watch the little maiko step out on her high okobo. Depending on the hanamachi the maiko belongs to, a make-up artist is hired for the special occasion; a tiny dot of rouge beni lipstick on her bottom lip and three bare-skin prong shapes painted under her nape with oshiroi instead of the usual two. The maiko is then led to greet proprietors of the many teahouses and restaurants she will soon be working with. Her Onee-san accompanies her, unless she is from the Gion hanamachi, in which case it is her otokosu who accompanies her (this is her male dresser; a man from a long line of dressers who comes to the okiya every night to dress the geisha and tie her long, heavy brocade silk obi before she attends banquets). A maiko wears a black kimono with the crest of her okiya motif for three days after the misedashi, and a colored, crested kimono three days after that. Her Onee-san brings her to all her banquets to introduce her to future clients, and many large gifts of money–called goshugi–are presented to her for the occasion.
Junior to Senior
(SOURCE)
Mizuage, a word that instigates controversy, and what used to be associated with ritual deflowerment before WWII, is nowadays a symbolic ceremony in which a junior maiko becomes a mature, more experienced senior maiko (shown above). This was done by the ceremonial cutting of the cord in her top knot and a change in hairstyle from wareshinobu to ofuku. This takes place around the maiko’s 18th birthday (many maiko begin at age 15), and a party is held afterward. The maiko now wears beni lipstick on her upper lip as well as her lower lip, which she’s done ever since her first year as a maiko ended. Her kimono, though still very colorful, becomes less patterned as she ages. She becomes more and more graceful as she matures, and within the next couple years, if she so chooses, she becomes a geiko. Shown below, the maiko on the left wears wareshinobu and the maiko on the right wears ofuku.
(SOURCE: Okiya.tumblr)
Senior or junior, maiko do not stop taking their many classes. Dance, Jikata (singing),shamisen, taiko, ookawa and kotsuzumi drum, flute (called a fue), kane,tea ceremony, shodo (calligraphy) and flower arrangement (called ikebanaor kado) are the classes maiko and geiko take, focusing on an instrument and/or singing, calligraphy, tea ceremony and/or ikebana and, most importantly, dance. There are many elderly geisha who still hone their skills in classes!
Find more Kyoto geisha fun and facts @gion-lady
There are just a couple adjustments I would like to make~ The look of the minarai can vary from hanamachi to hanamachi, most will have only the bottom lip painted for minarai but some go straight into painting both lips, and minarai are sometimes given more subdued looks rather than the over the top baby-like appearance of Gion Kobu, like in Pontocho with Ayaha-san when she was a minarai, the first time I saw her I was really confused because of how subdued her appearance was compared to other hanamachi. Also all Maiko start painting both lips before they transition into senior Maiko status, they start painting both lips after their first year of training (Except for those hanamachi where both lips are painted from the beginning in which this lip style doesn’t change.) Mizuage for Maiko and Geiko had nothing to do with ritual deflowerment of a Maiko, there was a party involved and her hair transitioned from wareshinobu to ofuku as well, she received mostly white embroidered collar to show her seniority but to my knowledge the ritual deflowerment was only reserved for Oiran and other courtesans and Maiko and Geiko include that piece into their transition. All Geiko also continue taking classes and going to practices, they’re more advance classes and they might not have as many as a Maiko does but they definitely still hone their skills into their geiko careers. ^^
Yes^^^ thank u; all of my books/research sources are very general when it comes to hanamachi to hanamachi tradition and it was suuuuper hard to find any specifics on each hanamachi’s way of doing things (like how in gion their otokosu leads them through on their misedashi instead of her Onee-san). Pretty frustrating especially bcus many books are written to generalize Kyoto geisha as ‘all one thing’. thanks! I did mention above about painting her lips: “The maiko now wears beni lipstick on her upper lip as well as her lower lip, which she’s done ever since her first year as a maiko ended.” the reason i didn’t delve too much into Geiko and their classes is because i wanted these two posts to be of maiko specifically, which is why i opted to keep it open ended with the sentence: “There are many elderly geisha who still hone their skills in classes!” I am going to be working on a Geiko set soon, and i wanted to give basics and not mention Geiko too too much until i had organized those Geiko posts myself. And about mizuage; it is totally up in the air with me right now because of my research, so i made sure to put “According to Liza Dalby…" (on the Pt.-I post) as well as according to Kyoko Aihara, as well as according to Lesley Downer, they have quoted older geisha in their books on their stories of their experiences with mizuage– (Dalby goes into it rather graphically as she recalls one of her experiences at an ozashiki where mizuage was the subject)–and so i decided to add this in. i trust in Mineko Iwasaki in that she had not had that old-style mizuage. i have written in the past that there has been no empirical evidence really on whether mizuage, as it was practiced by initiated courtesans, was practiced in the Kyoto geisha world before WWII–there are only stories of old geiko conveyed by (mostly) white authors. a level of trust has to go into this for me as a researcher with only their accounts as a reference. i am not here yet to say yea or nay on the subject, and so in my two posts here i wanted to keep it open ended but with factual evidence noted as best i could, while making the distinction between pre-war geisha and post-war geisha customs big enough. thanks!
