Thank you for answering my question! I can't seem to find any information/pictures of Kikuryu. I don't suppose you have any? Also, was Kikuno the onee-san of the retired Kikushino?
She can be found in two old odori programmes, this one is the Kyo Odori programme of 2005, the year she retired, and in the Kyo Odori programme of 2000. Odori programmes from the 1990s and early 2000s are a little bit scarce, especially Kyo Odori programmes, so I couldn’t find more but the person I’ve linked you to (Caitlin Downey on Flickr) is still actively collecting and scanning them, so I’m sure that there are more to come.
I also found two pictures of her performing during odori, number 1 and 2. Kikuryū was active during a time before instant-image-sharing was around and everyone had a phone with a pretty decent camera in it constantly with them, so there aren’t that many pictures of her to be found in the Internet.
That’s the thing with “older” Geiko in general (basically everyone who was around before ca. 2010), they usually didn’t have that many pictures taken of them, nowhere near comparable to today. If they did, it was for professional photoshoots, which used to be rarer, or special occassions like Misedashi, Erikae, Odori, maybe visits from very specials guests or birthdays. Of course most okiya and jimae Geiko already had cameras, but the pictures they took on those were usually only taken for private use.
And no, Kikuno was not Kikushino’s onee-san, her onee-san was Geiko Kikumaru, who debuted in 2004 directly as a Geiko and retired in June of 2016. Kikumaru was the last imouto of Kikuryū.
Kikuno was the onee-san to Kikuyū, who debuted in November of 2004 when Kikuno herself was still a Maiko, and retired in December of 2012, to Kikune, who debuted in October of 2006 and retired in May of 2012, and to Maiko Kikuyae, who debuted on the 19th of January 2016 and is still around.
