Yes, this is a continuation of thought from “A Random PSA On Fake Geisha” as the notorious fake geisha has now begun a harassment campaign not only against myself, but also against the one thing that she can never be: a legitimate geisha of Western origins.
As of Saturday the con artist Fiona Graham decided that she would go back onto Reddit to continue to push her false claims (spoiler alert: she was shut down even worse than on the original comments and the Reddit staff has now closed her AMA to further comments). She even went so far as to make a dummy account to try and up vote her negative comments and to defend more of her thoroughly discredited nonsense. While I don’t really care about how much of a hole she continues to dig herself on Reddit, I do care when her harassment turns into actual threats against people that I know.
The problem has been that Ms. Graham is incredibly jealous of Kimicho, the only legitimate Western geisha actually working. She tried to spread lies about her on Reddit, but everyone saw through them (good job community!) and she’s now gone into hiding from that website. However, right after these comments Kimicho started receiving a flood of accusations from “anonymous” people that she was actually a furisode-san and not a real geisha. It got so bad that Kimicho had to de-activate her Facebook account and has scaled back her use of social media. Because of this terrible abuse she had to issue a statement (which I have posted on here verbatim):
“Anonymous asked: Hi Kimicho, Sayuki (Fiona Graham) foreigner geisha claims that you are not geisha because you are married. She also says you're furisode. Is this true?
Kimicho: I’ve been getting this question a lot lately.I didn’t really want to respond because I don’t want to get involved with any sort of bickering or finger-pointing. So I will just say this: my geisha house has a very long and established history as a true geisha house. My okasan is a geisha, her mother was a geisha, and before that there were many previous Okami-sans who took great pride in the good reputation that Yoshinoya had for training real geisha proficient in many different arts.
The issue with furisode on the govoyagin page was a result of a miscommunication between my Okasan and the govoyagin staff, because my Okasan is not computer literate and didn’t understand the idea of the website or how the event would be presented. The event that now has pictures of Yoshinoya geisha was originally a page for an event for which govoyagin used a furisode company. They were ending their business relationship with the furisode company and so transitioned to using our services. Because govoyagin’s staff is small, the changes happened very slowly and regrettably in the meantime (and even now still) some information was mixed and confusing in regard to who exactly would be at events. Fixing the page up so that customers are not confused is still a work in progress, but govoyagin’s staff at first didn’t have a very in-depth knowledge of how the geisha business works and how exactly we are different from furisode, so it took time to work with them to make sure everything was accurate.
In terms of my personal life, the bottom line is that in Tokyo, and in many other cities, women working as geisha are married, divorced, have small children, and come from all walks of life. This is normal in modern days. The same way that many Buddhist monks in modern Japan choose whether or not to be celibate, or vegetarian, it is a lifestyle choice. Kyoto is the most strict about this, and I can’t speak for every geisha district as I don’t know their intimate rules, but I know many married geisha and it has no bearing on one’s artistic career. We keep our private lives private so that in our work spheres we can focus on our arts.
I am still in training, as geisha are until they retire. I don’t speak for the entire geisha world! I just want to try to help educate people about this world that I appreciate so much.
I am very sorry if anyone in the community was disappointed in me or in Yoshinoya because of the lack of communication and the confusion about the things being said. All I can do is work hard and be honest with everyone supporting me. I am deeply grateful for the continued support of the community abroad. As Forrest Gump would say, that’s all I have to say about that.
Thank you and よろしくお願い致します
Kimicho”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is a how a real geisha conducts herself in the midst of adversity.
The Govoyagin page that’s being referred to is this one, that has since been updated due to an error on Govoyagin’s end. So, not only has Ms. Graham created a straw man argument, but she’s attempting to promote a clerical error that has since been corrected in an effort to discredit a legitimate geisha.
Now, while this disgusting in its own right, she also decided to harass me on Patreon because she can’t be bothered to create an account on Tumblr to do the same. She was made aware of my post about her on Reddit by multiple people (and was included in the top voted comment). Since there is no one but Ms. Graham who would dare to defend her ridiculous claims of being a geisha it is obvious that she is the one who is harassing me. You can read more of it here on my Patreon page (I won’t bother copying and pasting that text onto here).
I really don’t care if she attempts to harass me or discredit me (I’m not sure how or with what), but I do care when she harasses an innocent bystander because of her raging jealousy. Kimicho is a legitimate and very respectful geisha and she should not face harassment from a jealous con artist. Please, stand up for real geisha and stand up for Kimicho!
