To the hunting of the Geishas

By Hugo Caligaris
Special envoy

KIOTO, Japan. - Going of temple in temple, between mountains and plains, we requested the owner of the sky that stopped incessant rain. It did not do it. Imprecamos against him with judgment fabric hardness, putting its authority. But Buddha I talk back ': "I show my power of diverse ways. One of them is concederte the grace that you request to me, acceding to your desire. Another one, negártela, since therefore I demonstrate you that my will surpasses yours and I put under to you, of step, to tests which you will leave more wiser fort and ".

These Gods have answer for everything. We also. We never attended the school of the rigor, because it does not seem to us right that besides to suffer it is necessary to pay the quota. So that we directed ourselves to the district of Gión, whose put a roof on paths assure free strolls humidity in one of the more colorful urban zones of Kioto.

Suddenly, at dusk, we saw it: geisha came towards us one. We dare to swear that kimono was not a normal woman dressing naturally his. They exposed its bearing, its empolvada face and, mainly, that hairdo to it of porcelain touched with brilliant peinetones and jewels because of as it is said that geishas does not sleep over smooth pillows but supporting the head in rigid wood buckets, with the purpose of not disturbing its hairdo.

Where it would go? What would go to make that rare bird surrounded by so many vulgar birds? As he is natural, we followed with all the discretion of the case, keeping the had distance. But in a while its calm one to walk of cord wrist had to become, since it doubled by a dark passage and disappeared without leaving signs. Simply one vanished, as if one had sunk in the tunnel of the time.

Whatever it goes to Kioto must have tourist to see, for example, the castle of Nijo, the legendary residence of the unifying one of Japan, Ieyasu Tokugawa. Ukiyoe has very beautiful paintings in the style, but before to comment those images of peacocks and tigers in combat the visitor speaks of the floors that trinan. Ieyasu did not want that they surprised it off guard and ordered his craftsmen who installed something to him less coarse than doors with padlock.

One "must see" Nijo. But if one went to Kioto and geisha did not see one, the pleasure to narrate its adventures between friends will be transformed into ridicule, in nightmare. Let us say it with certain crudity: before temples zen, museums and delicate crafts, the tourists in Kioto look for geishas, since this city has been its cradle and will be perhaps its tomb.

With to have descried one, although more not outside from distant spot, we had the passport to the day. But we wanted more, and we went to see dance them in the Gion Corner. There odori, dance of the cherry trees interpret miyako, dazzling to the public with their showy suits and their delicate manual gestures.

The demand conditions to the supply and, as she could not be otherwise, dedicated people and companies exist to offer all the ready tourists to pay sufficient therefore badly to the call "unique experience" to take direct bonding with one geisha.

In the region of Hakone, for example, the Hakone Geisha Association exists, that is in charge to cause that one participates in a ceremony of the tea offered by geishas guaranteed. In Kioto guides like Canadian Peter Macintosh work. By hardly 5000 yens (about 40 dollars) he offers himself to walk with the interested one in Gion to the visual hunting of geisha lost. He is to say: he receives 5000 yens by just like we obtained free.

But if the candidate stretches until the 50,000 yens, the specialist commits itself to in front of seat it during forty minutes a legitim geisha, to ask to him what wants. That excludes, by the way, any consultation referred to its private life: before the smaller sexual hint, geisha will retire victim without it justifies the return of the amount previously paid. There are two things of which geishas does not speak: sex and policy, exactly on the contrary that most of the Argentineans and Argentineans.

One says that in Kioto geishas in 1930 were 80,000, and that today is less than thousands, but it can well be another tendiente advertising treta to hierarchize tour. Only "geishas onsen" take intimate contact with their clients, but they constitute a variant that exceeds our subject; one is prostitutas dressed as if they were geishas.

Really are refined jewels. Geisha means "person dedicated to the art", and that art is the one to satisfy to the men from a point of view, in principle, spiritual. The recent book of Arthur Golden "Memories of one geisha" reveals the legend partly: one would be children of very humble origin, deposited by his parents in one okiya, or marries of geishas. There it would be educated them with rigor, in the arts of the personal adornment (shimadamage), the dance and shamisén, or Japanese guitar. The aprendizas are called maikos, and they are distinguished of its teachers by the colors of its clothes. One says that when the maikos arrive at the adolescence it offers them like virgins to a wealthy client. This ceremony of sexual initiation, or mizuage, officially is declared illegal in contemporary Japan. When growing, geishas usually finds danna, an official lover who protects them and she maintains them.

Anyone cannot contract the services of one geisha, insist the astute agents. And if it is obtained, not it will be but so that they recreate it to one as to shogún Japanese of century XVII and they initiate it in arcane the aesthetic ones of the East, without allowing him to advance beyond the door. There is a ultrareserved category that the guides maintain under the sleeve, and that consists of leaving solo tourist and geisha during the time that both consider advisable. In that case, geisha will receive, literally, in palitos: their tariffs are moderate reason why they take in burning successive senko, or palitos of incense that is ignited since the encounter begins.

The celebration will cost a fortune, but it has interested in paying it. We whatever the cost imagined that in the future they will be mainly foreign, of exotismos several buying. And what has more exotic for a foreigner who one geisha, superior and submissive, terrenal and etéreo, sinful and at the same time innocent a being? For the Japanese of last generation, however, the program is looked more and more like an old-fashioned, quite boring folkloric evening and with few probabilities of lowering from the paradise to the crude land of the facts. For that reason they prefer to look for the prohibited thing elsewhere, far from story books.