Edo Beginnings. By the time of the Occupation years, 1945-1952, geisha , defined as art persons, and geisha culture had been around for over two hundred years. By 1800, geisha had become a monopoly of highly trained women entertainers in a profession which had once included males. This did not prevent the Occupiers and Westerners in general from frequently mistaking geisha for prostitutes or from mispronouncing the word as "gee-sha." They had in fact been doing so since the late 19th century. The women were also often infantilized as geisha “girls,” perhaps because of the many young or apprentice geisha undergoing training in geisha houses, including appearances at parties. Many geisha were in fact women of mature or elder years. The institution was somehow evidence to foreigners of an exotic Japan lurking just below the surface. Although historically rooted in Edo popular culture of the early 18th century, by the 1930s geisha were becoming conservators of a supposed traditional culture and aesthetic. Over the years, they had been well-depicted in prints, paintings, and early photographs but not in personal memoirs. Geisha were discreet and kept their silence.

Confusion in Terms. Another reason why geisha had been confused with prostitutes is because of their presence in government controlled and walled pleasure quarters which included licensed prostitution, courtesans, theaters, and eating houses. The most famous pleasure centers were Yoshiwara in Tokyo; Shimabara in Kyoto; and Shinmachi in Osaka. Also, geisha underwent deflowering ceremonies as part of their initiation, and many in fact had patrons or special male customers. Some left the geisha life to marry patrons or live with them as lovers. However, with the exception of lower level geisha in hot springs resorts, geisha were not licensed prostitutes or even high level courtesans. As keepers of “the flower and willow world,” they lived by day in their own special houses and entertained by night in their own designated restaurants or teahouses. They earned high fees for their managers if not for themselves and, for the most part, had a wide degree of choice in personal attachments. Their origins varied from volunteer recruits of modest merchant or artisan families to the indentured urban poor.

Geisha Parties. Geisha dinner parties were expensive evening affairs, featuring classical or traditional songs and instruments (primarily the three stringed samisen), dances, sometimes playlets, also games and conversation tinged with the erotic. Geisha were highly trained in small talk and adept in catering to the egos of male customers. There was a continuous flow of sake to go with elegant food. Apprentice geisha, or maiko as they were called in the Kyoto district and hangyoku in Tokyo, adorned in white facial makeup, colorful kimono, and elaborate hair styles, were called upon to help entertain the all-male guests. The institution flourished in the 19th century, and many leading Meiji political figures had wives who were former geisha. The first modern actress, Sadayakko (1871-1946), who appeared on the stage with her actor husband, Kawakami Otojirō, in Japan and abroad in the 1890s and early 20th century, was also a former geisha, although of a low level.

Competition and Decline. In the vibrant popular culture of 1920s Japan, geisha had to compete with a surge of café and bar hostesses who operated in much less expensive drinking or dance establishments and often doubled as unlicensed prostitutes. Geisha began learning modern dances and wearing modern fashions. However, the number of registered geisha declined from an all time-high of 89,000 in 1929 to 32,000 in the mid 1930s, though they were still in demand to entertain Japanese military officers during the Asia-Pacific War both at home and overseas. By 1944, geisha became eligible for war work under the new Labor Conscription Law of September. Earlier that year, geisha houses and restaurants had been closed by the government. In March 1945, B-29 fire bomb raids over Tokyo burned most of the Yoshiwara pleasure district (previously devastated in the great Kanto Earthquake of 1923). Contrary to wartime law, it was still operating, and hundreds of prostitutes who were trapped inside brothels died horrible deaths. A famous theater in the Shimbashi district where geisha had once performed annual dances also burned down. Osaka, too, underwent highly destructive B-29 raids. Kyoto escaped both fire and atomic bombs, but as a preventive measure city officials had nevertheless torn down many wooden houses in the pleasure quarters to make primitive firewalls.

Occupied Japan. Restaurants, bars, cafes, and geisha houses were legally back in business as of late October 1945. Though considerably reduced in number, geisha continued to be a presence in Occupied Japan and had a union for self-protection. In Tokyo, an estimated 1500 geisha could still be found in Shimbashi, the Asakusa district, or off-Ginza. Others were in Kyoto's Gion quarter or operated on a small scale in lesser cities and towns or famous spas. In the early months of the Occupation, it is alleged that lower level geisha were among the thousands of Japanese women recruited by the Recreation and Amusement Association—a front for the Japanese government run by businessmen and the police—to entertain American and Allied servicemen in segregated cabarets and concurrently to protect virtuous women from rape and sexual harassment. In fact, most of the women called geisha were not trained art persons. Their job instead was to dance with foreign soldiers, serve drinks, and perhaps provide sexual service, all for small pay. In better establishments for GIs, Japanese women wore kimono and gave the illusion of being geisha. Either the women themselves, or their male managers, added to the confusion by using the term, “geisha girls.” However, the mainstream clients at early and authentic postwar geisha parties were, as before, Japanese men—for the most part businessmen, politicians, bureaucrats, and creative artists. One figure for all of Japan in 1947 is a mere 2500 geisha. The following year, the theater in Shimbashi reopened for annual geisha dances. In Kyoto, geisha resumed their spring dances for the public. In the face of competition from strip shows, cabarets, and casinos, geisha continued to ply their profession for men who appreciated their art, skill, and beauty.

As a special treat, senior foreign military personnel and civilians were occasionally entertained at geisha parties by Japanese businessmen who had sufficient money in austere times to organize lavish feasts and classical style entertainment. A few foreign women were invited as well. Not all foreign guests, whether male or female, fully understood or appreciated the style of entertainment, some calling it childish or silly. For unknown reasons, photos of apprentice geisha in these years are easier to find than pictures of full-fledged geisha, and it is very difficult to piece together their story of the survival as an institution under foreign occupation. Since the Occupation, Western interest in geisha has continued undiminished, especially the “secret” history of the women. However, within Japan, after a revival in the late 1950s, the number of geisha dwindled over the years.

Post-Occupation. Several years after the Occupation, as a doctoral student experiencing my first research trip and visit to Japan, I had a brief encounter with the maiko world. The librarian father of my best Japanese friend, a kindergarten teacher at the American school in Tokyo, pressed the two of us—and an American male doctoral student—to visit Kyoto (spring 1959) and learn something about “traditional” Japan. He joined us there to make sure that we saw the most important shrines, temples, and gardens, and then insisted on escorting the three of us to a maiko party. At the appointed evening hour, we arrived at a well-preserved house in the Gion section. We sat on zabuton or cushions placed around a low wooden table on the tatami floor and awaited the entrance of the apprentices. I was startled by the white make-up with reddish tinges and amazed at the conversational skills of the maiko, whether talking to me, my American male friend, or the Japanese father and daughter. I would probably have been even more impressed had my Japanese speaking abilities been up to my reading skills. The food was simple but magnificent; the flow of sake was limited (it was respectable for women to drink beer in Japan but not sake). I do not recall any musical entertainment. Since it was excruciatingly painful for foreigners to kneel Japanese style or embarrassing for a woman to sit cross-legged in a skirt, we were encouraged to stretch out our legs under the table. In common with other foreigners at that time, I did not fully appreciate the occasion and thought it was, back in the years just before the rebirth of full-fledged feminism, a bit demeaning for women as performers and as guests.

A Pocket Guide to Japan prepared by the Office of Armed Forces Information & Education (Department of Defense), 1960, helps further to frame the official story of geisha as understood by Americans of that time. First, advising readers (males) that “the average young women of Japan,” though equal in law with men under the constitution, “are more reserved and conventional than American women” and to “avoid pickups,” the guide continues:

The maiko dinner in Kyoto has remained my closest brush with the geisha world. However, some years later, the late 1970s, an American doctoral student in anthropology at Stanford University, Liza Crihfield (Dalby), wrote a dissertation based on her personal field experience as a geisha. Fluent in Japanese, she was the first foreign woman admitted to the profession, and her subsequent book about geisha is absorbing and well-documented. She comments in her introduction:

Among the texts appearing on this site are excerpts from Dalby's book, Geisha, which provide many glimpses into the world of the geisha from the 1930s to the 1970s and her own experiences in the late 1970s. In addition, there are two valuable contemporary accounts from the Occupation period itself by Allied women—Santha Rama Rau in 1947 and Honor Tracy in 1948.

Today. Today, one of the things which has most changed is that geisha are speaking out, telling their own personal stories instead of letting Japanese and foreign males have the definitive say. One geisha, emboldened by Japanese feminism, has even tattled on her Prime Minister lover (Uno Sōsuke), 1989, abruptly shortening his tenure in office. In turn, geisha have been almost totally identified with TRADITION. Recruits are no longer indentured or sold by parents, of course, and have not been for many decades. Instead, they are willing or curious volunteers to a small and lingering profession. By the late 1990s, the number of geisha in Japan declined to approximately 1000, but renewed interest has led to a recent rise in recruitment of teen-age trainees, or maiko, in Kyoto. Moreover, a second foreign woman has been accepted into the ranks of geisha as of December 2007—Fiona Graham, who holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Oxford University and is known professionally as Sayuki.