So, at the height of her popularity, she quit. She also felt increasingly dissatisfied with the opportunities available to geisha, and with her profession’s strict adherence to tradition, especially when it came to keeping geisha and other women uneducated. Her constant work and high standards ran her into the ground, and she once suffered from a life-threatening kidney condition. Henshall puts it, the geisha’s clients were men “amused by the illusion of that which is never to be.” Getting out of the Gameīut Iwasaki’s renown couldn’t last forever. But Iwasaki categorically denies any ritualized sexual aspect to geisha life, especially the scene in Memoirs of a Geisha where Chiyo’s virginity is up for auction this practice, called mizuage, was strictly reserved for oiran. Of course, many geisha throughout history have certainly engaged in sexual favors with their clients, and maintaining strict definitions in such ambiguous entertainment work is impossible. In fact, when a saucy Henry Kissinger tried to feel her up, Iwasaki recalled, “we told him to desist.”
In the 18th century, geisha were specifically developed as chaste, entertainment-only alternatives to Japan’s oiran courtesans, who were designated sex workers. Contrary to many white fantasies, including Golden’s depiction of geisha in Memoirs, Iwasaki was not an escort.
“I told him he could keep it,” she said, “I didn’t want it anymore.”īut though Iwasaki lived a life of glamour and flirtation during her time as a geisha, her work did not include bedroom romps, royal or otherwise. But she found the monarch “frosty” and “rude,” and said the Queen “never laid a chopstick on the food that had been so painstakingly prepared for her.” As for the Queen’s son, he committed the gauche error of signing her fan, which Iwasaki did not look on as a favor. On her 21st birthday, Iwasaki was made a geisha proper, and the coming years were a whir of parties and famous names in her autobiography, she counts Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles among her clients.
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By the time she was 16-and before she was even made a full geisha, or geiko-she was the most popular geisha in Japan.
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As a fledgling geisha, Iwasaki learned how to pour tea, dance, and make flirtatious conversation, all with a deliberate yet graceful air.
These young girls are actually what Westerners usually think of when they imagine geisha their kimonos are more elaborate than their mature counterparts, and they often wear their hair in the distinctive Nihongami style. Like most Kyoto geisha, at the age of 15 Iwasaki began her training as a maiko, or an apprentice geisha. But this was only the beginning of Mineko’s illustrious career. The house matriarch, Madame Oima, must have seen something special in the young girl: she was made heir of the house, and took up Oima’s surname, Iwasaki. At the tender age of five, she was sent away from home to study Japanese dance at the Iwasaki geisha house in the exclusive Gion district of Kyoto, which is the most elite of Kyoto’s hanamachi or “flower towns” that house geisha. Iwasaki was born as Masako Tanaka in 1949.
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