Unlike the old days when girls would become geisha through personal connections, 23-year-old Komomo (Little Peach) took her first steps towards the vocation by e-mail. As Komomo recounted in “A Geisha’s Journey,” a book of essays and photographs by Naoyuki Ogino due out in May, she had no way of learning about the remote and secretive geisha world until she found a web site run by Koito, a Kyoto geisha who also ran an okiya (geisha house). (http://www.e-koito.com)

“I wanted to know more about my own country and that’s why I chose this world,” Komomo told Reuters. Dressed in a formal crested black kimono with a brocade sash, her face covered in white makeup with just a touch of red at the eyes, she added: “I wanted to make Japanese history and customs a part of my daily life, not just wearing a kimono occasionally, but every day and living life as they did in the old days.” But this seemed impossible until she found Koito’s web site, one of the first written by a working geisha.

“I was so excited that I e-mailed Koito-san right away, telling her my dream of becoming a maiko, an apprentice geisha, but that I didn’t know how to begin,” she wrote. The two corresponded for three years, until Komomo graduated from junior high school. Shrugging off the opposition of her parents, who wanted her to take a more conventional path of university and marriage, the 15-year-old headed for Kyoto.

“I thought she wouldn’t last,” said Kimiko Nasu, Komomo’s mother, who was visiting her only child. “She has a strong will, and in the geisha world you have to make yourself disappear.”

Lessons driven home

Komomo moved into Koito’s okiya in Miyagawa-cho, a cluster of narrow, stone-paved streets lined with wooden houses in central Kyoto. Her first weeks were spent learning to greet people with polite bows, wear kimono, and speak in the soft Kyoto dialect.

“In the first year, every single day, it seemed I was scolded all the time. That was my job, to be scolded,” said Komomo, who stands barely 150 cm (4 ft 11 inches) tall.

“At evening gatherings, no mistakes are permitted, and this isn’t something you can just learn suddenly. It has to be driven home, as part of your daily life, so you won’t do anything embarrassing in front of the guests.” Each demanding day begins with lessons in dance, singing, tea ceremony and music, and continues with parties — the geisha’s real work — from six until midnight. With only one day off every two or three months, Komomo at first sometimes longed for the life of an ordinary teenager, able to see movies on a whim. But she only thought of quitting briefly, during her first two weeks, when another girl decided to leave.

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