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in to see a geisha before noon. And unlike the punctual Japanese, they were never on time, as I had discovered when I was paying court to the mama-san. It was in many ways the looking-glass image of “real” Japan. All the usual rules were subverted. One should not take the comparison too far. Like Japan, it was a hierarchical, stratified society. But, within the small confines of the geisha communities, it was women, not men, who wielded power; and everyone hoped for girl children, not boys, so that they could carry on the line of geisha. It was a back-to-front world—which was of course the whole point. Men came to the “flower towns” looking for an escape from drab reality in a world of dreams.
    So how had this dream world arisen? This was something I could only understand by looking into the past. Over the following months I sifted through texts to try and understand where the geisha had come from, what their role was in Japanese society, and why Japan had developed this parallel universe. I befriended geisha in Tokyo and in some of the hot spring resorts where Japanese go on holiday. I hung out with different classes and varieties of geisha. And I began to get some clues as to why Japanese men (some, anyway) might be angry at the very notion of my writing a book on geisha.
    Geisha Past and Present
    In this book I put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. The first, fourth, sixth, and eighth chapters deal with the history of the geisha, their changing face and role through the centuries, and the many romantic tales, both fact and fiction, which have grown up around them. It is a secret history. In the standard histories of Japan, geisha are never mentioned; yet when I probed a little deeper, I found them there, playing a role in the great events of their day and consorting with the most powerful men of the country as friends, confidantes, mistresses, and sometimes wives. But they are always in the shadows, the women behind the decision makers.
    Today they seem respectable enough; in fact there is a powerful geisha PR lobby driving home the point that geisha are not prostitutes with such insistence that even the most out-of-touch Westerner must have got the message by now. But in Victorian times and before, when geisha were in their heyday, they were the pinnacle of an outrageous alternative society. Like rock and roll stars today, they were the queens of a popular culture created by, with, and for the people, so subversive that the shogunate, the government of the day, spent much its time hopelessly attempting to repress it, or at least keep it within controllable bounds. Many of the writers who celebrated this culture found themselves in prison from time to time. The woodblock print artists whose work is so familiar to us today made a living portraying the courtesans, geisha, and kabuki actors who were the pin-ups of this alternative society.
    As for the glamorous courtesans and rollicking male geisha who were like court jesters to the wealthy guests, the Japanese will tell you that both professions died out at least a century ago. I found differently . . .
    And what of modern-day geisha? Very few Japanese have ever met one. In the evening the streets of Gion are crowded with Japanese tourists with cameras poised, waiting patiently like birdwatchers for a maiko to flit into view for a few seconds before darting into a nearby teahouse. Only the very wealthy or their guests will ever get to spend an evening in the company of maiko or geisha. Who are these women and why do they do what they do? In the rest of the book I look at the world of the geisha today, from the rites and rituals of geisha life and how a geisha does her makeup and kimono, to how she learns to charm at geisha parties. It is a journey in search of the last remnants of a dying tradition, to record some of these colorful personalities, their customs, their stories, their memories, their present and their past.
    Inevitably I find myself looking