Giving up the past
The first thing little girls were taught was traditional Japanese dance. Mineko Iwasaki surpassed the other girls in this activity. At 21, she was considered the best Japanese dancer. The classes took a lot of physical strength from her, but her efforts were rewarded. Mineko Iwasaki is a geisha who danced for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. Few have received such an honor. But even as a little girl, Mineko Iwasaki found herself in a privileged position. She was noticed by the owner of the educational institution, Madame Oimoi, and made her an atotoriti, that is, an heiress. That is, after some time she would own the Gion geisha house. To make this possible, she had to be abandoned by her parents at the age of 10 so that Oimoi could adopt her and take on the surname Iwasaki, although she was named Masako Tanaka at birth.
Image in cinema
Perhaps the image of geishas was significantly damaged after the war and even more after the film “Memoirs of a Geisha” was released. Today, no one will be surprised by the association of geishas with prostitutes, while this is incredibly far from the truth. Geishas were never courtesans offering sex for money. They are well-educated ladies, respectful and well-mannered.
One reason is that American soldiers called any Japanese girl with whom they had sex, either forced or consensual, a geisha. Even if the soldiers were able to forcefully take possession of a geisha, they could not know even a fraction of what these women were really capable of.
Another reason is the interpretation of the image of a geisha in cinema, where all the qualities of a geisha were reduced only to the ability to please men, sell virginity and compete in beauty.
In the original story, the Japanese geisha is the personification of the ideal of beauty and femininity, a kind of muse of all muses, the dream of every man, from a loader to an ambassador. Before moving on, it is necessary to accept the fact that no other woman will ever compare to a geisha, because a geisha learns to be a woman from a very early age and spends her entire life honing her skills.
Woman for secret conspiracies5
Geishas were always aware of all key events, closely followed politics, they understood art like no one else and could captivate people by dancing or playing musical instruments. The most valuable thing is that geisha used all these qualities exclusively to satisfy men, to help them relax and unwind.
Men gave a lot of money for a meeting with a geisha, and they paid them in full: in their house, a man always felt like a welcome guest, and afterward he came out inspired and full of strength.
Another important quality of a geisha has always been silence. Everything that was said in the presence of geishas remained between the interlocutors. This peculiar code of honor more than once played into the hands of the geishas themselves. One of the most notable cases was the rebellion against the Tokugawa shogunate in 1867-1868.
Then, knowing about the ability of geishas to remain silent when necessary, men held anti-state meetings in geisha houses. History is silent whether this was the geisha's original plan or whether it was fate, but when the rebellion ended with the accession of a new emperor to the throne, the geisha found themselves under the patronage of the most powerful men in Japan and further strengthened their influence.
