hey ladies

We went to the Miyako Odori-- the most famous geisha event in Kyoto each April. It's in the Gion geisha district and it's the second geiko (the more usual term for geisha in Kyoto) and maiko dance I've seen. Last month we went to the Kitano odori, the dances put on by the Kamishichiken district, another of the most prestigious districts of the five hanamachi (geisha districts) in Kyoto. Kamishichiken is much less touristy and smaller than Gion and it's in our neighborhood up north, so I feel a new affinity for them over the more well known areas.

It goes like this:  You walk into a normal looking modern theatre. It's sort of a hybrid between a western proscenium, with the big patterned fire curtain, and then two side arms of runways (like hanamichi in Kabuki, only on each side) and long boxes with curtains behind the two hanamichi also. And that's because, when the show begins, the curtains rise on the two side sections and there's a line of musicians on each side:

The thing that took my breath away when the curtains rose was this: these musicians are playing the exact same instruments as noh and kabuki and bunraku performers-- the big Japanese classic theatres.  But they're all women. Fabulous women. This is all stuff I've known intellectually; yeah, geiko are primarily performers and they study dance and music assiduously etc etc.  But the thing that hits me hard when those curtains go up, even for all I've studied and read about geiko is that this is the flipside of all those men-only "classical" performance forms.  Here are young gorgeous women playing noh style handdrums and taiko and flute-- I wish I had a picture of the maiko playing the taiko (the big drums on the left of the picture above)-- they do it just like the guys at the noh theatre, which is to say, they are awesome.
On the other side of the aisle are the older geisha who sing and play shamisen:

And they too are awesome. And then the stage fills with maiko and geiko who are stunning and in perfect sync and then there are scenes, much like kabuki, only it's all women. Women in gorgeous Heian costume, women in drag as Genji, as a poor farmer, as the murderous girl whose obsessive love turns into a snake in Dojoji, and as the hapless monk who gets burned alive after spurning her.

There's also tea served at all these big geiko events (like Baikasai I posted about before) and that too is of course a historically male-dominated practice that geiko have also mastered.  I have a lot more thinking to do about the dynamics of this gender segregation and doubling of artistic practices. What does it mean, is there a special appeal to geiko doing arts that were specifically restricted to men (due to officials' concerns over desire that crossed the lines between stage and street). Or are the similarities just holdover from the general aesthetics of Japanese performance?  Just from the visceral feeling of elation I feel seeing women's mastery of these restricted arts makes me think there's more to it than coincidence. And really, it's pretty awesome that there's this cadre of women who are maintaining their own genealogy of artistic prowess. There's a lot to be worked through here.
And my own photos of the tea, forthcoming.