In search of a geisha
December 2007
We seek them here, we seek them there … the mysterious geishas of Kyoto. But unlike the Scarlet Pimpernel, those geishas are everywhere. I thought that geishas and maikos (their apprentices) were as elusive as a dream on waking – disappearing into dark shadows, glimpsed momentarily through a rice paper screen.
A beautiful vision, unattainable, unfathomable, with their china-white faces, cupid’s bow lips, layers of fabric and feet clad in little, white toe socks and shod in wooden thongs. But here at Kiyomizu-dera, a collection of Buddhist and Shinto temples on a hill in eastern Kyoto, they’re everywhere.
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