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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Australian becomes a Geisha


A Melbourne women has qualified to become one of only 45 geishas and has started work serving tea and saki,dancing and lighting cigars.

She has been allowed to enter the mysterious "flower and willow world" of Japan's geisha for the first time.

Fiona Graham first came to Japan at the age of 15 on a school exchange program. Impressed by the culture, she graduated from a Japanese high school, attended Keio University and Oxford before completing a doctorate in social anthropology.

True to tradition, Sayuki — her professional name — meaning transparent happiness will not reveal her age. To enter the 400-year-old institution, she had to master a range of skills such as the drum, tea ceremony, small talk and traditional dancing as well as her own specialist gei, meaning art or entertainment. Sayuki plays the traditional bamboo flute, practising every day.


She plans to write on her experience later.

From the Age

2 comments:

James Higham said...

That's not unusual. I ran a post on an American geisha and the vicissitudes of it. Said a lot about Japanese life. Wish I had one.

Colin Campbell said...

I could use one just about now after a long late afternoon of box unpacking, bed building, tea making and child suppression. Interesting and fairly unique experience.