In introducing Maiko Masquerade: Crafting Geisha Girlhood in Japan, Jan Bardsley explains that although she and her colleagues taught courses on geisha for many years, it is maiko (apprentice geisha) who figure so prominently in the twenty-first-century cultural landscape. Three strands of geisha studies inform her research: geisha history and their representation in Japan; analysis of geisha representation abroad; and US college courses drawing on the first two strands to examine the dynamics of representation. As one who also taught those courses, I would have enjoyed having Maiko Masquerade on my required reading list to engage my students.
Among the many virtues of this book is the emphasis on textual representation, written and visual, from anime to manga to illustrated tenugui (hand towels) and illustrated prints. The deft use of representation across media, along with interviews and observations by former geiko (the preferred term for geisha in Kyoto) and maiko, deepens our understanding of the values and priorities of the cultures that produce them. Among those values, in the case of twenty-first-century maiko, are agency and jibun rashisa (self-expression), or living in a way that expresses and follows one's own style.
To demonstrate the dramatic shifts in representation from the 1950s to millennial maiko, Bardsley describes how the Mizoguchi Kenji film Gion bayashi (A Geisha, 1953) and Sugie Toshio's Janken musume (So Young, So Bright, 1955) portray maiko as subject to sexual exploitation. By the twenty-first century, however, the threat of sexual servitude is replaced by the struggle to achieve maiko-likeness. “We are independent career women” (p. 127), Bardsley quotes from Yamato Waki's manga Kurenai niou (Crimson fragrance, 2003–07). Sex is now consensual; maiko are not dependent on financial support directly from clients. These twenty-first-century texts reject any association of maiko with sex work.
At the heart of Maiko Masquerade is the notion of maiko-likeness (maiko rashisa) and masking and unmasking, which link maiko texts in the 2000s as a prominent theme. Maiko-likeness refers to performing the maiko as she is idealized and expected to look and behave. She embodies youthful femininity, cheerfulness, charm, and a desire to please. The perfection inherent in maiko-likeness has inspired tropes of transformation and concealment of the ordinary Japanese girl, writes Bardsley. Performing an icon of Japanese tradition through masking, among other components of the package, so to speak, such as kimono, is a concern in narratives that Bardsley explicates, such as Crimson Fragrance and Koyama Aiko's manga Maiko-san-chi no Makanai-san (Miss Cook for the maiko girls, 2016–17), not to mention the “light novel” series Shōnen maiko: Chiyogiku ga yuku! (Boy maiko: There goes Chiyogiku, 2002–14) by Nanami Haruka.
The expression of “the pleasures of transformation and the dangers of disguise” in these texts assumes the existence of a genuine self, which is masked, or the existence of multiple identities, one of which is the masked self. The multiplicity of identities in Boy Maiko: There Goes Chiyogiku speaks to this through gender masquerade and sexual orientation. Chiyogiku is a teenage male who successfully masquerades as a maiko, while Shion, a woman in her early twenties, masquerades as a man, a club host. The narrative also suggests same-sex desire in these characters. At the same time, this series of “light novels” reinforces the notion of gender performance in general, for the ordinary Japanese girl must perform the gender of idealized femininity to be successful. Anyone can wear a mask, but maiko and geiko use it especially to enable and reinforce the hyperfemininity they assume, as certain manga characters, such as Chiyo and Shion, use it to assume the sex not consistent with their physical bodies but to safely coincide with heteronormative sexual desire when they choose.
It would be interesting to consider the mask here in the context of Japanese arts and letters, where it is a recurring trope. When the nō actor puts on a mask, he becomes the emotion of the spirit/character he embodies.Footnote 1 Simultaneously, the actor's “real self” recedes. Mishima Yukio famously hid his same-sex desire behind a mask of heteronormativity in Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku, 1949). And in another postwar work of prose fiction, Masks (Onnamen, 1958) by Enchi Fumiko, Mieko masks her rage and scheming to divert her perfidious husband's bloodline to a matriarchal one. That is not to say that the mask is the exclusive provenance of Japanese aesthetics, but it figures prominently.
Bardsley observes that “the narratives call attention to the artifice and performativity of maiko-likeness, value jibun rashii goals, but rarely question the social structures and conventions driving multiple expectations for femininity” (p. 33). Ultimately, the gender crossing in Boy Maiko: There Goes Chiyogiku reinforces the female-male binary. Therefore, deploying gender crossing and tantalizing the reader with same-sex desire dramatizes gender performativity and fluid sexualities, but effectively forecloses them.
There is a tension between geiko and maiko as the face of tradition and those as illustrated on tenugui and art exhibits, in which they are sporty and independent. The permanent exhibit 100 Maiko Illustrations at the Kyoto International Manga Museum depicts “typical aspects of maiko-likeness in cartoonish fashion” (p. 180), as well as subverting or satirizing maiko-likeness. Bardsley reads all these visuals in several ways, concluding that they are as revealing of Japanese popular culture as they are of maiko. Are maiko an anachronism, or do they fit in the world as gutsy and adorable shōjo (girls) with attitude? With an array of possibilities, it appears that culture projects onto maiko fear and desire, just as was done onto moga (modern girls) in the 1920s.
Bardsley presents a provocative, comprehensive look at the representation of maiko and girl culture in Maiko Masquerade. Not only is it a great contribution to scholarship on maiko, but it also demonstrates the politics and power of representation.
