A look at the misunderstood history of geisha

The term geisha (芸者) emphasizes entertainment, artistry, and performance. The first character, geiis the same as in words for the arts (芸術), artist (芸術家), performing arts (芸能), and so on.

“It cannot be emphasized enough that the image that geisha would almost automatically conjure up today – especially abroad, but not exclusively – is quite irregular if we try to historicize the term,” says Maki Isaka, a professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in Japanese performance and gender studies. “Geisha means ‘that which’.sha)’ Doing ‘gei (acquired artistic technique), a term used in exactly the same way in the past, but which was even broader and even included practitioners of martial arts.”

The term itself is not necessarily even gendered. Historians note that the first geisha were actually men who worked in what was then called Edo, now modern-day Tokyo. “Depending on the regions geisha because a ‘gender neutral’ term indicates male geishaand a gender signifier would be needed to indicate female counterparts,” says Isaka.

Geisha is also not a monolithic word, it is simply the word that has been adopted into English; in other cities, such as Kyoto, the term geiko is used instead.