Word: geishas
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Throughout Nippon the tactful, fluttering geisha- and her lusty sister the joro have given rise at last to a political issue between the Kenseikai (Conservative Party) of Premier Wakatsuki and his erst- while† supporters, the Seiyuhonto (True Friends Party). The pub- licists of these embattled partisans, in their effort to cast blame for the Yoshiwara of Tokyo upon their opponents, have stirred the Japan- ese press to investigate the seat of responsibility for such resorts of incontinence throughout the Empire. Despatches reported last week that so many statesmen of both the Government Party and the opposition have been found...
Broad, clean, tree-planted streets diverge from the Omon (Great Gate), near which stands a monument (TIME, July 26) to the 730 geisha and joro girls who perished during the earthquake. Within the quarter dwell in comparative luxury the 3,000 girls who are envied of their 50,000 lesser imitators throughout Japan...
Yoshiwara Life. Seen from within, the life of the quarter does not present the roseate aspect visible to chance Occidental visitors. The geisha must undergo a lengthy educational process during which they are taught to dance, sing, and play the long necked unmelodious samisen. Further instruction renders them expert in all the formal minutiae of welcoming, supping with, attending, and bidding good-bye to their clients...
...joro, girls deemed unworthy of such complicated training, are perfunctorily instructed by an uma.† Both geisha and joro girls are purchased in their ^eens from impoverished parents, about $500 being the lowest price deemed appropriate for a girl of geisha calibre. The geisha then technically rents an apartment from her purchaser, who advances her credit wherewith to keep up her establishment. By this subterfuge, the geisha-house owners remain legally mere landlords. Actually they hold the geisha girls who are in their debt as security until they earn enough to pay off the credits extended them. Though in many...
Against this possibility of a secure old age the occupational diseases of the geisha seriously militate. Despite the fact that the girls are examined every two weeks and are sent when necessary to the splendidly equipped Yoshiwara Hospital the toll of rinbyo, baidoku and raibyo is as heavy as in the Occident...