Will Japan’s Geisha Survive the Digital Age? – Disrupting Japan

You don’t usually think of Japan’s geisha as being an industry, but it is. In fact, strictly speaking, it’s a cartel. A cartel that is now being disrupted by internet-based booking agencies and low-cost substitutes. It seems that even geisha are not immune to internet-based disintermediation.

In this special interview Sayuki, Japan’s only geisha that holds an MBA, explains the business model behind geisha. We talk about the way things used to be, the current threats that have many geisha concerned that the traditional art form and the lifestyle will not survive, and how some geisha houses are trying to adapt.

This is a rare, behind the scenes look at the business of being a geisha and a chance to see how Japan’s geisha might survive and even thrive in the coming digital age.

It’s a fascinating discussion, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Show Notes for Startups

How Sayuki broke 100 years of tradition to become a geisha How geisha are being challenged by both the entertainment and tourism industries Changing geisha from a private art to a public one Why geisha might not survive the modern era of tourism The geisha cartel is being challenged, any why that's not good for anyone The challenge modern geisha face on social media The changes in training for the next generation of Japan's geisha

Links from the Founder

Sayuki's home page Follow her on twitter @sayukiofasakusa Become her patron on Patreon Follow her on Facebook Book a geisha experience

Geisha Banquet in Tokyo Private Custom Shopping Tour with a Geisha Private Lunch with Sayuki Kimono Shopping Tokyo Tour

[shareaholic app="share_buttons" id="7994466"] Leave a comment Transcript from Japan Disrupting Japan, episode 61.

Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs.

I'm Tim Romero and thanks for listening.

Today I’ve got something really special for you. We are going to talk about the kind of business that you’ve probably never heard any details about. Today we’re going to sit down and interview Sayuki, a Geisha. And since this is Disrupting Japan, we’ll be talking about the business side of being a Geisha. We’ll look at the Geisha business model and examine how it’s being disrupted by modern technology. And believe me, it really is.

Now, listeners outside Japan might not understand how special this opportunity is. Traditionally, Geisha are not really supposed to talk about their business. Geisha create the illusion of comfort, beauty, and elegance, that is unsoiled by such base things as money. But make no mistake about it; it’s an illusion. Geisha is a very serious business and Sayuki, who also has an MBA from Oxford, has agreed to sit down and walk us through it.

In fact, from a business point of view, Geisha are an established cartel that are being disrupted by new technology, the internet, and tourism websites in particular, and by low-cost substitutes. And there’s a very good chance that Geisha will not survive in their traditional form. In fact, many Geisha houses are proactively trying to adapt to this new market environment. But Sayuki tells this story much better than I do, so let’s hear from our sponsor and then get right to the interview.

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[Interview]

Tim: So today we’re sitting down with Sayuki, who is a bonafide Geisha here in Japan and we’re going to talk about the business of being a Geisha, so thanks so much for sitting down with me today.

Sayuki: Thank you.

Tim: First and foremost, a lot of our audience is either in Japan or knows a lot about Japan, but a lot of people don’t, so before I get started for the business can you clear up exactly what a Geisha is, what they do now, what they used to do?

Sayuki: A Geisha means arts person, literally. So Geisha are traditional dancers or musicians, and most of the entertainment that we do is private entertainment. So we go to dinners and parties, which are usually in private rooms, and not large-scale public performances, although we also do those occasionally.

Tim: Okay. You’ve been a Geisha now for about 10 years?

Sayuki: Nearly. Getting there.

Tim: Wow. Okay, so since this is an audio podcast, I should explain that you are Caucasian—you are not Japanese, which makes you very unique and I’m sure appealing in the world of Geisha. But can you back up a bit and tell us a story of why on Earth you decided to become a Geisha and how you managed to do it?

Sayuki: Sure. I’m an anthropologist. I got my doctorate from the University of Oxford, and graduating, I started to lecture in Japanese studies, and also to make documentary programs for television for broadcasters like BBC or National Geographic Channel. And I took a slate of ideas one day to National Geographic Channel, including ideas about infiltrating the mafia and all of those kinds of things. And one of those ideas was to make a program about Geisha.

Tim: So you started to infiltrate the Geisha?

Sayuki: Instead, yes.

Tim: Which sounds a lot more interesting and safer than infiltrating the mafia.

Sayuki: My life could have taken a very different turn.

Tim: I imagine so. I mean, but especially as an Australian, you can’t just decide, “I want to be a Geisha.” How did you get connected? How did you find someone willing to take you on?

Sayuki: I looked first among my alumni and I was the first white graduate—the first female white graduate of Keio University in Japan, and it’s a school with a very strong alumni network. And it came in very handy in the Geisha world because many of the tea house owners are Keio graduates, many of the customers are Keio graduates, and it was a really great network, and they really looked after me and helped introduce me to the Geisha world. So I was very lucky in that sense. But it’s true that you can’t just walk into the Geisha world. There’s a lot of misconceptions. There was an American anthropologist in the 70’s, called Liza Dalby, who wrote an absolutely amazing thesis about the Geisha world, after researching in Kyoto for a year. She was living in the house of an ex-Geisha and somewhere along the road, in her research, they dressed her up and sent her out to a banquet to experience what it was like. And she wrote her thesis on the basis of that research. And some people have made the assumption that she became a Geisha because of that, but it’s actually very different to actually become a Geisha. For example, in Kyoto, to become a Geisha, they would have to change their rules, their constitution, to allow a foreigner in for the very first time in Geisha history. And that would be an absolutely major affair, as it was for me. It needed the agreement of all 45 Geisha in the Asakusa and of all the people who are connected to the Geisha world, and it was a very major decision, and there was absolutely no way possible that Kyoto would have made this decision in the 70’s.

Tim: I’ve been in some hard negotiations before, but how did you manage to convince 40+ different Geisha houses to make this change? Not only accepting a westerner in but accepting—most people start off the Geisha training very young girls, right? So that’s a really big deal. How did you get them to make that change?

Sayuki: I think I was really lucky and I had very good introductions and those people worked very hard on my behalf. Asakusa is a very conservative, very old fashioned district and a lot of people realize that Tokyo is very much more conservative in many ways than Kyoto is. Kyoto is very conservative in the look and the way they do things but they have many modern business methods that Tokyo still doesn’t have. So in that way, Tokyo is still very conservative. In that way, I think it’s surprising that I got permission to debut in Asakusa, knowing now what I know about the Geisha world. There’s other misconceptions that people make. They think that I opened the door and now suddenly the Japanese Geisha world welcomes foreigners in. That is very far from the case. That’s not true at all. To get in a proper town district now would be equally as difficult now as it was when I debuted 9 years ago. Since I debuted, there have been a number of foreigners who have worked as a Geisha in the countryside, or in former seaside resorts, or Geisha districts that have very casual standards, and they’re not at all the same thing as town districts. In some of those districts, they have fewer Geisha than they used to have and they have a lot of need of Geisha for tourists who suddenly come in at certain times of the year. So they recruit part-timers and all kinds of casual people.

Tim: Geisha is not really a part-time job.

In the town that—see, there is a very big divide between a town class Geisha district and a countryside, or seaside, or former lodging town. Though along the road from Tokyo to Kyoto, there were 52 stops, and every single one of those had some form of Geisha, but they were not high-class Geisha. Because they were servicing for people who stayed one night only. So the first one of those was Shinagawa. That wasn’t part of Tokyo in the old days. And it went on from there.

Tim: So the further you got from either Tokyo or Kyoto, I don’t want to say the lower the standards got, but what is the right was to put it?

Sayuki: They were just more casual because of the nature of the clientele. So there have been a number of foreigners that have debuted in countryside Geisha districts. Nowadays, I have to point out, anybody who is a Geisha nowadays is serious about their art and serious about their job as a Geisha. It’s not a profession that is very casual these days. But these foreigners, they were all married, and the ones that debuted in the countryside or seaside districts, and this is because you cannot work as a Geisha without long-term residency,