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Information on Geiko (Geisha)

What Geisha Do
Arts and Training
(work-in-progress)

Appearances and Rank
Learn how to tell a maiko's seniority, if a maiko or geisha is real, and important transitional steps in their career.

Geimyo
About geisha names

Geisha Terminology
Some Japanese and Kyoto-ben Vocabulary

Outside Links

Immortal Geisha
This site has tons of information on geisha and pictures too! If you wish to research geisha and maiko this is where you want to come.

Recommended Reading
(coming soon!)

The Setting

　This role-play will take place in the fictional "Gion Yume" instead of one of the five hanamachi ("flower towns") of Kyoto. So in this setting there will actually be six instead of five hanamachi - Gion Kobu, Gion Higashi, Pontocho, Miyagawacho, and Kamishichiken.

Gion Yume (yume meaning "dream") is generally rectangular with about a hundred tea houses, though a geiko or maiko will regularly do business with about half this number, and would primarily appear at about ten or so (when geiko and maiko attend banquets outside of Gion Yume the engagement is still routed through one of the local teahouses). Mixed in with the tea houses (ochaya) are more modern restaurants and also the okiya (lodging houses where the geiko/maiko live).

 In the northern, middle part of the hanamachi is the Gion Yume Kaburenjo, a big red brick and wood building where the geiko and maiko practice all their lessons--dancing, drum, learning ochaya games and others--and do their major performances, like the biannual Yume Odori, which take place in May and November. Whenever the dances of Gion Yume are in progress red lanterns are hunt out with the hanamachi's crest in white. The crest is of five circles with a sixth, smaller circle in the middle of them; they connect to the middle individually.

Current Month and Events

Month: June

Events: 

Rokkagai

Upcoming Events

Gion Matsuri in July

Okiya

The main okiya (the house in which members of a certain geisha family live) in which I am hosting the RP is the Iwamoto okiya, though there are others. While you can create your own okiya and its members' it might be more fun to belong to one okiya with members already, for more character interaction. The Iwamoto okiya is large and one of the most prosperous in the district. We also have the Yanaginohana okiya, Aeriani okiya, and Saki okiya.

NPCs

NPCs are "non player characters". These are the people you will be interacting with in everyday RP life but are not controlled by me or anyone else. You are free to write interacting with and controlling these characters. These would be other residents of Gion Yume, the hair dressers, wig makers, kimono dyers, kanzashi and fan sellers, mothers of the tea houses, hosts of the bars, and other such people.

Here are just a few NPCs you can use in your posts. Please feel free to make up your own NPCs too!

　Shops, Ochaya and Restaurants

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