Modern-day geisha triumphs in closed, traditional world

By Elaine Lies

KYOTO (Reuters) - Just eight years ago, Komomo was a Japanese teenager living in Beijing, riding her bicycle around the city and playing pool with her friends on weekends.

Now she is a geisha in Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, a proudly elegant member of a centuries-old but fading profession of female entertainers celebrated for their beauty, skill at traditional dance and music, and witty conversation.

Unlike the old days when girls would become geisha through personal connections, 23-year-old Komomo (Little Peach) took her first steps towards the vocation by e-mail.

As Komomo recounted in "A Geisha's Journey," a book of essays and photographs by Naoyuki Ogino due out in May, she had no way of learning about the remote and secretive geisha world until she found a website run by Koito, a Kyoto geisha who also ran an okiya (geisha house). (www.e-koito.com)

"I wanted to know more about my own country and that's why I chose this world," Komomo told Reuters.

Dressed in a formal crested black kimono with a brocade sash, her face covered in white makeup with just a touch of red at the eyes, she added: "I wanted to make Japanese history and customs a part of my daily life, not just wearing a kimono occasionally but every day and living life as they did in the old days."

But this seemed impossible until she found Koito's website, one of the first written by a working geisha.

"I was so excited that I e-mailed Koito-san right away, telling her my dream of becoming a maiko, an apprentice geisha, but that I didn't know how to begin," she wrote.