The Society for Japanese Studies

Review: [untitled] Author(s): David W. Plath Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer, 1984), pp. 455-461 Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/132146 . Accessed: 03/01/2011 08:39
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Review Section

Geisha. By Liza Crihfield Dalby. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983. xix, 347 pages. $25.00.
Reviewed by

DAVID W. PLATH University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Chuang-tzuwoke up from that famous nap and wondered. Was he only a butterfly dreamingthat he was a philosopher or was it the other way around? Anthropologist Liza Dalby here offers her memoirsof a year of fieldworkin Kyoto, where she was able to play the role of Ichigikuthe Foreign Geishaof Ponto-chd.The book is, as they say, a good read. It also is, I must say, written in such a way that the reader begins to wonder if the author is a geisha dreaming dreamingof being a yoru she is an ethnographer or an ethnographer
no ch5.

Ichigiku is a stunning performer. Already a media celebrity in Japan ("I was interviewed almost as often as I conducted interviews," p. xv) she may well become one on this side of the Pacific too. She can set a mood, project illusions, shape an anecdote, and tease the interi with clever one-liners. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry back in Kansas will find it easy to identify with her in her triumphs ("they laughedwhen I sat down to play the samisen"). And so the flower-and-willow world of the geisha, usually so peculiar and difficultto approach, will take on almost human dimensions. Ichigiku will take you There, into the zashiki. You can eye the swirling silks, savor the sake, sing along with michiteru samisens, almost ready to believe that even a clod like you could do well in those exotic soirees of Japan's artistic cognoscenti. Geisha just mightbe the first book by an Americananthropologistthat makes it
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to the screen as a feature film. (Oscar Lewis' Childrenof Sanchez was filmeda few years ago, with Anthony Quinnas Sanchez, but the film never has been released.) Here is a new challenge for Meryl Streep: to play Dalby the anthropologistplaying Ichigikuthe entertainer. If this were merely Ichigiku'sbook, a geisha's recordof a year in the gei life, my review could end with another line or two. I would cough a specialist cough or two at the overstatementsIchigikulikes to utter about Japanese life. And I might mutter about Ichigiku's Lawrence-of-Arabia pose: that life always is biggerand more real in the flower beds ("emotions that seem to run strongerin the geisha world, where romanceis trade.... the geisha live in rougherwaters than most," p. 312). But then, that seems to be the world-view of show-biz people, as in those narcissistic films where Hollywood portrays Hollywoodians in the agonies of making a Hollywood
movie.

This is, however, also Dalby's book, an "interpretive ethnography" (p. xvi). And if you read it as ethnographyand not just as entertainmentit can offer cautionarylessons for all of us who aspire to interpretJaponicato the folks back home. Research in Japan,all the more so when it involves fieldwork, thrusts us into daily dilemmas. How deeply should we get immersed in people's lives? What do we gain or lose, interpretivelyspeaking, at each level of depth and shallowness? How importantis near-nativeproficiency in the language?or at role-playing?And how do we guardagainstdeluding ourselves that we alreadyhave achieved it? I have never found a pat solution to all of this. And to me the orthodoxies of scientific methodism are as smelly as any others. But the ethnographer/ has to make choices and, having made them, has to Japanographer own responsibilityfor them. Dalby's choice is to be "unabashedly subjective" (p. xv). Well and good, a lot of us employ our subjectivities in our work. But I suspect that quite a few of her colleagues are going to be abashed by the way she conflates ethnographywith autobiography. When she was not engaged in the zashiki as Ichigiku, or being interviewed by the media, Dalby went around energetically interviewing others, observing, reading. She writes knowledgeablyon a number of topics relevant to the demimonde. Among others there are chapters on the social organization of geisha wards, on the norms of zashiki play and samisen musical genres and the correct way to wear kimono, on techniques of geisha training,on relations with clients and lovers. Thoughher base-campwas in Ponto-chdshe

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went on field trips to other geisha camps in Tokyo and Atami. This does not cover the whole domainof geishadombut it certainlyalerts the reader to variations in the landscape. In addition there are two historical chapters that trace the traditionalizationof the geisha in modern times. This occupation that had been a pace setter for Tokugawachic tried at first to grab the lead in displayingmodernfashion-e.g., one geisha dance-show in-the 1930s offered a Rockettes number. But that turf already had girls. been claimed by the hosutesu and the bar and the Takarazuka The geisha retreatedto the zashiki, to a nativist revival of kimono, samisen, and dodoitsu, and carved themselves a new niche as purveyors of ethnicfun'iki instead of mddo. For these two chapters Dalby has the stage to herself. Ichigikuis in off the green room, because she wasn't a part of Ponto-cho in the old days. Dalby has to operateas a scholar:marshalevidence, weigh sources, and persuade by presenting a line of argument.She can't, as she does so often elsewhere, hide behind Ichigiku, insisting that we accept her alter ego's utterances as Authority, for after all she "was" (in the book's phrasing) a geisha. Peculiaras it mightseem, for me these two chaptersare the most persuasive in the book. For one thing, here Dalby's role-confusion does not block the view. For another, here we can see events in geishadomclearly contingentupon events in the rest of the society. The geisha tribes are not-as they often seem to be elsewhere in the book-living on isolated islands in the floatingworld. Furthermore, although snapshots and illustrationspop up here and there in the other chapters, the effect is ho-hum. In the historical section, the aptly-chosen visuals sing to the text in graphic counterpoint. But more than any of the above, when Dalby gets away from Ichigiku she begins to take her reader on an intellectual quest, not just a guided tour throughthat exotic world that wives and tourists never will know. One can begin to see geisha life-work and imagework as processes shapingeach other, can begin to comparecertain of the dynamics of geishadom with dynamics that go on in entertainment subcultures anywhere. For instance, given the historical transformationsof the trade, are those who go to geisha parties today really Japan's artistic best and brightest (Ichigiku's view of it) or are they more often the richest and rightest? Geisha life-work is entertainment;much of entertainmentis image-work. Geisha image-workis ajabako filled with the paradoxes of ethnicity nested in the enigmas of sex, the whole thing wrapped in a furoshiki of premodern arts of intimate

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performance. Image-work becomes almost inseparable from lifework. Life-workis impossiblewithout clients who are wealthy or on expense accounts, and who have reasons to want these emblems of Japaneseness to be preserved. Contradictionsfamiliarto people in the entertainmenttrades anywhere, here get honed to razor's edge. Dalby does not show much appetitefor (as a linguistmightput it) disambiguatingsuch contradictions. All of this abstract analysis is my way of phrasingit, not hers. She rejects the idea of makingany comparisons ("a hacking away of cultural matrices") and opts instead "to elaborate upon what is culturally unique to geisha" (p. xvii). She doesn't sustain any analytic quest for long. But she is aware that there can be more than one blossomy path up the Fuji of cultural interpretation. Dalby would like to be "the Margaret Mead of the geisha world" (pp. 180-81). She has her share of Mead-like vitality, atsukamashisa, and flairfor the dramatic.But there is a powerful difference, and it has to do with the practice and purpose of ethnography. Mead never looked into her mirrorand saw a Melanesian or a Samoan:did not confuse playingnative with being native. Dalby has a very simple solution to the problem of moving through ethnography's field of epistemologicalmirrors: just play the role sincerely. With your sword of truth you can cut down the false chrysanthemums. Across the river in Gion, for example, there are not enough apprenticegeisha to staff a chorus line for the annualdance show. So "high school girls in wigs" are hired part-time for the season. "What the tourists do not realize is that the ranks of real maiko are padded with imposters" (p. 256). In her Preface on "Geisha and Anthropology," Dalby phrases it as a problem of true subjectivity vs. false objectivity. She warns us not to mistake her style of work for that of the conventional researcher who engages in "participantobservation." The C.R. deludes himself with "a degree of emotionaldistance that only creates a false sense of objectivity" (p. xv). If the C.R. only would, instead, engage in total immersion, play the role with his whole heart, his honesty would give warrantthat letting it all hang out in unabashed subjectivity is the same thing as revealing the unbewigged truth. One immediatedifficultywith this as researchpolicy is that in a lot of conventionalfield situationsthe locals just don't have any role into which they can comfortablycast you. Dalby was given a golden opportunity,and she did a gold-medaljob of exploiting it. She was not kept hoveringon the fringes of an occupationalsubcultureas an observer, she was allowed to participateas if she were a key per-

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former.But I wonderif her enthusiasmfor role-playwould have been tolerated for long if she had insisted on "being" the head of the Ponto-chdGeisha Association in as literal a way as, she assures us, she "was" Ichigiku. Or let's suppose that her next field project will be to investigate the women of the Imperial Household, another fascinatingset of emblems of ethnicity. Can we predict the reaction of the ImperialHousehold Agency when it is asked to create a new Princess called Kikuko, so that the investigator can deploy her unabashed subjectivity? Gung-ho subjectivity seems to buy you as many problems as does gung-ho objectivity. Immersion in the life around you, roleplaying where possible, empathetic participation,trying on other people's feelings as well as their wigs-all this and more is part of field research as technique. MargaretMead was one of anthropology's most vigorous advocates of subjectivityas the ethnographer's most importantsingle instrumentof investigation. But she was clear about what she meant:a controlled, informedsubjectivitytempered by all the critical self-distance that one can muster. During one period of her life she even went around urging her colleagues to undergo didactic psychoanalysis in order to strengthen reflexive self-awareness. Dalbynever questionsher alter ego or wondershow well Ichigiku knows what she claims to know. Ichigiku is a poem who cannot mean but only be. Ichigiku indulges herself, for example, in sneering at Country Geisha:for her, those in Atami. "An Atami geisha party reeks with prurience" (p. 234). The women only perform for the money, whereas "In the more prestigiousflower wards, efforts are made to sustain a feeling of mutuality" (p. 244). After all, "Onsen geisha is usually taken as a euphemismfor prostitute" (p. 235). Told that her views only echo the haughtiness of people in Ponto-ch6, Dalby dismisses the issue with a wave of the fan of sincerity. "I consider it a matterof intellectualhonesty, if that is not too grandiosea term, to make no secret of my own biases" (p. xvii). I consider it a matter not of honesty, of baring biases, but of whose biases are at issue, and whose we are seeking to interpret. Dalby's subjective biases remainjust as safely hidden, for all that the book is written in first person, as do the biases of the objective C.R., in whose ethnographies"the presence of the writer is hardly acknowledgedand things are recorded as if they were simply there to be observed" (p. xvi). The biases that are open to scrutiny are holds any point of view differthose of Ichigiku.If the ethnographer

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ent fromthat of her alterego, we never learnwhat it mightbe. And if the geisha of Ponto-chdhold a view of the world that is any different from Ichigiku's, that too remains befogged. There is a marvelous shell game going on here, and a lot of us indulgein it from time to time. Borrowingexotic robes, we chuckle at the round-eyesand the bourgeois, bash the bastardsunabashedly, then sit back and say, "Don't blame me, folks, I'm only telling the truth as my people know it." Done in moderation, done for a purpose, done with a bit of whimsy, there probably is no great mischief in it. Done for three hundredpages it begins to cloy, and I begin to wonder what has been accomplished. Some parts of the book made it a candidatefor the annualawardingof the Orderof the and the Snort. Chrysanthemum If we can trust Ichigiku, then one thing that has been accomplished is a detailed record of the world as perceived by a little tribe of women living on the rightbank of the Kamo River. This certainly is part of the work of ethnography,"to explain the culturalmeaning of persons, objects, and situationsin the geisha world" (p. xvi). But if one does the job uncritically,one runs the risk of ending in what some of my colleagues call secondaryethnocentrism.One sets aside one's own prejudicesonly to swallow those of one's culturalconsultants (or what we used to call our informants). Like people most anywhere, the Ponto-cho tribe see themselves not only at the center but as the pinnacle of their universe. They alone have preserved the true gei. In their zashiki the illusions are more real, the mutualitymore mutual,the work done for art's sake not for the money. Other tribes of geisha just don't measure up. Those in Gion, though they have some talent, are shabby. Those in Akasaka can't even play the samisen; those in Atami are legspreadingmercenaries.And as for barhostesses and wives, they are human furniture. Ichigiku sees all of geishadom in terms of this ideal type. The other tribes are not merely different, they are deviant; indeed some are fallen women. Perhapswe should allow Ichigikuthe rightto play the pot callingthe kettles black; she is only saying what she honestly feels. It's none of her business if some preferkettles. But what about the ethnographer?Are the folks in Akasaka and Atami going to accept this as an honest report on the cultural meaning of their world? Another sticky issue arises out of Ichigiku'scompulsive honesty with regardto people in her own tribe. From time to time she can't resist the temptationto talk out of turn. For instance, speakingof the

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house-motherwho took her in as an apprentice, she blurts out that the woman has a "blind spot (which may perhapsone day cause the
bankruptcy of the Mitsuba) . . . her fond devotion to her irresponsi-

ble, spoiled son" (p. 31). Sometimes when talkingabout the behavior of guests in the zashiki she names their names. And eavesdropping on her colleague Ichiteruat a music lesson, she announcesthat Ichiteru "would never be a musician, althougheventually some of the musical trainingmight seep in" (p. 253). Dalby apparentlyfeels no responsibilityfor what her alter ego says. But her tribeare not illiteratefisherfolkon an isolated island in the South Pacific, and these days even they read English. Gossip is partof the way any communitysustains its solidarity,and some kind of report on it is part of good ethnography. But most of us would ratherleave out informationthat we can't phrase in some way so as to avoid offending, without good reason, the dignity of people to whom, as guests, we owe so much. When the curtaincomes down, I walk out puzzling whether we have gained as much as we have lost in this show of honesty. If the purpose has been that of " presentingthe geisha's viewpoint" has added (p. xiv) then I am not even convinced that the role-playing The changes of scene have been deft, much cultural interpretation. the intimatemomentsin the zashiki and backstagehave been charming. I like playingWalterMitty too. But I continue to suspect that a conventionalresearcher,armedwith tape recorder,interviewingkey consultantsover a fairlyshortperiod, would end up with a portraitof the geisha world-view that is just about the same-without all the histrionicfuss. On balance, Geisha is useful to the specialist as an update on currentconditions in the flower beds. I found the historical section particularlyilluminating.Beyond that the book did not add much to what I alreadyknow about the geisha world. Know at a distance, of course; I have never been there and could not afford the pricey partying myself, but have drawn upon the reports of DeBecker, Perkins, and others who have been there. There has not been a good general book on geisha for a while; Dalby's volume answers to a widespread and perennial curiosity. Her talent as a writerought to win her a vast audience. And perhaps her audience will be more adept than I am at playing To Tell The Truthand will spot, even before she is asked to stand up, who the real anthropologistis. After all, "a geisha should keep up her image at all costs. Through sheer force of will, appearance can create reality" (p. 273).