Mizuage

Mizuage (水揚げ^?, lit. "hoisting from water") was a ceremony undergone by a Japanese maiko (apprentice geisha) to signify her coming of age. When the older geisha (in charge of the maiko's training) considered the young maiko ready to come of age, the topknot of her hair was symbolically cut. Afterward, a party would be held for the maiko.

During the Edo period, courtesans undergoing mizuage were sponsored by a patron who had the right of taking their virginity.^[1] Mizuage has also historically been connected with loss of virginity of maiko,^[2][3] but this practice became illegal in 1959.^[4]

According to research by anthropologist Liza Dalby, mizuage was an important initiation to womanhood and the geisha world. Mizuage gave way to the next ritual often referred to as ‘turning the collar’ or ‘Erikae’: where a maiko exchanges her red collar (maiko) for a white collar (geisha). Previously to the mid twentieth century, all maiko had to go through this ceremony in order to become a full fledged geisha. Once the mizuage patron's function (of deflowering the young maiko) was served, he was to have no further relations with the girl.^[5] Mizuage was not considered by geisha to be an act of prostitution. The money acquired for a maiko’s mizuage was a great sum and it was used to promote her debut as a geisha.^[6]

Since 1959, mizuage has become the equivalent of a sweet sixteen party. Mineko Iwasaki, one of the geishas that Arthur Golden met while writing "Memoirs of a Geisha" described mizuage in her autobiography as being an initiation party. Mizuage was demonstrated on the to-be geisha by a change in hairstyle.^[7] It is a celebration of the passage of girl (maiko) to woman (geisha).

In fiction

Arthur Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha portrays the mizuage as a financial arrangement in which a girl's virginity is sold to a "mizuage patron."

References

1. ^ Seigle, Cecilia Segawa (1993). Yoshiwara: the glittering world of the Japanese courtesan. [Honolulu]: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1488-6. page 179.
2. ^ Melissa Hope Ditmore (2006). Encyclopedia of prostitution and sex work. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-32969-9. , page 184 [1]
3. ^ Japan encyclopedia. Belknap Pr of Harvard U. 2005. ISBN 0-674-01753-6. page 234
4. ^ Reynolds, Wayne; Gallagher, John (2003). Geisha : A Unique World of Tradition, Elegance and Art. PRC Publishing. ISBN 1-85648-697-4.  page 135
5. ^ Liza Crihfield Dalby. Geisha. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998
6. ^ Lesley Downer. Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World. (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2000) Pages 256-266.
7. ^ Mineko Iwasaki. Geisha, A Life. (New York: Washington Square Press, 2002)Page 206-210.

External links

Japan portal

• Remaking a memoir - A new autobiography, former geisha Mineko Iwasaki
• Mizuage at wikidictionary