The secrets of a geisha’s kimono

You probably know the basic names and pieces of a kimono, but there is much more to that robe than what meets the eye.

First of all there is the kimono. They tend to be all the same length, so no matter how short you are, you’ll probably get one that is similar in length to one that belongs to the tallest person in town. If it’s too long, you can fold it underneath the obi so that it doesn’t show.

Then there is the obi. The way it is tied can vary depending on who is wearing it, the season and/or the occasion. They are very long and can even reach one side of the hallway to the other, so just imagine how heavy it actually is when wearing it. Oh, and if it's tied up at the front then it's not a geisha, but a prostitute.

Darari-obi (lit. "suspended obi") is the obi knot that the maikos tend to wear. The bow nearly starts at the height of the shoulders and the edge nearly reaches the floor.

Apart from the obi there is also the obijime, a string that holds the obi in place.

Tabi are the ninja socks. There are many different types of shoes too, either those called geta (if they look like wooden beach shoes), okobo (the tall ones that maiko's usually wear) or zori.

They also change the type of underwear they are wearing depending on the weather. It's either ro, if it's summertime, or hitoe, in September. On top of the underwear but under the kimono there is the koshimaki, or thigh wrap, that is a silk cloth wrapped around the geisha's thighs. 

And you wonder how the geisha keep on putting things up their sleeves, such as fans or handkerchiefs, and nothing ever falls out? That's because there is a pocket inside the sleeves called a furi.

But what I find most hard to understand is the art of their hairstyles.

The momoware hairstyle (lit. "cut peach")is usually what the young geisha and maiko wear. It's an up-do with a (usually) red piece of cloth inside the bun. Men say that this is provocative because it looks like a madam's cave. If it has a pattern on it, the geisha has not yet had her mizuage, meening she is still pure.

Two other examples of hairstyles that maiko and geishas wear are the wareshinobu and the tsubushi shimada.

 

The photo is of a geisha wearing the momoware hairstyle. You can also see that she hasn't fully painted the back of her neck. She does this so that the men she will later compliment take more notice of the skin under the make-up. A geisha's neck is will always be shown until the first back bone, since it's "the most attractive part of a geisha's body". Something that would be like us seeing a girl wearing a mini-skirt.

 

In case you are curious, you should know that geisha try hard not to un-comb themselves, since doing so would mean a trip to the hairdresser, which not only is expensive but also painful the first few times. How do they sleep then? A geisha’s cushion consists in a stump of wood that makes your neck go stiff but permits you to stay beautiful the next day, called a takamakura.

A geisha isn’t a geisha just by wearing a kimono and having a funny hairstyle though; make-up is almost just as important. To put it on, a geisha uses many different brushes. I don’t know much about make-up, meaning nothing at all, so I’ll just tell you more or less what they use to paint their face and we’re done. First of all, they sometimes put a yellowish cream around their eyes and mouth that is made of nightingale excrements because it was supposed to be good for the skin. I say ‘sometimes’ because it was very expensive and I doubt they use it anymore. Then they spread wax all over their face and neck to later cover it up with the white paint. After this they add colour to their cheeks to not look like white pandas and then paint their lips and eyebrows. Kuroyaki is a black (hence the name) perfume that comes from crushed wood.

A geisha that has reached 30 years old no longer paints her face all white, but rather uses other kinds of make-up.

Clearly geisha do more than just try to look pretty. They have to learn all kinds of arts to be able to entertain men, such as knowing how to play a tsutsumi, a shamisen and a fue, they have to learn to dance and sing in the geisha way (nagauta). But I’ll tell you about this another time.