Foreign readers may not be very familiar with the professional traditional entertainers called geisha, but nowadays it’s not unusual even for older Japanese to be unaware of what geisha actually do.

Misconceptions about geisha that stem from highly sensationalized stories from Western perspectives flatten the complex cultural artistry of the profession. Detail of a Katsura, a geisha wig. Before ...

We’ve talked before about geisha as one of Japan’s distinctly female professions, so this time we’re going to share with you a few fun facts about the geisha and their floating world. How many of ...