Hanamachi - Hanamachi - Kyoto Hanamachi - Traditions

Traditions

Each district has a distinctive crest (kamon), which appears on geisha's kimonos, as well as on lanterns (list of crests).

A summer tradition, around the time of the Gion Festival among Kyoto hanamachis is to distribute personalized uchiwa (団扇?, flat fans) to favored patrons and stores the maiko or geiko frequent. These feature a crest of the geisha house on the front, and the geiko's name on the back (house name, then personal name). These are produced by Komaru-ya Sumii (小丸屋 住井?, Sumii (family name) Small circle house), and the product name is Kyōmaru-uchiwa (京丸うちわ?, Kyoto round uchiwa). Establishments in hanamachis that have many geiko clients often accumulate many of these fans, and proudly display them as a sign of quality.

All the Kyoto hanamachi stage public dances annually, or odori (generally written in traditional kana spelling as をどり, rather than modern おどり), featuring both maiko and geiko. These also feature an optional tea ceremony (tea and wagashi served by maiko) before the performance. These are performed for several weeks, mostly in the spring – four hanamachi hold them in the spring, one (Gion Higashi) holds their show in the autumn. Different districts started public performances in different years; the oldest are Gion Kōbu and Pontocho, whose performances started at the Kyoto exhibition of 1872, while others (Kamishichiken, Miyagawachō) started performing in the 1950s. There are many performances, with tickets being inexpensive, ranging from around 1500 yen to 4500 yen. The best-known is Miyako odori, by Gion Kōbu, which is one of the two oldest and has the most performances.

The dances (name of performance and explanation) are as follows (listed in order of performance through the year):

  • Kitano odori (北野をどり?, name of area – see Kitano Tenman-gū) – Kamishichiken (since 1953), spring, varying dates, currently last week of March and first week of April
  • Miyako odori (都をどり?, capital) – Gion Kōbu (since 1872), all of April
  • Kyō odori (京をどり?, Kyo(to), capital) – Miyagawa-chō (since 1950s), first 2 weeks of April
  • Kamogawa odori (鴨川をどり?, Kamo River) – Ponto-chō (since 1872), most of May
  • Gion odori (祇園をどり?, Gion) – Gion Higashi, early November

There was also previously:

  • Aoyagi odori (青柳踊?, Green willow, willow in leaf) – Shimabara (from 1873 to 1880; ceased in 1881)

There is also a combined show of all five districts, which is called "Five Geisha District Combined Public Performance" (五花街合同公演, gokagai gōdō kōen?), or more formally "Kyoto's five geisha districts combined traditional theater special public performance" (京都五花街合同伝統芸能特別公演, Kyōto gokagai gōdō dentō geinō tokubetsu kōen?). This takes place during the daytime on two days (Saturday and Sunday) on a weekend in late June (typically last or second-to-last weekend) at a large venue, and tickets are significantly more expensive than those for individual districts. Connected with this event, in the evening on these two days there are evening performances with kaiseki meals, either a combined event, or separate ones per district. This is known as the "Five Geisha Districts Evening" (五花街の夕べ, gokagai no yūbe?), and is quite expensive (as is usual for kaiseki), and very limited availability; this has been held since 1994.

Read more about this topic:  Hanamachi, Hanamachi, Kyoto Hanamachi

Famous quotes containing the word traditions:

    Napoleon never wished to be justified. He killed his enemy according to Corsican traditions [le droit corse] and if he sometimes regretted his mistake, he never understood that it had been a crime.
    Guillaume-Prosper, Baron De Barante (1782–1866)

    And all the great traditions of the Past
    They saw reflected in the coming time.

    And thus forever with reverted look
    The mystic volume of the world they read,
    Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
    Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)

    But generally speaking philistinism presupposes a certain advanced state of civilization where throughout the ages certain traditions have accumulated in a heap and have started to stink.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)