Background
As a high school student Dalby visited Japan in a student exchange program; there she learned to play the shamisen. In 1975, she returned to Japan for a year to research the geisha community, as part of her anthropology fieldwork. Dalby's research, done as part of her Ph.D studies at Stanford University, was presented in her dissertation, and became the basis for her first book, Geisha, about the culture of the geisha community. Her study, which included interviews with more than 100 geisha, was considered to be excellent and received praise from scholars at the time of publication, although some retrospective scholarship is more critical. During her Ph.D studies about the geisha community, conducted in Pontochō, she was invited to join a house in Kyoto where she was allowed to attend banquets under the name Ichigiku—in part because she was fluent in Japanese and skilled with the shamisen. She performed at ozashiki without charging money, and from the experience formed friendships and relationships with geisha in the district.
Read more about this topic: Liza Dalby
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