Japan's geisha are experts in their field, but they're often treated like tourist attractions. Learn why Kyoto officials have ...

The history of geishas stretches back nearly 400 years. Scott Swan meets one geisha who says she's the first white woman in Japanese history to join the tradition.

For decades, a pic's international marketing followed the cues of the all-important domestic launch. But the Japanese campaign for "Memoirs of a Geisha" is more lavish -- and on a much faster ...

Geisha numbered as many as 80,000 in Japan during the 1920s, and were still part of a thriving industry as recently as the 1950s and ’60s.

For professional geisha, the scandal has touched a nerve. For decades, geisha have battled the widely held misconception among foreigners that they are Japan’s answer to the Western call girl.

ASSOCIATED PRESS ­Fukukimi, a maiko or geisha apprentice, from the Ishihatsu house of geishas in Kyoto, Japan.

“Secret Moments of Maikos” is an 80-image glance into the lives of maikos, young women training to be geishas, in Kyoto’s Gion Quarter.

“Japan,” says one oldtime patron of the Sumida houses, “is the land of the vanishing geisha. In the end they will wind up as purely tourist attractions—like the Navajo Indians.” ...

In total contrast stands the Japanese Geisha, neat, skilled in traditional songs, graceful in age-old dances and minutely educated in a polite ritual which by no means always ends in nimble leaping.

A great exchange rate, ChatGPT, and kimono-wearing bros have turned Kyoto into the loveliest tourist trap on earth.