(Bloomberg) -- Hi everyone, it's Nate Lanxon in London. Japan's historic geisha culture is not often mentioned in the same breath as insights on modern consumer technology; the high-class entertainers, dancers and masters of performance artistry are more commonly discussed in the context of things that are "old-fashioned," or "relics of the past." Today I plan on changing that.
These elegant woman, who live their lives behind painted faces and layers of silk kimono, typically work every day of the week —but they don't get paid, and aren't allowed to marry unless they permanently leave their artistic careers. They spend years honing their skills to become virtuosos of a dying craft. (While they aren't forced to join or considered prostitutes, the vocation is fading away amid criticism that it subjugates women.)
On a recent trip to Kyoto — Japan's old capital city — I managed to get inside one of their performance houses, and felt I had to use this rare opportunity to ask them first-hand how much technology exists in their lives.
As teenagers, I thought they would have been patrons of Snapchat, Line, Facebook and WeChat, sneaking glances at the outside world and the lives of their friends between daytime commitments. And they were, once. But when they moved into their homes — or okiyas — to begin training as geisha, all the conveniences of technological modernity had to be sacrificed.
I spoke to three such women over two evenings in Kyoto's geisha district of Gion, and all told me that at one point they were quite tech-savvy. The first, an 18-year old in her third year of study, said she initially discovered her okiya after Googling such establishments. She knew she wanted to become a geisha and took to the internet to research them. But after getting parental consent to join, she had to give up her phone, access to the web and all other technology.
I met another geisha the following evening who said the same, and that once lodged with her peers in their okiya, communication comes mostly in the form of hand-written letters to family and friends, and news via newspaper or word-of-mouth. No email, no iPhone, no social media. One girl said she very occasionally was allowed to use a landline telephone to call her parents.
However, these women aren't Luddites. One evening I sat across a table from a pair of French tourists. They spoke no Japanese. The geisha spoke some English but zero French. I was surprised and excited to see her pick up one of her guest's smartphones and use Google Translate to move the conversation along.
It wasn't like watching a grandparent struggle with the latest Samsung or Apple product — it was like seeing someone who, actually, really knew what they were doing. The bizarre nature of this image was amplified by the traditional surroundings of the Kyoto tearoom we were sitting in, complete with the Japanese shamisen playing in the background, and the cups of sake on our table.
Despite at one point having access to plenty of tech, none of the women said they missed it at all. Their friends had accepted their choices and were happy to keep in touch via letters. The girls all came from rural towns far outside of Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka, and their traditional upbringing seemed to predispose them to being comfortable living without the gadgets we all take for granted.
I walked away from my two evenings with Kyoto's finest entertainers humbled, surprised and jealous in equal measure. With the recent scandals around Facebook data exploitation, confirmations of the fatal risks imposed by autonomous vehicle testing, and political leaders teasing nuclear war via social media, I couldn't fully stop myself envying what must be a life of art, dance and blissful ignorance.
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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Stevenson at rstevenson15@bloomberg.net.
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