Playback ’94] “If you run away, I’ll have the yakuza after you,” Maiko who escaped from a group told of the “darkness” of the Gion area.

What did “FRIDAY” report 10, 20, and 30 years ago? In “Playback Friday,” we take a look back at the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we will look back at a story from the November 4, 1994 issue that appeared 30 years ago: “Punching, kicking, confinement, verbal abuse… Maiko in Gion, Kyoto accused of escaping from a group of women! A History of Women Workers in Kyoto” is introduced here.

Maiko at a long-established Okiya in Gion, Kyoto, quit one after another by August 1994, unable to endure the daily treatment they received. These women testified to the “shocking reality” of the Okiya 30 years ago. The situation has been improved since the news report, and this kind of harassment is almost unheard of in Gion today. The article at that time reported the following about the accusation, which caused a stir for the soundness of traditional Japanese culture (the descriptions in parentheses are quoted from past articles).

He would mess up my hair after I had tied it up.

He even threatened me that if I ran away, the yakuza would come after me.

Four former maiko, Ms. A (then 17), Ms. B (then 21), and Ms. C (then 17) from Okiya X, and Ms. D (then 21) from Okiya Y, ran away from the Okiya one after another, unable to bear such verbal abuse on a daily basis. The women told this magazine that the treatment they received at the Okiya 30 years ago was horrific.

［The girls were bullied by the Okiya’s owner and other senior female staff members, and the bullying was directed at their every move.

Whenever they made a mistake, they would bring up their parents’ families and bully them. When they were in a bad mood, “they would get angry at us for wasting paper just because we were upset in the bathroom.

If the situation escalated, he would slap her with a slap, give her an iron fist, or even kick her with a flying kick or a roundhouse kick, causing tremendous damage.

When I had my hair done in the “we-shinobu” style, my head was once shackled and a pin was stuck in my head” (Ms. D).

They would mess up my hair, which I had just finished tying, or grab my kimono and drag me around.

［When the wives and sisters scolded us, we were made to sit on our haunches until they gave us permission. This was almost like torture. In the summer, they were on the verge of dehydration, and in the winter, they almost caught a cold from the cold.

“The hardest part was being forced to sit naked on the cold floor in the bathtub for a long time. The older lady would watch me while I soaked in the bathtub.

A chaperone monitors them even on their days off.

There is more to the realities that the four had revealed in the past.

［Even on their only two days off a month, they were not free to decide what to do for the day . They were not allowed to wear mini-skirts or jeans, and were accompanied by a chaperone when they went downtown. They were forced to live a strict, military-like lifestyle: they could return home only six days a year, and they were not allowed to take a day off from the tatami room even if they were feeling a little sick.

［In those days, maiko were paid 40,000 to 50,000 yen per month . In return, they received a “congratulatory gift” from customers, which together was supposed to bring in an average of 100,000 to 200,000 yen per month. ……

I think it amounted to several million yen over a five-year period. ……

How did the Okiya respond to these numerous accusations?

How did the Okiya respond to these numerous accusations?

There is no such fact. It is an old society backed by traditional culture, so everything is not divisible by arithmetic.

The four who had quit their jobs as maiko said they wanted to start a new entertainment service that would allow the general public to experience the hospitality of maiko, making use of the art they had been trained in. Did a disaster turn out to be a blessing in disguise?

Accusations of underage drinking and sexual assault in 2010

At the time of the publication of the article in this magazine, the “maiko group escape case” was not widely reported. It was not until December 1994, when Ms. D filed a lawsuit against Okiya B, demanding payment and restitution of compensation and four years’ worth of congratulatory gifts, totaling approximately 10 million yen. This lawsuit was reported by the media as bringing “workers’ rights” into the Gion tradition of “the proprietress and maiko being like father and son.

Today, this would be considered a case of power harassment, but at the time, there was no such concept, and the media only reported the arguments of the two sides in a straightforward manner, rarely touching on the “human rights” of the maiko. The general reaction of the public seemed to be, “It’s a traditional world, so there’s nothing we can do about it.

In November 1994, the four former maiko established a maiko dispatch company, Maiko no Yakata. It was reported in a newspaper article at the time that when they distributed pamphlets to inns and travel agencies, reservations were filled up to six months in advance. The trial was settled in April 1995 on the grounds that the parties had reached an agreement.

In June 2010, a former maiko accused on Twitter (now X) of forcing minors to drink alcohol and of sexual assault. It is still fresh in our minds that the work of maiko attracted attention at that time. Maiko and geiko, who carry on the traditional arts and crafts, are part of the “culture of Kyoto’s Hanamachi district,” which is designated as an “intangible cultural heritage linking Kyoto. We can only hope that this centuries-old tradition will be preserved in the future in a form that is appropriate to the times.