Liza Crihfield
apan's Geisha Dalby, in Natural Histon' (Feb. 1983), Box
4300, Bergenfield, N.J. 07621.
To Westerners, Japan's "geisha girls," with their powdered faces and traditional garb, seem exotic and slightly sinful. Most Japanese, reports anthropologist Dalby, have the same reaction.
Yet the geisha are not prostitutes. The first geisha were male enter- tainers in 17th-century Japanese brothels. No women entered the pro- fession until 1751, but 1800 they had claimed the profession...