Kyoto Trip (2)
Manager Lee snickered.
"I think I finally get why you can't stand Oh Ha-young, Chirok."
"Sir?"
"It's because of that Japanese beauty—Yoshiko, or whatever her name is. But no matter how gorgeous a Japanese woman is, it doesn't do you any good. She's pie in the sky. Same as back home—you can pine after an idol all you want, and you'll never have her."
The student spoke up.
"Liking celebrities is a free country, isn't it? That's how fandoms get started. We live in a world where they even sell celebrity merchandise."
"What do you think? Who's prettier—a Korean idol, or this Yoshiko woman?"
"They each have their own kind of charm. But Yoshiko has something distinctly feminine about her."
"Is that so?"
"You could say Yoshiko has a classical beauty. That's why her fans span such a wide range of ages. Tomorrow a lot of people will come out with cameras just to see her."
After dinner at the izakaya, the three of them stepped outside. The city streets were still ablaze with light, and the crowds had yet to thin.
Beside a park, women in short skirts stood in a line, staring at their phones. They seemed to be waiting for someone. Their clothes were decidedly revealing.
Manager Lee asked the student,
"Who are those girls? Looks like they're waiting for somebody. Don't tell me they're waiting for me."
"Haha. Those are tachinbo."
"Tachinbo?"
"Women who stand around waiting for customers so they can sell... well, their private parts."
"Is that right? The police don't crack down on girls like that?"
"They do. But the moment the cops show up, they scatter—and then they gather right back again."
"Huh. Not a sight you'd ever see in Korea."
"This is nothing, though. Go to a place like Okubo Park in Tokyo and girls like that are lined up in rows."
"Aigoo. Their parents must be beating their chests in despair, whoever's daughters those are."
Kim Chirok still couldn't sleep even after returning to the hotel. It seemed a court date had been set for the Oh Ha-young case.
What if I go to trial and lose?
That would be a disaster. The scarlet letter of "sexual harasser" would follow him around and torment him for the rest of his life.
The thought even crossed his mind that he should find Oh Ha-young and settle it once and for all—take her down with him. But that wasn't a wise idea.
Would a Japanese woman do something like that?
His mind drifted to Yumiko and Yoshie, the two women he'd met in Myeongdong last time—the ones Jang Min-soo, the real estate company employee, had introduced. Those two, always smiling, always so bright with their greetings—he couldn't imagine them ever pulling a stunt like that. A thing that ugly was something only a thick-skinned, mannish woman like Oh Ha-young would do.
Should I hire a lawyer too?
Some of his old classmates had gone to law school. But he didn't want to hand his sexual harassment case over to a classmate. He wanted a specialist—someone who'd handled a lot of sex-crime cases.
That would probably run him at least five million won. It might cost less, or it might cost more, but either way he'd have to pay a retainer. And if he lost, he'd have to cover not only his own lawyer's fees but Oh Ha-young's as well. Ten million won would drain out of a household that had nothing to begin with, easy as anything.
Dad gets thirty thousand won for a single poem. How many poems would it take to make ten million?
Kim Chirok could only sigh. Beside him, Manager Lee was already asleep, snoring loud enough to rattle the room. Kim Chirok tossed and turned until well past two in the morning before he finally managed to fall asleep.
Kim Chirok woke to the feeling that someone was kicking him in the backside. The someone was Manager Lee.
"Chirok! How long are you planning to sleep? At this rate we won't even make breakfast."
He sat up and realized how late it had gotten. The breakfast cutoff was only minutes away. Kim Chirok splashed water on his face in a hurry and went downstairs to eat.
As expected of a small hotel, the breakfast spread was nothing impressive. The breakfast at the four-star hotel in Osaka had been decent; this was rather meager.
When they came back down after the meal, the student was already waiting in the lobby. He smiled.
"Did you sleep well? The matsuri is in the afternoon, so this morning let's visit Kiyomizu-dera. It's close by."
Kim Chirok asked him,
"Kiyomizu-dera—that's the famous temple, right?"
"That's right. It's one of Japan's representative temples. A UNESCO World Heritage site. The water that flows from the hillside is exquisite."
They toured Kiyomizu-dera. Famous as it was, the temple was packed even in the morning. Built on a hillside, the climbing and descending made for hard going. The temple itself was magnificent, and the three-story stone pagoda was well worth seeing.
At the base of the cliff beneath the main hall, a thin stream of water fell like a waterfall. Drinking it was said to grant longevity, academic success, and love, and a long line of people had formed. Kim Chirok and Manager Lee queued up and tried the water themselves. It tasted like nothing more than ordinary mineral spring water.
Finished with the temple, the group headed for Gion's hanamachi.
This was the street where geisha resided, also called Hanamikoji—the Street of Flower-Viewing, if the name was any indication.
Narrow alleyways lined with traditional Japanese houses stretched on and on, most of them two-story. Restaurants, bars, and teahouses stood packed along both sides. The tourists were so thick it was hard to even walk. It reminded him of the alleys of Insadong back in Seoul.
But because this district was home to the ochaya where geisha made their appearances, it was several times larger than Insadong, with far more maze-like side streets.
Manager Lee grumbled.
"Good grief, there are a filthy lot of people here. I'm hearing plenty of Chinese, too. Looks like the whole damn lot of them piled in."
The street festival seemed to be getting underway. Police had begun directing traffic. Westerners with cameras slung around their necks were pouring in as well—not snapping pictures on their smartphones, but carrying professional-grade cameras, clearly intent on getting proper shots.
After about an hour of waiting under the blazing sun, the procession at last began to pass.
The sound of drums rolled through the street, and people in traditional costume came dancing by with strange, unfamiliar steps. Tourists lined along the roadside were in a frenzy, snapping photographs without pause.
Then a carriage rolled past, carrying some ten geisha dressed in white. It was the Hanagasa Junko—the Flower Umbrella Procession—on its way to perform a dedication dance at the shrine.
Geisha ordinarily wore brilliantly colored kimono with long, hanging sleeves, their hair ornaments equally lavish. Today, however, they were in white—white garments painted with nothing but delicate orchids. Colorful clothes, it seemed, could not be worn at a sacred shrine. In white, the geisha looked as pure and graceful as swans.
Someone had shouted it. But men in traditional dress were escorting the carriage, and it was hard to get a clear look. When tourists tried to press in for photographs, event staff held them back and wouldn't let anyone come close.
The student turned to Manager Lee.
"If you want a proper look at the geisha's faces, we should go ahead to Yasaka Shrine. That's where they'll dance."
"That's the shrine Japanese people go to pray at, right?"
"Yes. We'd do well to get there early and wait. That's where the ceremony wraps up."
So the three of them pushed through the crowd toward Yasaka Shrine, going at a near run. It was packed there too.
In the shrine courtyard stood a large pavilion-like building—apparently the place where the dancers offered their sacred dance to the gods. Nobody was heading for the main hall; everyone had formed a ring around the pavilion.
Before long, the street procession filed into the shrine grounds.
The geisha in white kimono stepped down from the carriage and walked in. They looked like goddesses descending from the heavens.
Kim Chirok looked closely. The geisha he'd seen in videos had all seemed older, but the ones who'd come today looked young—every one of them in her twenties.
The geisha in the center caught his eye. She was a woman beautiful as a sculpture, and petite besides, which only made her look more feminine. The professional photographers raised their cameras as one and trained their lenses on her. Behind them, tourists held their smartphones high, scrambling to get a shot.
That must be Hirosue Yoshiko.
The gathered crowd began to call her name.
The geisha called Yoshiko lifted her head ever so slightly and smiled. It was truly the smile of an angel.
Ah... she's truly beautiful.
Kim Chirok found himself catching his breath.
A Shinto priest in a peculiar ceremonial hat came forward and said something. Then a group of somewhat older musicians appeared, knelt on the pavilion floor, and settled in. They carried not modern instruments but traditional Japanese ones.
The geisha in white all climbed onto the pavilion and formed two rows. There were ten of them in all, each holding a folding fan.
Music rose into the air, and the geisha began the dedication dance. It was as if celestial maidens had come down from the sky and were dancing, light as air, upon the earth.
Even talkative Manager Lee watched the scene in a trance. Their student guide pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and stared just as intently.
Truly beautiful.
Whether a god actually resided in this shrine, Kim Chirok couldn't say. But if a god received a gift like this dedication dance, He would surely grant any wish.
Camera shutters fired from every direction. There were bound to be journalists among them. Tonight's evening papers would almost certainly run the story: a dedication dance praying for the peace and prosperity of the nation, performed at Yasaka Shrine.
Kim Chirok wondered how much practice it took for those women in their twenties to dance like that. Geisha went to training school right after finishing middle school, so they had probably been learning since their teens. The ones without talent would have been weeded out; only those who could truly dance would have survived. Didn't Korean athletes and celebrities grind themselves down with practice from childhood too?
He found himself recalling something the H Group Osaka Branch Manager had once said. These days, the Branch Manager had told him, there were no geisha who sold their bodies. Income from performances and banquets alone was considerable. A modern geisha, he'd said, was best thought of as an entertainer trained by something like a talent agency.
Kim Chirok found himself nodding. Those women had surely been trained as performing artists from the moment they finished middle school, raised by something very much like an entertainment agency. There was no other way they could dance like that.
When the feast of dance came to an end, the geisha tossed fortune pouches out toward the audience, then disappeared into the main hall.
Kim Chirok turned to Manager Lee.
"You were completely mesmerized back there, Manager."
"They're really something. And every last one of them is beautiful. But you, Chirok—you're in trouble now."
"In trouble?"
"After seeing women like that, ordinary Korean girls aren't going to catch your eye anymore. Girls like Oh Ha-young won't even register."
At the mention of Oh Ha-young's name, his blood boiled all over again. All he could think was, What the hell am I supposed to do about that bitch?
Their student guide pushed up his glasses and added,
"I've been here three years, and this is the first time I've seen a dedication dance up close."
Kim Chirok smiled.
"They really were remarkable. To dance like that, you'd need—what, three years of practice? The footwork was no joke."
"Three years? Hardly. A maiko—an apprentice geisha—typically trains at the okiya, the house where geisha live, for five to six years."
"Is that so? So if they enter at sixteen, right after middle school, they wouldn't finish training until they're twenty-two."
"Korean entertainment agencies spend years training a single idol too. And geisha aren't even allowed to let their hair come undone when they sleep. They rest their heads on wooden pillows, which is why people say the training is brutally hard."
"Sleeping on a hard wooden pillow—that does sound rough."
"The kimono are heavy, too. They typically weigh over twenty kilograms."
"With those long hanging sleeves, I can believe it."
Manager Lee cut in.
"Then who'd ever want to become a geisha? Were today's geisha pulled from poor families and forced into training?"
"No. There used to be almost no applicants because it was so hard, but these days the numbers are going up. The income is good, and they're recognized as performing artists."
"The income is good?"
"They don't even have to work the bars. Appear at an event and they get paid well. They go out to tourist festivals, corporate anniversaries, promotional exhibitions. It's like how trot singers in Korea make good money doing regional events."
"Hmm. I can see that. They sing and they dance, so of course they'd be regulars on the event circuit."
"Kyoto gets close to fifty million tourists a year. Every one of them will want to see the hanamachi at least once. That's why the commercial district here is so alive."
"Makes sense."
"So even with the brutal training period, the number of geisha applicants keeps rising. These days they even recruit online."
"They don't take just anyone who applies, though, right?"
"Of course not. They look at things like appearance, I'd imagine. Since they come in right after middle school, most of them are probably from difficult family circumstances. And that desperation would only make them practice harder, wouldn't it?"
"Someone said geisha are like idols trained by an entertainment agency. That sounds about right."
"A lot of geisha are quite naive, because they don't know the outside world. They receive etiquette training, too, so their conduct is said to be excellent."
"Watching them dance earlier, they did all look rather demure."
Hearing that, Kim Chirok found himself thinking it was probably true. Children who grew up wild and free were likely more of a problem than geisha living under harsh surveillance in a communal house. One only had to look at Oh Ha-young, the hotel owner's daughter, and Bang Mihee, the PE teacher's daughter.
How rotten those two bitches were. Oh Ha-young had sued him for sexual harassment when he had never even touched her, and Bang Mihee was a woman who'd had an abortion after a premarital pregnancy.
The angelic Hirosue Yoshiko he had seen today would never do such a thing. Of that, he was certain.