High above Gion, Kyoto’s Imperial Hotel is a new frontier for geisha district

Kyoto –

Before the maiko starts to dance, the woman tuning up her three-stringed shamisen instructs me to focus on the teenage girl’s hands. The older woman, once an apprentice geisha herself, says it is there that the emotion of the dance is conveyed.

Over the next several minutes, Honoka (who goes only by a mononymous stage name like all in-training maiko and full-fledged geiko [the Kyoto-specific term for geisha]) glides over the tatami on the second floor of Toki, an o-chaya (teahouse) tucked down a narrow street of Kyoto’s Gion Kobu neighborhood. For one dance, she twirls a pair of red-and-gold folding fans through the air. For another, she performs with her hands free, pausing for the briefest moment to bring the long sleeve of her pale green kimono up to demurely cover her mouth.

Later that night, back in my room overlooking the tiled rooftops of Gion’s many teahouses, the remarkable view gives me pause. How many times have scenes like the one I witnessed earlier played out over the 1,000-year history of Kyoto’s most famous hanamachi (geisha district)? From here, at the newly opened Imperial Hotel, Kyoto, I wonder how many visitors have ever seen it like this.