Through Norie we made the acquaintance of Suzuno, great Geisha of Asakusa and my friend @maigeiko​ posted a photo like the one above they had saved with some great links. So i retired my post to the drafts, to revisit it one day again and work on it and maybe post it. Well, due to having a lot of time on my hands (as many of us do these days) i decided to do some research on Suzuno again. She fits snugly in my preferred niche topic of senior Geisha outside of Kyoto and to add to that, she is an outstandingly interesting personality with a unique path in the karyukai. With all that said, here it is and i hope you, dear reader, enjoy my post about

Asakusa Suzuno, the Geisha and the guitar

Asakusa’s Geisha are incredibly local centric so it’s hard to grasp that so many of them are not born and bred in the famous district of Tokyo. As is with Suzuno, legendary Geisha, she was born in Hokkaido, in Abarishi to be exact. Her hometown is known for long winters with snowy days and freezing temperatures. Crops are grown to be hardy and so are the inhabitants of the region. Maybe this is where Suzuno got her tenacity from, a trait that would benefit her in her path from her rural hometown to the big city, where she entered a parallel world, the karyukai.

Her debut as a Geisha in 1968 not only meant a new lifestyle for her. She had moved from her hometown to the big city and had found herself in a tight knit hanamachi with extremely high demands on her just after finishing high school. She was a rather talented singer and dancing had always come easily to her but she was confronted with a slew of beautiful and dedicated Geisha sisters. She knew she needed an idea on how to stand out. But standing out is usually a fine line to thread in the Geisha world where tradition is a highly held value.

Japan was going through a time of change yet again and 1968 is considered to be the year Japan found its voice with a surge in political activism, education in women and rapid economic growth. Suzuno’s unique approach to Geisha culture can be traced back to these developments directly:

It was to be the guitar that would set her apart from her sisters. She had learned it from an early age to accompany her singing and even though it was rather novel and almost unthinkable to exchange the trusty shamisen for a western guitar, the times they were a-changin’. In the late 60ies the folky guitar strumming was as popular as ever and Suzuno, as a modern girl in the big city, surrounded by change and experiencing the building of the first modern sky rise buildings in the country, was engulfed by a sense of revolution. The mood must have been electrifying, money started to pour into the hanamachi again and with lucky businessmen came many ozashiki. Suzuno made the acquaintance of important people and many of them came to see her because of her beautiful voice, her playing the guitar and her expressive dancing. When she got the opportunity to record her singing, she took the plunge and stepped into an old tradition of Geisha recording artists. Geisha had been some of the first Japanese singers on record so Suzuno was in good company. She still sings her hits to this day and they are crowdpleasers, reminiscent of another time.

The economic bubble burst in the 80ies and so the world of the Geisha specially had to endure a time of unease and dwindling numbers in applicants. In interviews Suzuno sounded calm but worried, she had come to call this world her home, but at the time the state of the economy seemed so fragile, it was hard to keep the spirits up. As much as she had profited in the 70ies, she was now challenged to make ends meet. But she was an intelligent business woman herself and to keep not only her own brand afloat but the whole hanamachi of Asakusa, Suzuno decided to take a big risk.

1991 Suzuno founded her own company. Still open to this day, it encompasses a few concepts: Outsiders can make an appointment to get dressed in Kimono and to learn about how Geisha wear Kimono as well. The idea was to offer an open door to recruit girls interested in entering the karyukai but also to educate the casual observer. Many of her students are happy to learn traditional arts from herself or her curated teachers and some find it very interesting to learn the gei of the Geisha without actually having to commit to the lifestyle. But the Bando culture school also acts as an okiya, so if the kimono dressing course worked its magic, she could enroll the applicant right away to her own okiya and dispatch the aspiring Geisha to the ryotei of Asakusa after they completed the gained training right from the source. It’s like a highway to success. And the whole concept is very Suzuno: To the point, very straight forward and effective. The latest success story of the school and okiya is her imouto Suzuryu, a dedicated Geisha since 2007.

A big party was held to commemorate Suzuno’s 50th anniversary as a Geisha in 2018. She performed her signature tunes on the guitar and her apprentices danced to recordings of her hits. There are not that many women so dedicated to such an intense lifestyle and to mentoring others like Suzuno so she absolutely deserved her spot in the limelight. And to emphasize the profound impact she has as one of the top senior Geisha of Asakusa, i wanted to share this great video with you:

This highlights not only her incredible talent as a performer, commanding on stage but also her important role as onesan. You can see her nodding to the offside and hinting to her sisters on when to enter, giving them cues essentially. The whole performance centers around her and her magnificent dancing. She is incredibly fluid and very expressive, her dancing speaks a universal language.

Suzuno is still going strong and very high in demand. Going through Japan’s tumultuous history of the last decades has made her come out stronger on the other side. Hopefully Suzuno will grace the hanamachi of Asakusa for another 30 years, i heard it has been done before in this district.

Sources: Kotechai3 with guitar / Asakusa Suzuno schoolgirl / Asakusa Suzuno debut / Asakusa Suzuno in brown / Kotechai3 / / sukemisuzu on Youtube