Modern Day Geishas with a Perverse Twist

The Japanese Geisha culture has a long and tainted history. In the past, young impoverished school-age girls from farms were often purchased from their parents so the rest of the family could have money to eat. In exchange, these young girls were sold to Japanese Tea Houses in cities to be trained as Geishas, where wealthy nobles and businessmen would pay to sit and enjoy the company of these young women as they served them refreshment and performed music and dances for them. All the time the women were being groomed to be the consort, or exclusive mistress to the highest bidder. Their virginity was auctioned off to the winner of the bidding war, and while continuing to be a paid performer, she serviced her male patron. The practice selling the Geishas was outlawed after 1959, so that the culture was purely for performance and entertainment.

Fast forward to today and the Geisha houses are largely gone, only a few are left for tourists and the socially privileged, to experience with a small remnant of women who still perform Geisha artistry for historic and cultural preservation in Japan. The new and common version of the Geisha culture is the Japanese School Girl or “JK” which is an acronym for “joshi kosei” meaning high school female student. The JK is an adolescent girl who hires herself out for compensated dating, with the help of a promoter (or in our terms) a pimp.

The Japanese School Girl culture is largely one based on fantasy and image, almost an anime feature to it with the hair and makeup. (There are those in Japan who prefer the anime fantasy world to even these live pretenders.) The appeal is the illusion the girls promote of a relationship with the client, like the Geisha experience did. Although, wealthy businessmen can still experience the full Geisha complement in a few cities, if they have the money and an invitation from one of the exclusive teahouses, most people will not have access to that exclusive world. The middle class and working men go to the inner city to find the JKs on the street. Like prostitutes in the United States, the girls advertise their wares in particular sections of the city known for that activity. The girls often have price lists and for the most part are not selling contact sex, but fantasy and a particular kind of companionship. It can be anything from a platonic cuddle session to tea and conversation. Massage or fortune telling might also be on the menu, depending on the purchaser’s taste.

School girls do not have to go through rigorous years of training, as did the Geishas of former times, they simply need to want to put themselves out there and have a manager or promoter to recruit and sponsor them. Occasionally, the girls do perform sexual acts if they are inclined, but that is purely up to the girl, it is not requisite and is the exception. That is not true when the consumer does not agree to the ground rules and the girls can suffer catastrophic encounters of rape and violence. It is a risk the girls expose themselves to, but is still the exception to the game, because the modern day culture in Japan is actually moving away from natural sexual orientation, as is the rest of the world. In addition, monogamous relationships and marriage are in decline. Young people are delaying and refusing to marry now, forsaking sexual relationships for alternative means of personal gratification. This JK Schoolgirl culture satisfies the desires of many Japanese men without sexual encounters, extra-marital and nonmarital. They do not have to do anything other than make their purchase for the evening and then participate in the activity of choice, to fulfill the fantasy of choice.

There are many possible explanations for young people substituting real relationships and human contact for fantasy encounters. Some sociologists and economists have conjectured that the struggling Japanese economy is responsible for the dramatic changes. It has become difficult for middle class and lower income men to secure good paying jobs so they are not able to support a family. They rely on one or two lower paying, part-time jobs to support themselves with little left over. Also, the women who have been able to secure good paying jobs do not want to risk quitting their job to become housewives. Further, economic penalties imposed by the state ensue after marriage, such as paying a penalty for not taking their husband’s health insurance.

Another reason for the substitution of natural relationships is the ancient Japanese traditions of ancestor worship, ghost stories, and fables. These attributes of their culture make the Japanese Schoolgirls and anime, the next means in the progression, for the Japanese to escape the pressures of living in a high speed, high pressure world through interfacing western culture into their own by modern day fantasies. The spirit of globalization has crawled slowly along since Japan’s open door policy began in the 19th Century. It took off in the 1920-30’s and after WWII gathered mach speed, and now the nation has reached light speed with the rest of the world.

The world of having a young girl for the evening willing to keep company with the man without him having to face rejection while she pretends to be interested in his needs for a few hours is a natural progression of the western influence on Japan’s formerly sheltered, guarded culture. There is no risk of rejection by asking someone out, and there is no need for a Japanese male to even pretend to be seriously interested in the girl. They are no longer under the watchful eye of the emperor, they can buy what they want without any responsibility required. It is prostitution Japanese style, and it is having a great adverse impact on family life.

This is a very end-times phenomenon, in that people can engage in false relationships and feed their fetishes and lusts through pure imagination with someone willing to act out, as a business deal. No emotion or real care or concern for the person is required. You might as well hire a robot, which may not be very far into the future. The robots would work a lot cheaper, once it is paid for, without the frailties of a person. The Japanese are very fascinated by robots, as it is.

In watching video of these encounters, the girls were cold enough to be robots. They were aloof and uninterested like they were processing a bank transaction. It is inherent in the job of having to perform acts for people they are not invested in emotionally. The Geisha image portrays that with the heavy makeup that covers any emotion on the woman’s face, wearing the perfectly sculpted hair with layers of embroidered attire. The whole costume and makeup are all pure image, weaving the fantasy of the “ideal beauty” that is the Geisha. The modern inception is a young girl in a private school uniform with a short pleated skirt and a blazer, so that her identity is clear, as a schoolgirl.

The Japanese population is in decline because the people are transitioning from the natural order of things to living solitary lives, without the bonds of marriage and family. In a world where family is becoming everyone’s favorite religion, some in Japan are different. They do still worship ancestors, but the anchor of the family unit has been tossed aside for a life without the burdens that having a family brings, in exchange for a fantasy world. Japan, the world of Anime and Ghost stories and an insistence on theatre and bringing fantasy to life in media day to day, is opting for the imaginary world to escape the pressures and trials of living today. As the only nation to suffer a nuclear attack on their shores, and the constant threat of it recurring from their neighbors, i.e. North Korea, China, or Russia to name some threats, it looms perhaps more real to the Japanese than other nations. However, Japan’s long history of relying on false worship of all kinds of things rather than God, does explain their present day spiritual condition.

Japan has yet to fully recover from the 2008 collapse and although among the largest in the world, their economy is still fragile. They are under a threat from China on the seas, and from North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Concerns over unstable trade treaties with China and the United States add to the everyday pressures on this island nation. The Government has been buying back debt and printing currency to prop up the economy, which is the third largest in the world. All of the pressures of holding a major role in the global economy and the competition it faces with China and South Korea in their region makes the nation uneasy. Do these larger issues serve to weigh on the millennial generation to discourage them from having children and getting married? Or is it purely the spiritual condition of this world that this generation was born without natural affection as was prophesied in God’s Word? Perhaps it is a combination of both. The result is that the people are becoming more perverse and personally closed, making the possibility of a relationship with the Living God nigh impossible for them, never mind with another person.

“This know also, that in the last days perilous time shall come.
    For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
   Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” 2Timothy 3.1-5