Century-old Tokyo geisha festival revives dying art

Tokyo: The geishas glide with measured steps across a wooden stage, offering a glimpse of a long misunderstood tradition that is becoming a rare sight...

Tokyo: The geishas glide with measured steps across a wooden stage, offering a glimpse of a long-misunderstood tradition that is becoming a rare sight in Japan.

Dancing with paper fans and dressed in kimonos, the entertainers were rehearsing without the striking white make-up and sculpted hairstyles they are famous for.

But for seven days from Wednesday the women will perform in full splendour at the 100-year-old Azuma Odori festival at a theatre in the heart of the Japanese capital.

In the popular imagination geishas are often confused with courtesans, but in fact their work is to be trained masters of refined old artforms.

"Japanese people themselves often don't understand or have the wrong idea about what geishas do," Hisafumi Iwashita, a writer specialised in geisha culture, told AFP.