A Dinner Party With Tokyo's Geisha
Japan's most private event. Tonight, you're on the list.
Next evening: October 27th. Limited seats available
Your Evening in Kagurazaka
For three centuries, an evening with geisha has been one of Japan's best kept secrets. You couldn't simply book one; you needed an introduction, and most Japanese people will go their entire lives without ever sitting in the room.
It is an evening we usually reserve for VIP clients in Kyoto. Now, for a handful of nights, we are opening the doors in Tokyo. Seasonal food, flowing drinks, live dance and music, and party games you will be talking about long after you fly home.
2 Unforgettable HoursDinner, drinks, dance and games
Up to 25 GuestsSmall enough to share the room with the geisha and make new friends
Kagurazaka, TokyoOne of the city's six surviving geisha districts
English-Speaking GuideEvery joke and story interpreted, so nothing gets lost
Three Hundred Years of Geisha
芸者 = Geisha
芸 (gei): the arts者 (sha): a person
Put together: a person of the arts. It has been the job description since the 1700s, and it still is. Here's the surprise: the first geisha were men. Known as taikomochi, they kept the party going in Edo's pleasure quarters with songs, jokes and storytelling. Then, around 1750, a dancer and shamisen player named Kikuya, from Fukagawa on the city's eastern edge, became the first woman to call herself a geisha. Within fifty years, it was a woman's profession.
Kikuya's idea was simple: a geisha is paid for her art, nothing else. Dance, music, conversation, and the rare talent of making everyone in the room feel like the guest of honor. That is still the job. Apprentices train for years, and the best geisha never really stop, taking lessons in dance and shamisen for the rest of their careers.
Tokyo is where it began, and Kagurazaka is where it held on. Just beyond the outer moat of Edo Castle, its cobbled lanes filled with ryotei, the discreet restaurants where politicians, writers and business leaders met behind closed doors. In the 1920s Japan had more than 80,000 geisha. Today there are thought to be around 1,000, with only a couple of dozen in Kagurazaka.
How Your Evening Unfolds
Two hours, four moments you'll be talking about for years.
Slip down Kagurazaka's cobbled lanes and into a traditional ryotei
Meet your geisha hosts over a seasonal Japanese dinner
Watch live dance and shamisen, close enough to hear the silk move
Take on the geisha at ozashiki asobi, the party games they rarely lose
Prefer the Room to Yourselves?
The house, the geisha and the evening, all yours.
Sit down to a multi-course kaiseki dinner prepared by the house's own chef, each dish introduced as it arrives. With no other guests, the geisha host your group alone. Ask about their training, their lives, the traditions they keep, or anything you have always wanted to know in an intimate setting.
More time to talk, more room to linger, and an evening shaped entirely around you.