When Kiyoha Kiritaka left Kyoto’s geisha district in 2016, she was escaping what she now calls “a system of slavery”, exposing a darker reality behind one of Japan’s most celebrated traditions.
Kiritaka entered the geisha world as a teenager, drawn to its traditional arts. She practised Japanese dance, the shamisen (a Japanese stringed instrument) and the tea ceremony, hoping one day to become a fully fledged geisha.
But after just over a year as a maiko – an apprentice geisha – she says she found herself trapped in what she describes as an “extremely abnormal world”.
