Geisha’s Relationship to Makeup and its Gesture
The word geisha in Japanese literally means an artist or a performer. Geishas are said to be a form of piece of art themselves, they are reservations of the Japanese traditional art. A geisha is a woman who sings, dances, plays samisen, play games like konpira fune fune and make conversation to entertain and interact with their clients.
Before becoming a geisha, most woman go through the phase of being a maiko, who is a young apprentice of a geisha. Maikos usually have more and thicker make up, and more hair decorations than a mature geisha does, the lessen of makeup suggests maturity and reliance of a geisha’s natural beauty.
The makeup preparation of a geisha is one of the most time consuming and most essential part of her appearance, for it’s actually an invisible mask of barrier that separates work and her private life. With the makeup she wears on her face, she become hostess with elegant manner, always willingly to entertain her clients, the person before the mask must always be professional and strictly follow the rules of geisha with a sealed lips and always make her client feel at ease.
Once a geisha has her makeup on she must act right and remember that she’s “on-stage”, it’s an indication of her role, and she then must identify herself as a geisha.
Kabuki Actors’ Makeup and its Relationship to Gesture:
Kabuki is a traditional Japanese dance drama that features its actor with elaborated customs and dramatic facial make up. The word “Kabuki” derives from the word “Kabuku” which means out of the ordinary or bizarre. It’s distinctive from the other forms of theater like Noh and Bunraku for its melo-drama performance and dress up. The story line for Kabuki are usually subject about historical event or everyday life, it was originally a form of entertainment for the commoners. Kabuki actors evolved from women to eventually all men, and even female roles are played by the men actors.
One of Kabuki’s most essential feature for its dramatic is its makeup. Each actor heavily applies it on themselves in order to create a mask-like effect to more vividly enact the character, it enhances actor’s facial feature to indicate their role’s gender, age and personality; it also exaggerates actor’s expression during performance to reenact the mood of their character. Different shades of white base is applied to the actors depends on the age and gender of the character, then red and black lines are applied to shape the eyes and the month. Kumadori is a form of dramatic make up for supernatural roles like heroes and villains, it uses specific shapes and color to indicate a character personality.
For Kabuki actors, makeup is the indication of roles, it’s also a mask of separation of the person onstage and offstage. Just like the geisha, makeup it’s an indication of their position, and different position enacts different performance, and more specifically, different gestures. Kabuki actors would act out something that’s consider inelegant to the geisha even though they’re both people “on-stage”. The different kind of “mask” separates the two to perform different actions.
Japanese Tea Ceremony in Relation to its Gesture
Tea Ceremony is the way or the art of how tea serving’s being performed. Procedure for the ceremony is very specific considering factors like seasons, time of the day, and the number of guests. Each action in the procedure of serving tea is very specific in technique, and its action is called temea. Chabako temea is the action of removal of equipment from the tea box and set up, hakobi temea is the action of pouring hot water into the kettle, obon temea is the action of placing tea caddy onto the tray, and ryurei is the way of placing guests to sits and serving tea.
When having tea ceremony, it’s ideal for the host to wear a kimono, because many of the action were made originally to keep in mind of the long sleeve on kimono and holds it back to prevent it from becoming dirty. Many of the geishas also conducts tea ceremony for their clients.
The purpose of the tea ceremony is not entirely to drink tea, but it’s more about aesthetic and preparing tea in a sincere way, the host of the ceremony should always be considering the guest with every motion, even the placement of tea utensils are considered from the guest’s views.
Conducting tea ceremony is somehow similar to kabuki acting and being a geisha in that all three are very conscious of their motion and gestures, every action should be taken with consideration and mindful of the audience.