Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese to win the nobel prize (1968) once wrote “If for no other reason than to preserve traditional hairstyles, the geisha’s existance is vital. I wonder how and when these hairstyles developed.”
“Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman’s neck and throat about the same way as men in the west feel about a woman’s legs. This is why geisha wear the collars of their kimono so low in the back…I suppose that its like a woman in Paris wearing a short skirt.” Sayuri, in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ by Aurthur Golden.
An old image from last year’s Plum Blossom Festival.