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Fiona Graham | |
---|---|
Graham as Sayuki playing the yokobue Japanese flute in January 2013 | |
Born | Fiona Caroline Graham Melbourne, Australia |
Nationality | Australian |
Other names | Sayuki |
Education | Keio University University of Oxford (M.Phil., D.Phil.) |
Occupation(s) | Anthropologist, geisha |
Website | www |
Fiona Caroline Graham (born in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian anthropologist working as a geisha in Japan. She made her debut as a geisha in 2007 in the Asakusa district of Tokyo under the name Sayuki (紗幸), and as of 2018 was reported working in the Fukagawa district.
Academic career
Graham was born in Melbourne, Australia, and first traveled to Japan for a student exchange programme when she was 15. She attended Japanese school and lived with a Japanese family.
Her first degrees in psychology and teaching were taken at Keio University. She completed an M.Phil. in 1992 and a D.Phil. 2001 in social anthropology at the University of Oxford, focusing on Japanese corporate culture. She has lectured at the National University of Singapore, and been a lecturer on Geisha studies at Keio and Waseda Universities since 2008.
Graham has published three volumes of anthropology.
Inside the Japanese Company (2003) and A Japanese Company in Crisis (2005) are about the large insurance company (given the fictional name "C‑Life") that she joined upon graduation, and which she later observed, first as a researcher and later as a documentary film maker. Her major subject is "the uneven erosion of the commitment of salary men to an overarching corporate ideology"; she concentrates on the cohort who entered the company when she did; the reviewer of both these books for the British Journal of Industrial Relations viewed her portrayal favourably, but thought that it " not adequately address wider issues of structure and power relations".
The reviewer for the journal Organization of Inside the Japanese Company was troubled by the uninformativeness about Graham's interviewees and by serious problems with the book's quantitative survey. Nevertheless, he found the book insightful and rewarding.
"C‑Life eventually went bust in October 2000", and A Japanese Company in Crisis concentrated on the ways in which individual employees thought and acted in expectation that the hard times were ahead. The reviewer again found flaws with the book, but on balance gave it a highly favourable review. The review of the book in Social Science Japan Journal had similar high praise for it.
In Playing at Politics: An Ethnography of the Oxford Union (2005), Graham built on a 2001 documentary (The Oxford Union: Campus of Tradition) that she had made for Japanese television about candidacy for president of the Oxford Union:
- Graham focuses on the highly ambitious individuals who decide that their future careers will benefit more from being known as former Presidents of the Oxford Union than from the quality of their degrees. . . . The carping comments from those on the sidelines, who view the candidates as slimy self-degraders desperate for status, provide an amusing counterpoint to the seriousness of the contestants.
The reviewer for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute found the book a "witty examination of British political processes" and " to all would-be politicians and their tutors".
Geisha activities
On 19 December 2007, Graham formally debuted as a geisha under the name Sayuki, which means "transparent happiness", in the Asakusa district of Tokyo, after a year of preparation and training. She was the first Caucasian woman to do so. Graham initially became a geisha whilst directing a documentary project for the National Geographic Channel but after completing her apprenticeship, she was given permission to continue working as a geisha. She took lessons in tea ceremony, and as of 1 August 2011, was taking lessons in shamisen, singing, and her main art of yokobue, which she chose after playing the flute for many years. Her formal debut and membership of a geisha house distinguishes her from American scholar Liza Dalby, an American national, who worked briefly with geisha in Ponto-chō, Kyoto, as part of her doctorate research and attended banquets as a geisha in the 1970s but did not formally debut..
After being in Asakusa geisha house for four years, Sayuki applied for permission to have her own geisha house since her geisha mother was retiring due to illness. However, the Asakusa Geisha Association would not permit a foreigner to become a geisha mother. According to a representative of the Asakusa Geisha Association, they only gave special dispensation for her to be a geisha "as part of her study" and "did not expect her to want to become an independent geisha to begin with". The Asakusa Geisha Association did not confirm this. In February 2011, Sayuki left and has since operated independently.
In 2011, Sayuki opened a kimono shop in Asakusa. In July 2013, she performed at the Hyper Japan festival in the United Kingdom. In the same year, she also visited Dubai and Greece. In 2013 she was running her own independent house in Yanaka, Tokyo, where she was training four apprentices. In 2014, she opened a bar in Kutchan, Hokkaido. In 2015, she was invited to Brazil to train for six weeks and then participate in the Carnival.
Since 2012, Sayuki has had nine trainees and as of 2019, she runs a geisha house in the Fukagawa district in Tokyo.
Wanaka Gym court case
In December 2010, Graham and a company owned by her were fined a combined NZ$64,000 and ordered to pay NZ$9,000 in costs after being convicted of a total of 14 charges relating to the use of a building in Wanaka to house tourists after the building had been declared "dangerous" in June 2008. Graham unsuccessfully made various appeals; a final leave to appeal by both Graham and her company was rejected by the Supreme Court of New Zealand in December 2014.
Books by Graham
- Inside the Japanese Company. London: Routledge, 2003. doi:10.4324/9780203433638. Hardback ISBN 0-415-30670-1, Adobe eReader ISBN 0-203-34098-1, ebook ISBN 0-203-43363-7.
- A Japanese Company in Crisis: Ideology, Strategy and Narrative. RoutledgeCurzon Contemporary Japan series, 1. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005. ISBN 0-415-34685-1.
- Playing at Politics: An Ethnography of the Oxford Union. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2005. ISBN 9781281232168, ISBN 9781906716851, paperback ISBN 978-1-903765-52-4.
Notes
- The large Japanese insurance company Chiyoda Seimei Hoken [Wikidata] also collapsed in October 2000. (千代田生命保険相互会社について, Financial Services Agency, Japan, 9 October 2000.)
References
- ^ Ng, Adelaine (1 August 2011). "A glimpse into the secret world of geisha". Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- "The Sayuki Geisha Banquet service Starts!!". Niseko Japan. Japan: Niseko Promotion Board Co., Ltd. 7 January 2013. Archived from the original on 30 June 2013. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
- Brooks, Harrison (25 October 2018). "Keeping a tradition alive, from the outside in". Bangkok Post. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
- "Fiona Caroline Graham". Library of Congress. 2015. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 16 March 2015.
... studied at Keio Univ., worked in the Japanese life insurance industry; later, Master's degree, management studies and Doctorate in social anthropology, U. of Oxford; her exper. and production of a film documentary for NHK form the basis for the fieldwork in the book ... data sh.
- ^ Ryall, Julian (9 January 2008). "Westerner inducted into mysteries of geisha". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group Limited. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
- Grunebaum, Dan (June 2016). "Sayuki: Being a gaijin geisha isn't easy but it can be fun". Metropolis Magazine.
- Graham, Fiona (1992). Aspects of a Japanese organisation (Thesis). Thesis MPhil--University of Oxford.
- Graham, Fiona (2001). Ideology and practice: an ethnology of a Japanese company (Thesis). Thesis DPhil--University of Oxford.
- "Past Departmental Seminars". March 2019. Retrieved 16 March 2019.
- "2012-2013 Keio University: International Center Courses" (PDF). Retrieved 29 October 2015.
- "Course List (Spring Semester)" (PDF). April 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 June 2014. Retrieved 29 October 2015.
- ^ Tony Elger, "Japanese employment relations after the bubble", British Journal of Industrial Relations 44 (2006): 801–805, doi:10.1111/j.1467-8543.2006.00524_1.x. (Review of Graham's Inside the Japanese Company and A Japanese Company in Crisis and of Ross Mouer and Hirosuke Kawanishi's A Sociology of Work in Japan.)
- Leo McCann, "Lives under pressure: Exploring the work of Japanese middle managers", Organization: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory and Society 12 (2005): 142–144, doi:10.1177/135050840501200111. (Review of Graham's Inside the Japanese Company and Peter Matanle's Japanese Capitalism and Modernity in a Global Era.)
- ^ Leo McCann, "Pop goes the bubble: Japanese white-collar workers face up to hard times", Organization: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory and Society 13 (2006):158–160 doi:10.1177/1350508406060223. (Review of Graham's A Japanese Company in Crisis.
- Kuniko Ishiguro, untitled review of A Japanese Company in Crisis, Social Science Japan Journal 9 (2006): 141–143, doi:10.1093/ssjj/jyk003.
- ^ Margaret Taylor, untitled review of Playing at Politics, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (2006): 983–984, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2006.00372_25.x.
- ^ Martin, Alex (3 June 2011). "Geisha cuts into kimono market". The Japan Times Online. Japan: The Japan Times Ltd. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
- ^ "Melbourne woman becomes a geisha". 9 News. Ninemsn Pty Ltd. 8 January 2008. Archived from the original on 5 October 2012. Retrieved 7 July 2011.
- Corkill, Edan (29 June 2008). "Aussie geisha speaks out". The Japan Times. The Japan Times Ltd. Retrieved 3 June 2009.
- Bunny, Bissoux (October 2017). "A day in the life of a geisha". Tokyo Weekender Magazine: 24, 25.
- "Japanese geisha". Radio New Zealand. 5 December 2013. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
- McNeill, David (24 January 2008). "Turning Japanese: the first foreign geisha". London: The Independent. Retrieved 8 July 2011.
- Nakano, Keisuke (12 May 2008), "Meet Sayuki, first foreign geisha", The Nikkei Weekly
- ^ Romero, Tim (22 November 2016). "Will Japan's Geisha Survive the Digital Age? – Disrupting Japan". Disrupting Japan. Archived from the original on 27 September 2017. Retrieved 27 September 2017.
- ^ Grunebaum, Dan (3 June 2016). "SAYUKI Being a gaijin geisha isn't easy, but it can be fun". Metropolis. Retrieved 19 January 2016.
- Sayuki. "Getting to be a Geisha". The Mainichi Daily News. Japan: The Mainichi Newspapers. Archived from the original on 8 September 2011. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
- admin (8 October 2015). "Life inside the Flower and Willow World". WAttention.com. Retrieved 11 July 2019.
- Dalby, Liza (1983). Geisha. London: Vintage U.K. pp. 106–112. ISBN 978-0-09-928638-7.
- Hyslop, Leah (4 October 2010). "Liza Dalby, the blue-eyed geisha". The Telegraph. London. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
- Corkill, Edan. "Aussie geisha speaks out". The Japan Times. The Japan Times. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
- Wallace, Rick (6 June 2011). "Aussie Geisha Fiona Graham rejects reports she's split with Asakusa Geisha Association". The Australian. Australia: News Limited. Retrieved 29 June 2011.
- ^ Novick, Anna (7 June 2011). "Foreign Geisha's Future Uncertain". The Wall Street Journal: Japan Realtime. Dow Jones & Company. Retrieved 14 July 2011.
- 外国人芸者の独立ダメ...業界組合「想定外」と困惑 [Foreign geisha denied independence - Association uneasy at unexpected turn of events]. Sponichi Annex (in Japanese). Japan: Sports Nippon Newspapers. 6 June 2011. Archived from the original on 10 August 2011. Retrieved 5 August 2011.
- 外国人芸者 独立はダメ 浅草の組合「想定外」 [Foreign geisha denied independence - Association talk of ‘unexpected events’]. Tokyo Shimbun (in Japanese). Japan: Tokyo Shimbun. 7 June 2011. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
- "Sayuki The First Western Geisha Appears at Hyper Japan 2013" (PDF). Hyper Japan. 2013. Archived from the original (pdf) on 22 April 2014. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
- "The Western woman who became a geisha". thenational.ae. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
- "Meet Sayuki, the world's first western geisha". Metro. United Kingdom: Associated Newspapers Limited. 25 July 2013. Retrieved 13 November 2014.
- "花柳界初 外国人芸者 紗幸 好きこそ物の上手なれ". jukushin.com. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
- "The Western woman who became a geisha". Tokyo: The National. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
- "Archive copy". wikiwix.com. Archived from the original on 23 November 2014. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - Lucas-Hall, Renae. "Sayuki Ushers the Japanese Geisha into the 21st Century". cherryblossonstories.com.
- "Who is Sayuki, Geisha in Asakusa Tokyo". Sayuki. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
- "Fukagawa Geisha - Reviving one of Tokyo's oldest Geisha Districts". Fukagawa Geisha. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
- James Beech, "Gym owner fined $64,000", Otago Daily Times, 18 December 2010.
- "The Wanaka Gym Limited v Queenstown Lakes District Council (2014) NZSC: Judgement of the Court" (PDF).
External links
- Official website
- Haworth, Abigail (9 November 2009). "Meet Japan's First Western Geisha". Marie Claire. Hearst Communication.
- "Lisa Ling goes inside the world of a modern geisha and a real-life nunnery". Oprah.com. Harpo Productions. 9 February 2010. Archived from the original on 10 February 2010.
- Irvine, Dean (2 February 2015). "'A beautiful life': The Australian woman who became a geisha". Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System.
- "Geishas 'millennials'", La Vanguardia, 28 May 2017.
- Bunny Bissoux, "A Day in the Life of a Geisha", Tokyo Weekender, 14 October 2017.