”一見すると華やかな舞妓、でも実態は「現代の奴隷だった」…元舞妓の告発　少女が見たのは、“粋”という名のセクハラ、客との混浴、先輩の暴力、「やめるんなら３千万円払え」,” 8 March 2026

[Unofficial description by Business and Human Rights Centre]

Maiko, often described as the “bearers of Kyoto’s hanamachi (geisha district) culture,” are widely regarded as symbols of traditional Japanese arts. However, Kiritaka Kiyoha, who left her career as a maiko, says the reality was “a system of slavery.”

According to her account, male customers frequently made sexual remarks when drunk, and it was common for them to slip their hands inside the women’s kimono and touch the breasts of geiko and maiko (professional entertainers). She says that customers pulled up the hem of her kimono and touched her lower body, and that she was forcibly kissed during taxi rides.

During a hot spring trip she attended with the proprietress of a ochaya (tea houses at which geisha and maiko entertain) and several geiko and maiko at the invitation of a regular customer, there was a custom known as “ofuro-iri,” in which the women bathe together with male customers. When she insisted that she did not want to participate, a senior geiko who sensed her distress deliberately hit her head against a wall and injured her, which spared her from participating in the bathing.

While living at the okiya (the lodging houses at which maiko and geiko live), she received only about 50,000 yen a month as “pocket money.” After she quit being a maiko, however, she received a tax bill. Maiko have long been treated as “not workers.” While the okiya provides food, clothing, and accommodation, the women live there and train in traditional arts, being regarded as “trainees.”

There is also a system resembling indentured servitude. When she left, she was asked to repay an alleged debt of 30 million yen, despite there being no clear basis for the amount. Pontocho Tea House Business Association acknowledged that there are no written contracts between maiko and okiya, but said that “efforts are being made in the hanamachi districts to protect maiko from sexual harassment.”

Kazuko Ito, a lawyer and deputy director of a NGO Human Rights Now, pointed out that the situation constitutes “a clear human rights violation and what the international community calls ‘modern slavery,’ which must be eradicated.”