Maiko Yuriha and Fall Foliage

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2020 has been a dark year, in more ways than one.

I don’t know about you, but I need to dispel some of this darkness and negativity I’ve been feeling.

I need some light!

I need some smiles!

I need some color!

I need some good memories to remind me how life once was and how it will be once again!

Fortunately, this portrait of the maiko Yuriha checks all these boxes for me.

I have not made many photographs this year, but I have been working on images that I haven’t had a chance to process yet. There are many of them. Too many!

As you can tell by Yuriha’s dangling yellow and orange hair ornaments, this photo was made in November, the month of momiji (maple leaves) in Japan. Since Yuriha’s upper lip is not painted, you can also tell that this was made when she was still a first-year maiko.

I first photographed Yuriha and her maiko sister Tatsuha on the day of their double misedashi (debut as maiko). It was by far the most challenging and exciting day of photography I’ve ever had.

I wrote about my experiences that day in a series of blog posts. You can read the first part here, the second part here, and the third part here.

Yuriha and Tatsuha’s misedashi was in January, and I did not photograph them again until this day in November. Why not?

I go back and forth about whether I should photograph first-year maiko or not.

On the one hand, I love their look. Their kanzashi (hair ornaments) most months are of the dangling variety, as Yuriha’s are here. I also prefer the red collars they wear and the typically bolder and brighter colors of their kimono.

All in all, first-year maiko are as visually striking as it gets.

On the other hand, they are brand new to their profession, a profession that there really is no training for. They jump in and it’s sink or swim. Since everything is new to them, they don’t have the well-developed identity that more senior maiko have, especially in their third and fourth years.

All in all, more senior maiko have a stronger sense of self than first-year maiko, which makes them much more interesting to photograph, in my opinion.

I found out on the day of their debut that both Yuriha and Tatsuha were still only 16. So young!

I decided then to wait until the end of the year to photograph them again. I wanted to give them time to get settled in to their lives and roles.

I also decided that since I photographed Yuriha and Tatsuha together on the day of their misedashi, I would photograph them together during photo sessions. It is much more challenging to photograph 2 people at the same time than only 1, and since I have been photographing geiko and maiko for so long, I needed a new challenge.

You cannot see Tatsuha in this image, of course, but she is standing next to me on the left and working as my assistant for this portrait. She was holding a reflector just out of frame beneath Yuriha’s chin, which accounts for the gleam in the bottom half of Yuriha’s dark brown eyes.

What I remember most from this day was how excited and enthusiastic Yuriha and Tatsuha were. I think part of the reason for this is that we were working in a garden, and there was no one else there but us (and my friend T-san, who was sleeping off in the distance).

There were no onesan (older maiko or geiko) or okasan to watch them, so they could let their hair down a little. I was also surprised to find out that Yuriha and Tatsuha were not often called to work together at ozashiki (the parties maiko and geiko entertain at), so they were enjoying the chance to be together.

I enjoyed it very much, too. They made my job much easier. My biggest problem all afternoon was that they sometimes were a little too excited and enthusiastic with their quips and jokes, so I had to gently remind them to focus from time to time.

And they did.

I am smiling now as I write this, and my mood has brightened.

I hope yours has, too.

I hope you are staying well and that you remember to smile as often as you can until we reach that time where 2020 is a distant memory, not completely forgotten, but overshadowed by better ones, brighter ones.

Ones like a laughter-filled afternoon with two young maiko in a colorful garden, not Eden, but pretty close!