h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Taikomochi or Houkan, the Male Counterpart to the Geisha - A2197154
Author: kunoichi - U551001

This is my own, original work (I am Caroline Seawright) - although it is published on my website (see link in the article), I am happy to also have it Peer Reviewed, edited and utilised here, too.

Hopefully that is okay!

I think this is an interesting topic - all I can think of for now is that it might need a few more headers

What sort of headers would you recommend?

Something like History, Geisha, Taikomochi Shichiko, Taikomochi Arai, or some such?

yes, that looks right type of headers

Welcome back to h2g2 kunoichi! Thanks for submitting this Entry, we need much more writing about Japan and Japanese culture.

This is a great piece and we'd welcome it into the Guide.


I have a couple of very minor queries:


[the taikomochi - and the men became so few that they started by otoko geisha ("male geisha").]

Do you mean started [the] otoko geisha? perhaps you could clarify, maybe there is a missing word or a typo here?

[The men continued to assisted the women - ]

continued to be assisted by, or to assist?

I know those are only minor nitpicks, and that Milla has already suggested headers, apart from this it looks really great! Fabulous stuff

Thanks for the header idea, and for the corrections to the typos.

These have been updated. What else would people recommend?

This is a really interesting topic and you give a lot of useful information!

Still (as usual) I have a few questions:

'Since then the geisha started to decline as the popularity of the jokyu (cafe girls) in the 1920s due to westernisation.'
Is this sentence complete? I don't understand what it means. Did the geishas turn into cafe girls or did the cafe girls replace the geishas? (and what are cafe girls?)

I also don't understand the following:
'The taikomochi explains that he isn't gay, and that he's called a geisha,...'
We hear earlier that 'geisha' is the female version... does that mean he tells that he is not gay but he is female? Or what does it mean?

'The audience roared with laughter because they all knew that this was a joke, making fun of how geisha and taikomochi please their customers! Of course they don't go that far, which is why it is a classic, amusingly erotic skit! '
I find this wording confusing. In the first section you say that it shows how they please their customers, in the second you say that it doesn't.

'The geisha still have young women wishing to become maiko'
I thought they are two different things? Why does it help geishas if girls want to become maiko? Or are they the same? Further up you say maiko are dance girls.

'Downer interviewed Taikomochi Shichiko, a taikomochi from Tokyo.'
Is it relevant that someone called Downer interviewed him? If yes, who is Downer?

Are there any traditional clothes that the Taikomochi wear, that you could tell us about?

Nothing from me, in connection with the text and I believe that Milla has now gone away on holiday. Thanks for making the corrections.

This now has to spend a few days** in Peer Review, to allow for further comments, but then I'd expect it to be selected by a Scout pretty quickly. As far as I'm concerned this won't require much, if any, in the way of sub-editing.

Internal links to other h2g2 Entries would be useful, if you could suggest any?




**Entries have to remain in PR for a week. Further details can be found here: A77393541

Just popping this link into here:

http://marcdeclercqcollection.wordpress.com/tag/taikomochi/

It may be possible for us to ask permission to use this image. Otherwise maybe one of our artists will be inspired to illustrate it.

I hope my corrections have answered your questions there.

Although as for the 'Downer' point, do I need to introduce her twice? Usually once you have mentioned an author, you use their surname afterwards.

I could not find much at all about the costumes worn by taikomochi at all, but just spent an hour or so writing a paragraph about Eitaro (from this http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1108119/natural and other articles), a male geisha who performs as a female, but when I pressed Preview, H2G2 lost all of my writing!

I'm not going to rewrite it now, but I am really quite peeved by that. I used 'preview' a few times while updating it, until the last one when everything vanished! I don't suppose there is a way to get it back?

Anyway, I am not sure how to add images to the article, or what permissions one would need to be able to use it. Any ideas?

Sorry, I missed that you had already introduced her.

I'm afraid that sometimes happens. Save your writng as often as you can, preview doesn't have any effect on whether your text is saved. The same happened to me very often already.

You can't add a picture to the Entry yourself. The Editors can do this for you once the Entry gets published. Any picture has to be either made by yourself or you have to have to get permission to use it by the copyright owner/artist or it's open source. In other cases the h2g2 Community Artists can make a picture for you. If you have a picture you can send it to artists at h2g2 dot com.

Brunel, under "preferences" is more reliable about preserving your text than Pliny (the blue front page screen).

I have mine set up with Brunel as home screen and that allows me to move back and forth between Brunel and Pliny by means of hitting 'Front Page' for Pliny.

Alternatively, you can list the Brunel screen, in bookmarks.

Did find a nice picture of a drum (taiko).




https://www.google.com/webhp#sclient=psy-ab&q=taikomochi%2C+historic+photos%2C+images&oq=taikomochi%2C+historic+photos%2C+images&gs_l=serp.12...9592.50497.0.70441.52.35.1.0.0.8.801.6568.1j27j5j0j1j0j1.35.0....0...1c.1.19.psy-ab.s7frAczMcTE&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&fp=a144351cce8306e3&biw=1280&bih=677




There appears to be very little in the way of historic photos on the net, with so small a number of contemporary performers, I suppose that is not to be expected.

Try that one more time.

http://chaari.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/what-is-a-taikomochi/

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/drum-and-box-with-maki-e-decoration-466115




Don't bother about the broken link above, its the wrong one.

Thanks for that, all.

Next time I will try to write elsewhere, even in a tex editor, and then update here, I think.

Will think about trying to write about the female-impersonator-geisha again later in the week. Hope the updates this morning were okay!

I have fixed another error I noticed, and added a paragraph about geisha Eitaro.

These are the internal links I could add. What do you think? Do I add them, or do the mods add them?

Kyoto - http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A7644026
Japanese Tea Ceremonies - http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A3651400

But there aren't too many articles about Japan or Japanese things to which I could link. I'm quite surprised that there isn't one about Tokyo, for instance!

Japanese History and Culture - http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A19773624

This might be another, but not sure where to link it, exactly.

This is an excellent piece of writing! Well done.

The only thing I could see wrong with it was the sentence already pointed out by Tavaron:

"Since then the geisha started to decline as the popularity of the jokyuu (cafe girls and show girls) in the 1920s due to westernisation"

You have "as the popularity of the jokyuu" but you don't finish the sentence. I presume it should be "as the popularity of the jokyuu increased".

Oops! Thanks for that, it is fixed now.

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Well done!