Mizuage

Mizuage (水揚げ) was a ceremony undergone by a Japanese maiko (apprentice geisha) to signify her coming of age. When the older geisha training her deemed the maiko ready to come of age, the topknot of her hair was symbolically cut. Afterward, a party would be held for the maiko.

During the Edo period, courtesans undergoing mizuage were sponsored by a patron who had the right of taking their virginity. Mizuage has also historically been connected with loss of virginity of maiko, but this practice became illegal in 1959.

According to research by anthropologist Liza Dalby, mizuage was an important initiation to womanhood and the geisha world. Mizuage gave way to the next ritual often referred to as ‘turning the collar’ or ‘Erikae’: where a maiko exchanges her red collar (maiko) for a white collar (geisha). Previously to the mid twentieth century, all maiko had to go through this ceremony in order to become a full fledged geisha. Once the mizuage patron's function served (of deflowering the young maiko) he was to have no further relations with the girl. Mizuage was not considered by geisha to be an act of prostitution. The money acquired for a maiko’s mizuage was a great sum and it was used to promote her debut as a geisha.

Since 1959, mizuage has become the equivalent of a sweet sixteen party. Mineko Iwasaki, one of the geishas that Golden met while writing "Memoirs of a Geisha" described mizuage in her autobiography as being an initiation party. Mizuage was demonstrated on the to-be geisha by a change in hairstyle. It is a celebration of the passage of girl (maiko) to woman (geisha).

In Fiction
Arthur Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha portrays the mizuage as a financial arrangement in which a girl's virginity is sold to a "mizuage patron."