Okiya

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An okiya (置屋, okiya^?) is the lodging house a maiko or geisha lives in during the length of her nenki, or contract.

A young woman's first step toward becoming a geisha is to be accepted into an okiya, a geisha house owned by the woman who will pay for her training. The head of the okiya is called okaa-san. Okaa-san is Japanese word for mother. The okiya normally pays all expenses, including kimono and training. The okiya (boarding house) is a big part of a geiko and maiko's life because the women in the okiya are their geisha family, and the okasan manages their career in the karyūkai (flower and willow world).

Geiko (Kyoto dialect for geisha) live in a geisha house (okiya) and work in a teahouse (ochaya), where there are music, dancing, partying, sometimes food, and always plenty of alcohol. A geisha pays a percentage of her earnings to maintain the house and support all the people living there who are not working geisha, including maiko (apprentice geisha), retired geisha and house maids. Kyoto is the only place where the strict geisha training continues still and the geiko traditions are handed down. Today, Kyoto is the only place where you have the chance of encountering a maiko-san.
There may be more than one geisha or maiko living in an okiya at any given point. Inversely, there are houses licensed as okiya but without any geisha living there. Generally, a geisha who has fulfilled her financial obligations to the house may choose to live independently, but will remain affiliated with the okiya for the remainder of her career. Inside the small confines of the geiko communities, it is women, not men, who wield power: everyone hopes for girl children, not boys, so that they can carry on the line of geisha. For all of their focus on men when they are at work, geiko and maiko live in a matriarchal society. Women run the okiya, women teach girls the skills they need to become a fully-fledged geisha, and women introduce new maiko into the teahouses that will be their livelihood. Women run the teahouses too and they can make or break a geisha's career. If a geisha offends the mistress of the main teahouse where she does business, she may lose her livelihood entirely.

The okasan of the okiya may adopt one of the geisha as her daughter (musume), to be her heir (atotori), therefore the girl lives in the okiya and all of the money she earns goes to the okiya. Under such an arrangement, the geisha's debts are absorbed by the okiya.