From next month, visitors to the city’s historic Gion district will be banned from certain streets after a surge in harassment.
For centuries, tourists have visited Kyoto to see the city’s geishas in their bright kimonos, white-painted faces and elaborate hairdos.
The plan to limit access comes after a Gion district council made up of local residents urged Kyoto City in December to tackle the issue of over-tourism, highlighting that the area was “not a theme park”.Many of the district’s atmospheric narrow lanes, lined with traditional wooden architecture, will be out of bounds for tourists from next month.
The picturesque Gion area, one of the busiest spots in Kyoto, has long seduced crowds of tourists with its time-capsule architecture, cultural heritage, and legendary status as home to geisha.The volume of crowds that throng Gion’s lanes is at odds with the culture of exclusivity that traditionally surrounds the rituals-steeped world of geisha, known as geiko in Kyoto.
The issue has become even more critical since Japan reopened its borders in October 2022 after two and a half years of closure because of Covid, paving the way for a resurgence in tourism. Sometimes they enter private properties to take photos, Peter Macintosh, an expert on geisha culture, told theA lack of cultural awareness is a key factor in causing discord between tourists and locals in Kyoto, according to James Mundy, of InsideJapan Tours, a tour operator.
In the 1970s, Liza Dalby, a US anthropologist, became the first Westerner accepted into the geisha community, after studying the form for her phD.
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