The true hostess with the mostest

IT was a moment they had dreamed of for years. Jill Clay and business partner Katie Chaplin took off their shoes in the tea house at Kyoto, Japan, and waited for their 'ozashiki' (private party) to begin. Upstairs, waiting in a beautiful embroidered blue silk kimono was a young maiko - trainee geisha - and her 75-year-old mentor.

Sitting down on the mats, Jill and Katie watched transfixed as the two women sang and played the most exquisite traditional Japanese music. Then Fukucho, at 16 the youngest maiko in Kyoto, turned her painted white face with her crimson lips towards her guests and began a slow, mesmerising dance.

Next, the geisha and her apprentice went on to show Jill and Katie how to play Japanese drinking games, including scissors, paper and stone. They ate a meal of rice, tofu, vegetables and soup in beautiful lacquered bowls. Throughout the evening, if the women so much as dropped a chopstick or a napkin it was instantly picked up. If they went to the bathroom, the geisha or her young apprentice came too - although they waited outside.

For Jill and Katie, who run a Japanese inspired website-based company, Vintage Kimono, the night was certainly one to remember.

"It's funny because we went in with all these questions and ended up just sitting there in awe," recalls Jill, 41, of Aske, near Richmond, North Yorkshire. "Words can't describe what it was like. After we'd had the party we were absolutely speechless, it was the best night of our lives."

Jill and Katie, 27, have been business partners for two years. The trip to Japan in April fulfilled a lifelong ambition for them to meet a geisha - women skilled in the traditional Japanese arts - and to learn traditional arts and crafts among the people of Kyoto. The pair had met at one of Jill's Japanese silk artwork exhibitions in Hawes, North Yorkshire, and went on to set up their Japanese inspired business.

"We started off thinking we'd make a few cards and ended up selling crafts and kimonos and things," says Jill.

But their fascination with geishas is just the tip of the iceberg. The pair hold exhibitions of artwork and sell Japanese crafts, books and clothing online. Katie, who's a petite size eight with long dark hair, is the perfect model for some of the beautiful embroidered kimonos which she dons for talks, exhibitions and press photographs.

"You can't keep her out of them actually," laughs Jill.

The pair have always had a love of things Japanese, although Jill admits she can't remember when exactly she fell under the country's spell.

"I guess it's from buying my first house, I've always loved Japanese influenced things," she says. "I can remember when I got off the bus in Kyoto during our trip and all I can say is I'd never felt more at home in my life."

Katie was partly inspired by the Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha she read as an 18-year-old, which has now been made into a Hollywood film to be released later this month.

"I seriously considered leaving my fiancee and going off to be a geisha," says Katie, only half joking one suspects - although she did marry George and the couple have a daughter Ebony, now six.

Katie and Jill, meanwhile, are not the first to fall under the spell of the enigmatic geisha who are known as 'geiko' in Japan. Geisha emerged at the end of the 17th century, a female answer to the male taikomochi - male theatre entertainers.

By the 1920s and at their height, there were more than 80,000 geisha across Japan. Now those numbers have dwindled to just a few hundred, but the myths around them continue. Geisha are often confused with the 'geisha girls' - prostitutes who used to dress up in kimonos and paint their faces white to entice the young American GIs during the war.

"The main thing we try to get across to people is that geisha are not prostitutes, they are artists," says Katie, of Newton-le-Willows, near Bedale. "If you even touch their kimono it is considered disrespectful."

Prior to the 1930s and 40s, young girls would be sold by their families to become geishas, although the position was still considered a great honour. Today, most begin their training in their late teens, after secondary school.

The women spend five years undergoing their training in music, learning to play the shamisen (a three-string plucked instrument) and the flute, as well as dance, singing, flower arranging, tea ceremonies and the art of conversation, encompassing world affairs and politics. The genuine Kyoto geishas wear kimonos, look impeccable at all times and speak in an ancient Japanese dialect, comparable to Shakespeare's English. But there are a number of imitators.

"Onsen is a type of holiday resort in Japan and they have what they call Onsen geisha, but they're extremely offensive to the Kyoto geisha because they don't study the arts and they are bad hostesses. A lot of people visit there thinking they've met a real geisha when they haven't."

The genuine articles live in geisha houses and host their parties in tea houses or at restaurants. If they marry, they are no longer considered as geishas, however they are entitled to have children with men, as long as the men can support the children for the rest of their lives. Often, the women will receive gifts from wealthy male patrons ('dannas'). Jill and Katie met one geisha who had recently been given a £3m house.

But even if you are a patron, it doesn't guarantee any additional services or attention.

"There's a lot of one-upmanship so if you have a patron and he's bought you a Porsche then another patron may try to outdo that by buying a Lamborghini for another geisha," says Katie. "And they don't get any extra attention, they have to book the same way as everyone else."

The private party which Jill and Katie had cost £600 for two hours, but they can take comfort in knowing that the price never changes, no matter how rich you are or what you buy the geishas.

"A couple of nights before we were at the party, the older geisha had been at a party with Richard Gere and he would have paid exactly the same," says Jill.

And it's not just anyone who can get an audience with a geisha, the women are enigmas even to Japanese men.

"Even in Japan, it is rare to meet geisha," says Katie. "It's like a gentleman's club. You don't just ring up and say can I have a party for Tuesday. It's a very secretive world and you have to be 'introduced' before you are invited to the tea house. If you let down the person who's introduced you, then there's a loss of faith, it's a big trust issue."

Jill and Katie were introduced to their geisha and maiko by a Canadian who is married to a former geisha. After their party, he remarked how he had flown a geisha and maiko out to America for a tour. The women jokingly suggested he fly them to England.

"We couldn't believe it because we were just joking, but he said 'of course you can'," says Jill.

A geisha and maiko will now be brought to North Yorkshire for a week in May. Jill and Katie have organised a series of events at Swinton Park Hotel near Masham, North Yorkshire, from May 23 to 25. They include a gala dinner and cocktail party, a number of lectures on the art of the geisha, performances and demonstrations of Japanese art and culture and a three-day art and gift fair. On May 22, the geisha will be entertaining school children at The Forum in Northallerton.

"We want as wide an audience as possible to see them," says Jill.

"They've been brought over here before by the Kyoto government but the general public have never had the chance to meet them like this before."

After the events, Jill and Katie will take them to Masham so that the geisha can buy gifts. It may be a little shocking to the residents of Masham, coming across the geisha and her young apprentice in their kimonos, beautifully dressed hair and painted faces. But if the reaction of Jill and Katie is anything to go by, they are sure to receive a warm welcome.

"I can't imagine what it's going to be like," says Katie. "But I can't wait."

* Memoirs of a Geisha is released on January 13. For more information on the geisha events in May, including the chance to meet one, log onto www.vintagekimono.co.uk or contact 07871 486011.