The word geisha means ‘arts person’ – gei is ‘art or arts’, sha is ‘person’. Geisha are performers who spend five years – as long as a university course – learning to sing, dance, play musical instruments, act and make charming conversation. They are as strictly trained as ballerinas in the west. But they are parlour performers – they perform not before huge audiences but at teahouse parties, in small intimate settings. It’s a tradition that we don’t have in the west. They are, if you like, celebrities – and like celebrities they may also have a love life. Yet for some reason westerners find the concept of geisha endlessly titillating. Whenever I give lectures on geisha and describe the rigours of their daily lives there’s always someone in the audience who gets up and asks if they’re prostitutes. Yet our celebrities can have a wild love life without being tarred with that brush. Another case of cultural misunderstanding?