The Role of Wine, Women and Song in Korea!

Since ancient times Chinese, Koreans and Japanese businessmen and government officials have used the sensual appeal and entertainment skills of young women as integral elements in creating and maintaining their professional relationships.      This custom appeared very early in China, apparently at least three thousand years ago, where it was centered on the Imperial Court and the highest echelons of government. Chinese courts maintained large numbers of women to serve and entertain higher officials and guests—with “scouts” seeking out the most beautiful girls in Korea and other tributary states and shipping them to China.      Early in Korea’s “Three Kingdoms Period” [roughly 57 B.C. to 669 A.D .]   troupes of attractive young women trained in singing and dancing, known as yorak (yoh-rahk), or “entertainers,” became permanent parts of the kings’ courts and the various ministries of the three governments.      As time passed, these young women came to be known as kisaeng (kee-sang), or “art persons,” and their numbers and influence increased dramatically.   In addition to entertaining their patrons and the friends and guests of their patrons they were also dispatched to entertain troops who were stationed in remote areas.      The fortunes of the kisaeng waxed and waned over the centuries since they also served as mistresses and prostitutes and were often controversial, but they were to achieve their heyday during the Choson Dynasty, which began in 1392 and lasted until the end of the 19th century.      During this period they became the best-educated, best-dressed and most elite women in the country, and their training and upkeep evolved into a major part of the nation’s commerce. [Over 10,000 of them were attached to the Imperial Court!]      The number and role of the kisaeng has diminished dramatically in modern Korea, but the institution continues to exist on a small scale and kisaeng houses are still patronized by businesspeople and government officials who also use them to entertain themselves and foreign guests.      In Japan, on the other hand, the institution of the geisha —the Japanese counterparts of the kisaeng —did not appear until the latter decades of the 17th century—first as entertainers for the most elite courtesans of the day, and it was not until the last decades of the 19th century that they replaced courtesans as the entertainers of choice by Japan’s elite.      By the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 there were some 80,000 geisha in Japan, and they had become an integral part of Japan’s business and political world—only to be mostly replaced by some 500,000 cabaret hostesses soon after the end of the war in 1945.      Now there are only an estimated 2,000 professional geisha in Japan [most of them in Kyoto], but in the meantime something quite remarkable has happened.     A combination of movies, books and television has romanticized the popular image of the geisha and now a growing number of ordinary Japanese girls are apprenticing themselves to geisha in Kyoto to gain the social skills they epitomize.      As is typical in Japan, sociologists and academics in various fields have joined in the public discourse about this phenomenon, virtually guaranteeing that it will continue to grow.      While small numbers of foreign businessmen and government dignitaries are taken to geisha inns by their Japanese hosts, large numbers are taken to cabarets and nightclubs that feature attractive hostesses.      Korean and Japanese hosts invite their foreign counterparts to kisaeng and geisha houses and to hostess-stocked nightclubs as a way of breaking down the cultural barriers between them. They know from long experience that interacting together with good-looking women is the fastest way to accomplish that goal.      It is important for foreign businessmen to be aware of the role that the nighttime entertainment trades play in Asia, particularly in Japan and Korea. The Japanese and Koreans use cabarets to psych out the true character and personality of their foreign counterparts, believing that they will truly reveal themselves only when drinking.      Japanese businessmen are especially skilled at feigning drunkenness in order to draw their guests out, and then just before the evening ends suddenly sobering up and expressing their true feelings about any negotiations going on, asking questions and stating their positions.   Copyright © 2009 by Boyé Lafayette De Mente ____________________ Boyé Lafayette De Mente is a graduate of Jōchi University in Tokyo and Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. He is the author of more than 50 books on the business practices, cultures and languages of China, Japan, Korea and Mexico. For a list and synopses of his books, go to: www.boyedemente.com .

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