The world of the striking geisha has always fascinated me. Being a student of Japanese film with a lasting curiosity of Japanese culture, the geiko have always had a spellbinding effect over me. Whether featured prominently in film, as in Kinji Fukasaku’s The Geisha House or in Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, or in print, the qualities of the composed, attractive Japanese entertainers have astonished me.

With A Geisha’s Journey: My Life as a Kyoto Apprentice, Komomo lets us in to her captivating world. Photographer Naoyuki Ogino accompanies Komomo on her entire journey, following her from the genesis of her search for individuality to the definitive realization of her dream as a geiko.

This is fundamentally a photo book, as Ogino’s work takes centre stage and fills each page with incandescent magnificence.

Komomo tells her story alongside the beautiful photography, filling us in on each phase of her journey. From moments of deciding to become a maiko (an apprentice geisha) to going to the geisha house for the first time and basking in its grandeur, this book carries us through all of the moments with closeness and loveliness.

Ogino’s photography is breathtaking. As a guide, he is inconspicuous and personal all at once. He is able to capture dazzling moments, stop them in time, and imbue the frame with luxurious emotion. The vibrant costumes of the geiko are absorbing in their intricacy and attractiveness.

Komomo’s prose is eloquent and amiable, proving why she is a popular geiko. The world she inhabits is one of traditional refinement and splendour and the book encompasses that reality with gorgeous exactitude. Komomo’s captions are informative and entertaining, as she introduces novices to a new and enthralling world that many have only seen in myth.

Overall, A Geisha’s Journey: My Life as a Kyoto Apprentice is a beautiful photo book accented by Komomo’s personal thoughts. It is an opulent, rich, vibrant experience and captures the life of a geisha in elegant colour.