A young woman who wants to become a maiko in Kyoto first spends about a year as a shikomi, living in and training. Then comes minarai, learning by watching. At a designated teahouse, she is allowed to see what happens at the banquets. The day she becomes a maiko is called misedashi.
Around the fourth or fifth year as a maiko, after the age of twenty, she becomes a geiko. This step is called erikae, the changing of the collar.
Kuden (口伝): oral transmission. A master passing the deepest secrets of a learning or an art to a disciple by mouth. Also a document that records such secrets. Isshi sōden (一子相伝): passing to one child. A master hands the essence of an art to only one child or one disciple and keeps it secret from everyone else. Menkyo (免許): permission. The certificate a master grants when a disciple has completed training in a martial or other art.
Japanese banks once had MOF-tan, staff in charge of the Ministry of Finance. Bank inspections were supposed to come without notice. To learn the schedule, banks entertained the ministry’s inspection staff lavishly.
In early 1998, prosecutors raided the ministry’s financial inspection department, and officials were arrested over the entertainment. A written question submitted in the House of Representatives on February 3, 1998, refers to the arrests.
In kabuki, the ie no gei, the art of the house, and the forms a parent performed weigh on the successor as a duty to carry on. A Waseda University scholar describes the heyako: a disciple or child actor judged to have talent and placed above a disciple but below a son.
The scholar concludes that what kabuki must pass on is the art, not the blood.