While I’d read many intriguing things about Kyoto prior to my recent trip, in reality it’s little more than a tourist trap, with European-style coffee houses and souvenir shops overshadowing the more authentic aspects of the city. Of course it’s still beautiful, especially at this time of year when one can enjoy sakura (cherry blossoms) from its many parks and vantage points. However navigating group after group following a flag-bearing leader is an inevitable part of doing so.

Nevertheless, the reason I had wanted to visit the former imperial capital was to learn first hand about the ever-elusive, ever-diminishing geisha and their maiko (geisha apprentices), and hopefully, with a bit of luck, spot one or two on their way to work as they shuffled through the tiny backstreets of the Gion district (an area famed for its okiya filled with said women).

As the sun went down on our one and only day in Kyoto and the coaches full of elderly couples heaved their way down the hill away from the main shrine attraction, like delicate flowers geisha appeared. Their tiny bodies were bundled up in colourful, yet rather restrictive-looking kimonos, while their feet were propped on wooden shoes that rocked precariously on the cobblestones. Painted white, bar a fork-shaped patch of skin left bare at the nape, their lips crimson and their hair swept up under regulation wigs they looked gentle and fragile, yet forlorn.

Puzzled, I later discovered that the number of tourists who stand in the path of geisha, grabbing them and forcing them to pose for photographs is on the rise. That might account their look of discontent, and why I saw so many dart dangerously, and with great difficultly, in and around cars and crowds, all the while with their eyes fixed to the ground. Sadly, the problem has become so great that many Kyoto travel guides now include geisha etiquette, instructing visitors on how to behave when in their presence. Little wonder fewer women are devoting their lives to the art.

Needless to say it was for this reason my photographs were all taken from a distance. Even then I felt like I was intruding.