Fiona Caroline Graham is an Australian anthropologist working as a geisha in Japan. She made her debut as a geisha in 2007 in the Asakusa district of Tokyo under the name Sayuki, and as of 2016 was working in the Fukagawa, Tokyo district of Tokyo.
Graham's first degrees, in psychology and teaching, were taken at Keio University. She completed an M.Phil. in 1992 and a D.Phil. 2001 in social anthropology at the University of Oxford, focusing on Japanese corporate culture. She has lectured at the National University of Singapore, and been a lecturer on geisha studies at Keio and Waseda Universities since 2008. Graham has published three volumes of anthropology. Inside the Japanese Company and A Japanese Company in Crisis are about the large insurance company that she joined upon graduation, and which she later observed, first as a researcher and later as a documentary film maker. Her major subject is "the uneven erosion of the commitment of salary men to an overarching corporate ideology"; she concentrates on the cohort who entered the company when she did; the reviewer of both these books for the British Journal of Industrial Relations viewed her portrayal favourably, but thought that it " not adequately address wider issues of structure and power relations". The reviewer for the journal Organization of Inside the Japanese Company was troubled by the uninformativeness about Graham's interviewees and by serious problems with the book's quantitative survey. Nevertheless, he found the book insightful and rewarding. "C‑Life eventually went bust in October 2000", and A Japanese Company in Crisis concentrated on the ways in which individual employees thought and acted in expectation that the hard times were ahead. The reviewer again found flaws with the book, but on balance gave it a highly favourable review. The review of the book in Social Science Japan Journal had similar high praise for it. In Playing at Politics: An Ethnography of the Oxford Union, Graham built on a 2001 documentary that she had made for Japanese television about candidacy for president of the Oxford Union: The reviewer for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute found the book a "witty examination of British political processes" and " to all would-be politicians and their tutors".
Geisha activities
Graham initially entered the geisha profession whilst directing a documentary project for the National Geographic Channel; however, upon completing her training as a part of the film, she was given permission to continue working full-time as a geisha, and formally debuted under the name of "Sayuki" in December 2007. Graham debuted in the Asakusa geisha district of Tokyo, and her training before this lasted for a year; this included lessons on dance, tea ceremony and the shamisen. Graham specialises in yokobue, having played the flute for a number of years before coming to Japan. As of 2013, the documentary itself remained unfinished. After working in Asakusa for four years as a geisha, Graham applied for permission to take over the okiya run by her geisha mother, who was retiring due to ill health; her request was denied on the grounds of her being a foreigner. In 2011, Graham left to operate independently of the Asakusa Geisha Association, though she continued to work as a geisha within the area, opening a kimono shop in Asakusa in the same year. In 2013, Graham was running an independent okiya in Yanaka, Tokyo, Tokyo with four apprentices, and as of 2019, has been running an okiya in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo, also with four apprentices. Graham has travelled internationally to demonstrate the traditional arts employed by geisha, visiting the United Kingdom to perform at the Hyper Japan festival in 2013, Dubai in the same year, and Brazil in 2015.
In December 2010, a company owned solely by Graham, The Wanaka Gym Ltd., was fined a total of NZ$64,000 and ordered to pay NZ$9,000 in costs, following a conviction relating to an unsafe building used for tourist accommodation. The building had been declared "dangerous" in June 2008, but continued to house paying residents in the two months after. After the conviction, Graham made a number of unsuccessful appeals, and a final leave to appeal by both Graham and the company was rejected in December 2014 by the Supreme Court of New Zealand.
Books by Graham
Inside the Japanese Company. London: Routledge, 2003.. Hardback, Adobe eReader, ebook.
A Japanese Company in Crisis: Ideology, Strategy and Narrative. RoutledgeCurzon Contemporary Japan series, 1. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005..
Playing at Politics: An Ethnography of the Oxford Union. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2005.,, paperback.
