Fiona Graham

Fiona Caroline Graham (16 September 1961 – 26 January 2023) was an Australian anthropologist working as a geisha in Japan. She made her debut as a geisha (trainee) in 2007 in the Asakusa district of Tokyo under the name as a part of her anthropological study, and as of 2021 was working in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo. and first travelled to Japan aged 15 for a student exchange programme, where she attended high school and lived with her host family. She had two siblings. She has been a lecturer on geisha studies at Keio and Waseda Universities.

Graham has published three volumes of anthropology.

Inside the Japanese Company (2003) and A Japanese Company in Crisis (2005) are about the large insurance company (given the fictional name "C-Life") that Graham joined upon graduation, and which she later observed, first as a researcher and later as a documentary film maker. The book's main subject is "the uneven erosion of the commitment of [the company's] salary men to an overarching corporate ideology",

"C-Life" eventually went under in October 2000, and A Japanese Company in Crisis concentrated on the ways in which individual employees thought and acted in expectation of the hard times ahead. The reviewer again found flaws with the book, but on balance gave it a highly favourable review.

In Playing at Politics: An Ethnography of the Oxford Union (2005), Graham built on a 2001 documentary (The Oxford Union: Campus of Tradition) 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 "[recommended it] to all would-be politicians and their tutors".

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 . Graham specialised in (the Japanese side-blown flute). , the documentary itself remained unfinished.

After working in Asakusa for four years as a geisha, Graham applied for permission to take over the 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, after being asked to leave the geisha community of Asakusa, Graham left to operate independently (against the Asakusa Geisha Association's regulations), 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 in Yanaka, Tokyo, with four apprentices. By 2021, Graham had permanent residency in Japan and was running an in the Fukagawa district of Tokyo with three apprentices. Graham allowed tourists to come and watch the young geisha have their lessons. Dubai in the same year,

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Japan in 2020, Graham added online geisha banquets to the 's repertoire of events.

Graham died in January 2023. 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 .