Geisha House Shima

The Shima teahouse wears a dark, wooden facade that hides the interior from the Higashi Chaya district streets. Built in eighteen twenty, this structure served as a high-end venue for geisha entertainment. Inside, the design emphasizes intimacy and precise aesthetics, with gold leaf accents and paper screens. When the government ordered geisha houses to relocate in the nineteenth century, the owner of Shima fought to keep this building as a functioning teahouse. It remains a rare example of preserved Edo period architecture.