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To Frances O’Meara, that made her mother a sort of modern-day geisha, “someone always knowing her audience, always knowing how to communicate, knowing how to relate.”

One didn’t feel any real connection between the lovers, but maybe that, too, was wanted, given that the callous American sailor treats marriage to a geisha during a shore leave in Nagasaki as a lark.

Others say that tourists sometimes disrespect local customs by, say, chasing after geishas to photograph them or eating while walking, a behavior that is considered rude in Japan.

A teenage geisha married off to an American naval lieutenant, she remains devoted to him long after he abandons her.

She’s a topless geisha in one sketch, a cartoonish chimera in another.