The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House is a nine-episode Japanese series that premiered on Netflix on January 12, 2023. Created by Hirokazu Kore-eda, it is an adaptation of the manga Kiyo in Kyoto: From the Maiko House.
Two childhood friends, Kiyo (Nana Mori) and Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi), move from their childhood home of Aomori to Kyoto's Gion District, where they intend to become maiko at Saku House. But while Sumire takes quickly to the training and customs, Kiyo is expelled from her clumsiness. But her talent in the kitchen quickly becomes apparent, and she is hired as the makanai (live-in cook) of the house. The show then follows Kiyo as she supports the women of the house with her cooking, and includes several subplots that explore the world of geiko.
Tropes:
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Momoko, to the T. It's a bit ambiguous how much of it is her geiko performance and persona (being simply the ideal of the trade), her own personality (especially since she's far more friendly and warm toward people in private), and just how much one bleeding over the other.
- Calling Parents by Their Name: The aloof and rebellious Ryoko calls her mother by her name, Asuka. When they begin to reconcile near the end of the season, Ryoko calls her "Mom", to her surprise.
- Career vs. Man: Justified. It's customary for geiko to retire when they get married. Iwai asks Momoko for commitment in episode 4, and she's torn because it would mean giving up the job she's loved for so long, and frustrated because he assumed that she would follow him.
- Celeb Crush: Mother Chiyo has a shrine in her room dedicated to Korean actor Hyun Bin. All while she could be his grandma.
- Childhood Friends: Kiyo and Sumire have been sisterlike friends since they were very young, and Kiyo despairs at the possibility of being separated from Sumire when she is expelled. They also have another childhood friend, Kenta, who goes to school in Aomori and worries after them.
- Cool Big Sis: Momoko, the senior geiko who mentors Sumire. She gives the younger girl advice in beauty, career, and relationships. For her part, Sumire greatly admires Momoko and even decided to be a geiko to emulate her.
- Costume Porn: There's a lot of detail given to the ornate traditional dresses worn by the geiko and maiko.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Sumire had initially wanted to be a doctor like her father, who now disapproves of her career pivot to becoming a geiko since he thinks it's sleazy. He begins to come around after visiting her in the fourth episode.
- Feminine Mother, Tomboyish Daughter: Mother Azusa, the proper but slightly airheaded former geiko and house manager, and her brusque teenage daughter Ryoko who has tomboyish fashion and manners and resents the lifestyle.
- Feminine Women Can Cook: Inverted. When the original makanai calls in sick, all the maiko are revealed as terrible cooks (in big part due to lack of any practice), while the tomboyish Kiyo turns out to be a Supreme Chef - much to everyone confusion, as for past three months she was incredibly clumsy.
- Flowers of Femininity: Flower decoration is one of the traditional skills the maiko need to master. A scene in the first episode shows Kiyo having trouble with it as part of the sequence that establishes her as a bad fit for the profession.
- Foil: The two senior geiko who are featured the most, Momoko and Yoshino, are a study in contrasts. Momoko is poised, aloof, and traditional; Yoshino is brash, unconventional and blithely charming.
- Food Porn: A lot of emphasis is given to food preparation and cooking, and the camera often lovingly pans over the finished dishes.
- Four-Leaf Clover: In episode 4 Sumire gets a four-leaf clover card from Momoko, which everybody extols as exceedingly lucky. But then her father arrives from Aomori to try and stop her from being a maiko, and the teens comment that it's not lucky at all.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Downplayed in case of Yoshino. She's very direct, self-centered, lies and confabulates almost non-stop, takes personal belongings (and food) of others without asking and has a Never My Fault attitude. However, she is still helpful and supportive to the other girls and more than once saves their skin with her unrefined, brash mannerism.
- Geisha: The show is about two girls who are training to become geiko, and a lot of attention is given to the grace and skills needed to become one, along with portraying it as a down-to-earth, regular job.
- Girlish Pigtails: Sumire, a teenage maiko trainee, wears her hair in two braids by the side of her head. In the sixth episode she sheds it to start wearing the traditional maiko hairstyle.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Momoko is an excellent geiko, fully dedicated to her craft and thus always carrying herself in a very feminine manner. She's also a big fan of zombie fiction, as evident by her personal belongings and movie preferences, creating a pretty strong contrast with everything else regarding her.
- Genki Girl: Yoshino is hyperactive to a fault. To make it all that weirder, she's an adult woman who managed to reach the status of a geiko, married someone, and then returned years later - yet she's as giddy as a pre-teen girl and the least mature of the cast.
- The Glasses Gotta Go: Enforced. Maiko and geiko are not allowed to be seen in various "non-traditional" activities. Including wearing glasses - while Tsurukoma has to.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Kiyo and Sumire are childhood friends with a pure, sisterly devotion to each other. Their relationship is likened to a long-married couple.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!: Yoshino brags that she was The Rival for Momoko during her geiko days. When Mother Azusa comments on it, she compares Yoshino to the person who managed to come last in the second marathon (after Momoko won the first) and being a lousy geiko in general.
- Job Title: The Makanai in the title refers to the live-in chef of a maiko house, a position the protagonist takes up in the second episode. A lot of focus is given to the meals she prepares for the residents.
- Meganekko: Tsurukoma is wearing a pair of old-fashion glasses that are just too big for her. When on duty, she has to take them off.
- Mono no Aware: One of Momoko's mottos is the saying "ichi-go ichi-e
", literally "one time, one meeting". No matter how many times she practices the same dance routine, each performance will end up different, and she says goodbye at the end of every dance. She's surprised when Kiyo displays a complementary philosophy to her cooking: so many factors might affect the dish no matter how familiar it is, and so she says hello before every meal preparation. - Parental Abandonment: Ryoko's father abandoned her and Mother Azusa, just to start a new family. In one of the episodes, Ryoko accidentally spots him in a crowd, now with a much younger wife and a pre-teen daughter, clearly dotting on them both.
- Plucky Girl: Kiyo, the teenage protagonist. In the second episode Sumire describes her as not particularly talented in school, but very determined to see things through.
- Quitting to Get Married: Yoshino did this a few years ago per the custom, but shows up in the house, claiming she divorced her husband and should be allowed to come back. It turns out she simply left him without any paperwork or even a word exchanged, and he shows up to try to reconcile.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Even though Ryoko claims Mother Azusa to be an uncaring slavedriver, she cares deeply about the girls in her employ. Even though she knows she has to expel Kiyo, she's reluctant to do so and instantly hires her as makanai when it becomes apparent that she's a good fit for the position. In the third episode, when she suspects the maiko of hiding a cellphone, she prefaces her speech by saying she's not going to say anything strict and instead reminds them of the customs they uphold.
- Raised by Grandparents: Kiyo was rised and living with her grandma prior to her departure to Kyoto. The narration is in form of Voiceover Letters she sends to her grandma.
- Shout-Out: The Bartender encourages Tanabe to confess his feelings to Azusa by evoking the film Notting Hill.
- Southpaw Advantage: Inverted. Kiyo in the series is left-handed (she's right-handed in both manga and anime adaptation), which is a living hell when it comes to using Japanese cooking utensil. Against all odds she handles them with great expertise - which is part of what impresses everyone witnessing her cooking.
- Supreme Chef: It's discussed that being a makanai is more complex than it seems because the maiko are from all over Japan, and the recipes must satisfy everyone. Kiyo's cooking, however, is praised by everyone who eats it, and her food prep in each episode is framed as Food Porn. In the fourth episode, her cooking is enough to drive a grown man to tears.
- Talented, but Trained: Sumire takes quickly to the maiko training and customs, and is described as a generational talent. However, she still works very hard to hone this talent, even getting up early every day to practice her mai. Tsurukoma realizes that she doesn't have the same passion as Sumire despite being senior, and decides to quit to find her real calling.
- Title of the Dead: Momoko puts together a George A. Romero-inspired performance with the maiko and titles it Maiko of the Living Dead.
- Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Ryoko absolutely loaths everything related with geiko, dresses like a boy, is brash and aloof, while almost always replying in a deadpan manner - sharply contrasting with the feminine maiko. She still dreams about becoming a Korean Drama actress, meaning she enjoys watching them.
- Visual Pun: In the second episode, Kiyo and Sumire literally walk down opposite roads at a crossroads to signify their diverging paths.
- Writer on Board: Hirokazu Kore-eda openly stated that his main desire to work on the series was to dispel all the misconceptions Memoirs of a Geisha (re)introduced into the pop-culture. Every episode has at least one scene dedicated entirely to some trivia regarding maiko and geiko, on top of being as a whole about their regular, day-to-day life.
