General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (舞妓さんちのまかないさん)

The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (舞妓さんちのまかないさん) is a nine-episode Japanese drama series released worldwide on Netflix on January 12, 2023, adapted from Aiko Koyama's manga of the same name and led by Hirokazu Kore-eda as showrunner, director, and writer¹. Set in the geiko district of Kyoto's Gion, it follows two 16-year-old friends from Aomori who move to Kyoto to train as maiko (apprentice geiko); one, Kiyo, is judged unsuited to performing and instead becomes the makanai, the cook, of a shared house where maiko live together¹. The word makanai refers both to the person who cooks for a boarding house and to the meals served there².

Key fact	Detail
Original title	舞妓さんちのまかないさん (Maiko-san chi no Makanai-san), manga by Aiko Koyama, serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday from 2016³
Manga recognition	Winner of the 65th Shogakukan Manga Award; sales reported at over 1.8 million copies in 2022, over 2 million by January 2022 in Japanese announcements, and over 2.7 million by November 2022³^•⁴^•⁵
Showrunner	Hirokazu Kore-eda, Palme d'Or winner for Shoplifters (2018); his first Netflix production¹
Release	Nine episodes, global exclusive on Netflix, January 12, 2023⁶
Lead cast	Nana Mori as Kiyo and Natsuki Deguchi as Sumire, co-leads; Aju Makita as Ryoko³
Production	Co-produced by Netflix, Story Inc., and BUN-BUKU Inc.⁶
Early performance	In Japan's TV Top 10 for six consecutive days after release, and in the Top 10 in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Israel as of January 20, 2023⁷

Spoilers

Story

Kiyo (野月キヨ) and Sumire (戸来すみれ) leave their hometown in Aomori Prefecture after junior high school and move to Kyoto to become maiko. Both enter a yakata, the communal residence where maiko live under the care of a manager, and begin training in drum, dance, and other arts as shikomi (trainees)¹^•⁸. Kiyo is told she is not suited to being a maiko and should return home to Aomori; as she is about to leave, her cooking is noticed, and she is hired as the house's makanai¹. In the manga's telling, an oyakodon she makes for the household wins praise and leads to the job⁵.

While Kiyo finds her place in the kitchen, Sumire shows talent in Kyomai dance and becomes celebrated in Gion as a "once-a-century talent"³. The series follows the two friends' daily lives under one roof as they pursue different paths, with the food Kiyo cooks as the connective thread⁸. The nine episodes carry titles such as "Kigaeru" (episode 1), "Otafuku" (2), "Kinki" (3), "Negai" (4), "Sentaku" (5), "Kataomoi" (6), "Yami" (7), "Obake" (8), and "Kadode" (9), and run from 38 to 46 minutes each⁸.

Cast and characters

Casting was done by open audition. Kore-eda stated that the maiko roles, regardless of the actors' experience, were all decided through repeated auditions with everyone on an equal footing⁴.

Nana Mori (born 2001) plays Kiyo, the makanai of the Maiko House³.
Natsuki Deguchi (born 2001) plays Sumire, Kiyo's childhood friend from Aomori and the prospective star maiko³.
Aju Makita (born 2002) plays Ryoko, the high-school-aged daughter of the house's manager; Kore-eda's team created Ryoko for the drama, and she is the only girl in the yakata who is not a maiko³^•⁹.
Keiko Matsuzaka plays Chiyo, the previous manager of the house, who still holds a commanding position in its operation³.
Ai Hashimoto plays Momoko, the most popular geiko, and Mayu Matsuoka plays Yoshino, a former peer of Momoko's who returns to the geiko path³.
Takako Tokiwa plays Azusa, the manager of the Maiko House and Ryoko's mother³.

The supporting cast announced in November 2022 includes Kairi Jo as Kenta Nakawatari, a childhood friend of the two leads who stays in Aomori for high school and baseball; Momoko Fukuchi as the senior maiko Tsurukoma; Kotoko Wakayanagi as her classmate Kikuno; Kotona Minami as the second-year maiko Kotono; Lily Franky as the yakata's bartender Ren; Yukiya Kitamura as the otokoshi (male attendant) Takeshi Ishida; Toshinori Omi as the photographer Ryu Seino; Kanji Furutachi as the seventh-generation kimono dealer; Keiko Toda as the dance teacher Kimie Sakurai; Kayoko Shiraishi as Kiyo's grandmother in Aomori; and Arata Iura as the architect Masahiro Tanabe⁵.

Production

Netflix announced the series in January 2022 as a joint production with Story Inc. and BUN-BUKU Inc., with Kore-eda serving as showrunner, director, and writer; the initial announcement described an eight-episode series, later releases settled on nine⁴^•⁶. Genki Kawamura, producer of Confessions, Villain, Your Name, and MIRAI, joined as planner, and each episode was directed by one of four directors: Kore-eda, Megumi Tsuno (Ten Years Japan), Hiroshi Okuyama (Jesus), and Takuma Sato (Any Crybabies Around?), with scripts shared among Kore-eda, Mamami Sunada, and the three younger directors³^•⁵.

The credited staff include cinematographer Ryuto Kondo, art director Yohei Taneda, costume designer Sachiko Ito, food stylist Naomi Iijima, and composer Yoko Kanno, who had previously worked with Kore-eda on Our Little Sister⁵. Kore-eda credited Taneda's large, detailed sets, Iijima's cooking, and the ensemble of actresses playing the house mothers and senior geiko as the production's central strengths⁴.

Research began in the summer of 2020, about two and a half years before release. Kore-eda wrote that his knowledge of the hanamachi, the geisha districts, had previously come mostly from films by Kenji Mizoguchi (Sisters of the Gion, Gion Bayashi) and Mikio Naruse (Flowing), and that his first attitude on entering Gion was as negative and skeptical as that of Sumire's father in episode 4. Reporting changed his view: he met people inside and outside the district working to carry the tradition forward to the next generation, and he was struck that the yakata is a community of unrelated women who call each other mothers and sisters, and that the district operates as a single organism connected by internal telephone lines¹⁰^•².

The district he and his team researched was Gion Kobu, the Kyoto hanamachi with the largest number of geiko and maiko. He described the COVID-19 period as a crisis for the tradition, with trainees who had no stage on which to present their training and some returning home¹⁰.

The manga and its adaptations

Aiko Koyama's Maiko-san chi no Makanai-san began serialization in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday in 2016 and won the shonen category of the 65th Shogakukan Manga Award³. Its reported cumulative circulation grew across the production period: over 1.8 million copies at the time of the English-language announcement, over 2 million in the Japanese announcement of January 2022, and over 2.7 million by the November 2022 teaser release⁴^•⁵.

Before the live-action series, the manga had already been adapted as a twelve-episode anime produced by NHK and directed by Suzuki Yōhei¹¹.

Reception and cultural context

The series entered Japan's TV Top 10 on Netflix the day after release and stayed there for six consecutive days; by January 20, 2023 it had also reached the Top 10 in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Israel⁷. On the Japanese review aggregator Filmarks it holds a rating of 4.1 out of 5 from 13,401 user reviews¹².

Kore-eda was conscious of earlier Western portrayals of geisha, particularly Memoirs of a Geisha, and noted that there are no teenage makanai like Kiyo in reality; he said he hoped the series might at least dispel misconceptions such as the belief that maiko are sold by their parents, though he had not set out to make a corrective². His own account of the research records changes under way in the hanamachi: at the ozashiki parties he attended, maiko no longer pour drinks or drink alcohol, maiko parties end at 22:00 with geiko taking over afterward, and written contracts and consultation desks now exist between the yakata and the maiko. He also noted that Kyoto has five hanamachi with differing customs, so reform does not proceed uniformly, and that questions such as the maiko's status as workers remained unresolved in his own mind¹⁰.

The directors who worked on the series framed it as a celebration of Japanese food culture. Takuma Sato described it as reflecting the wisdom of finding joy in the changing of food, clothes, and seasons, and Hiroshi Okuyama said reading the manga had changed his own cooking and choice of ingredients².

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026