Commenter paper_pal says "Perhaps her somber expression is because the life of a caged bird reminds her of her own life......" Japan's Emperor Hirohito also quoted as having said the same thing about his own life after being raised behind the culturally antiquated, and tradition-thick bars of the Imperial Household. From an old TIME MAGAZINE story..... "..........Hirohito's...favorite subject is his 1921 voyage to Europe, which made him the first member of the Japanese royal family to set foot outside his homeland. During that trip the 20-year-old Crown Prince played golf with the dashing Prince of Wales and, Hirohito later recalled, "first experienced freedom" after having been raised "like a bird in a cage."........" www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,921316,00.html Of course, I am sure 99% of us in the world have felt like that at one time or another; and as we all know, there are still many countries and cultures that put still more bars around their citizens (more bars around the women than the men) than what would be tolerated in the other half of the world. No doubt, many Geisha did feel like a bird in a cage, as their life was (at that time) something they did not enter of their own accord -- and was specially appointed with a long list of customs, manners, and required social talents that were specifically aimed at commercial [but non-sexual] relations with men who never-the-less objectified them in more sexual ways than human ways. Of course, most women think that describes 99% of men EVERYWHERE ! As for the Geisha in the photograph, while there is nothing spectacular about either her Kimono or her pose, that has got to be the finest photo of a Meiji-era bird cage I've ever seen. But if I was the bird, I'd rather be free.