THE grey men in suits and the willowy beauties in kimonos have always seemed oddly matched, yet Japan’s conservative politicians hope that a revival of the geisha tradition is a sign that old-fashioned values are on the way back.

The dying art of the geisha received a surprising boost last week with figures showing that the number of apprentices has reached 100 for the first time in half a century. More than 30 modern, educated girls are entering this exacting profession every year.

There are at present only about 200 genuine geishas working in the old city of Kyoto, down from several thousand in the period before the second world war depicted in the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha. They can command astronomical fees for entertaining male customers with refined performances of music and dance, playing absurd parlour games and diverting men with conversation as they serve exquisite food.

The geisha’s terms do not normally include sex but often end up with a successful girl entering a contract as a wealthy man’s mistress.

The revival is seen by sociologists as a sign of a yearning for stability and tradition in a troubled world; a mood that Taro Aso, Japan’s new prime minister, hopes will help him at the polls.

He is expected to call elections in November in an attempt to break the opposition’s grip on the upper house of parliament and reinforce the conservative majority in the more important lower house.

In Japan, mainstream conservatives are represented by the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), which has governed almost without interruption since the 1950s. As Karel van Wolferen, the writer, explained, the LDP is neither liberal nor very democratic; indeed it is not even a party but a group of factions, and it does not really rule – the bureaucracy does that.

The opposition, however, is not exactly left-wing. The Japan Democratic party, its main component, is led by Ichiro Ozawa, 66, a liberal who defected from the LDP. He opposes Japan’s modest commitment to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ozawa led his new allies to victory in upper-house elections last year but he is widely perceived as untrustworthy and autocratic. In the rarefied realms of Japanese politics, the next election will be a grudge match.

Perhaps the survival of geisha culture reflects the fact that Japan is still a fine country for feuding old men. At a mere 68, the prime minister cuts a youthful dash among his peers in the blue-blooded hierarchy that inherited power from the founders of the modern state.

Aso, the heir to a political dynasty that made its fortune in the coal mines of Kyushu, outranks his predecessors in sheer elite connections. He is the grandson of Shigeru Yoshida, a postwar prime minister. He is married to the daughter of another, and his sister is a princess through marriage to a cousin of Emperor Akihito.

“He’s very much for traditional values,” said Hideaki Kase, a conservative commentator. Kase said that four policies defined Japanese conservatism – the royal family, the US alliance, education reform to break the power of left-wing teachers and changing the postwar constitution to allow the Japanese “self-defence” forces greater freedom of action.

“People are hoping for change but the economy is the issue,” he said. “If a general election is called, there is a good possibility that they [the LDP] could lose their majority in the lower house. My guess is that they will just hang on.”

In part that is due to Aso’s surprising popularity among young Japanese, who like his plain speaking and his fondness for manga comics, lurid illustrated stories that often feature graphic sex and gratuitous violence.

Opponents say there is a nasty streak to his brand of conservatism. The governments of China and South Korea, mindful of the past, are watching his every move with suspicion.

His appointments have included a minister who wants Japan to consider acquiring nuclear weapons in response to North Korea and an MP who heads a faction of the ruling party that maintains that the 1937 Nanking massacre, during Japan’s invasion of China, was a fabrication.

The prime minister’s own lacquered charm wears thin when he is confronting the poorest groups in Japanese society from his own lofty pinnacle. Speaking of Hiromu Nonaka, a distinguished cabinet secretary, he once observed: “We can’t make a burakumin like him prime minister.” It was a scornful reference to the man’s origins in Japan’s humblest caste, the gravediggers and slaughterhouse men of medieval times. His target responded by saying: “We should not leave Japanese politics to a man like him.”

Aso has tapped into a vein of defensiveness among Japanese who see their country caught between the American financial crisis and the growing power of China. Many feel it will need all the wiles of the geisha to preserve its success.

Additional reporting: Shota Ushio

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