goze

thumb|A goze in 1912 (photographed by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore and hand-colored) is a Japanese historic term referring to visually-impaired Japanese women, most of whom worked as musicians.

== Etymology == The kanji for mean "blind" and "woman." is most likely derived from , which also means "blind person" ( is a formal second-person pronoun). Although the term can be found in medieval records, other terms such as , were also in use (especially in written records) until the modern era. In spoken language, the term is usually suffixed by an honorific: , , , etc.