Memoirs of a Geisha

Title: Memoirs of a Geisha

Author: Arthur Golden

Pages: 428

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Young Chiyo-Chan is taken from her house in a small fishing village and sold to an okiyo in the Gion geisha district of Kyoto. Contrary to popular belief, geisha are not prostitutes, but are artisans or entertainers. Chiyo's early life is extremely difficult from the suffering caused by her own mistakes and the head geisha in her okiya, Hatsumomo. The turning point in her life is when she is noticed by the Chairman as a little girl. Everything Chiyo does from here on out is only to bring her and the Chairman closer together. Chiyo is eventually adopted and trained by another geisha, Mameha, one of the most successful in Gion. One of the most important moments of Chiyo's life (who has now changed her name to the geisha name Sayuri), is when her mizuage (virginity) is sold to the highest bidder. From then after Sayuri is one of the most successful geisha in Gion.

My Review: I both liked and hated this book. After reading this book, I hardly believed that it was a work of fiction and not a true memoir. The stories and descriptions are simply astonishing and incredibly believable. Near the end of the book, Sayuri made me so angry, although the ending remained satisfying. This was a bit of a slow read but it's one of those books that really draws you in and gets you thinking - even while not reading. That is what I really liked about the book. For better or worse, I found my emotions and feelings throughout the day tied to what was happening in the story. Another interesting thing from the book is that it takes place during the Great Depression and World War II from the viewpoint of the Japanese.

Disclaimer: While this book obviously deals with the business of selling sex, it was never an uncomfortable read. I probably wouldn't read it to my kids though.

From the Book: "(p. 67) Whatever any of us may have thought about Hatsumomo, she was like an empress in our okiya since she earned the income by which we all lived. And being an empress she would have been very displeased, upon returning late at night, to find her palace dark and all the servants asleep. That is to say, when she came home too drunk to unbutton her socks, someone had to unbutton them for her; and if she felt hungry, she certainly wasn't going to stroll into the kitchen and prepare something by herself--such as an umeboshi ochazuke, which was a favorite snack of hers, made with leftover rice and pickled sour plums, soaked in hot tea. Actually our okiya wasn't at all unusual in this respect. The job of waiting up to bow and welcome the geisha home almost always fell to the most junior of the "cocoons"--as the young geisha-in-training were often called. And from the moment I began taking lessons at the school, the most junior cocoon in our okiya was me. Long before midnight, Pumpkin and the two elderly maids were sound asleep on their futons only a meter or so away on the wood floor of the entrance hall; but I had to go on kneeling there, struggling to stay awake until sometimes as late as two o'clock in the morning. Granny's room was nearby and she slept with her light on and her door opened a crack. The bar of light that fell across my empty futon made me think of a day, not long before Satsu [Chiyo's sister] and I were taken away from our village, when I'd peered into the back room of our house to see my mother asleep there. My father had draped fishing nets across the paper screens to darken the room, but it looked so gloomy I decided to open one of the windows; and when I did, a strip of bright sunlight fell across my mother's futon and showed her hand so pale and bony. To see the yellow lights streaming from Granny's room onto my futon...I had to wonder if my mother was still alive. We were so much alike, I felt sure I would have known if she'd died; but of course, I'd had no sign one way or the other."