I first got interested in geisha reading Arthur Golden's MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, then decided to go hunting for more information on geisha to see how accurate his account was. I started with Liza Dalby's GEISHA, and then came to read this.
Mineko delivers an absorbing account of her life and training as a very top geisha in Gion, the most exclusive of Kyoto's geisha districts. For those who are comparing her tale to Golden's, keep in mind that Golden is writing fiction, in fact, almost fairy-tale-esque fiction (complete with wicked stepsister, wicked stepmother, fairy god-mother, handsome prince, etc.) Mineko's tale is true, and archly told; Mineko herself comes across as a very strong, in some places almost domineering personality, as one would expect given her position in the family she was adopted into and her family's high-status position in Gion. The strength of her personality makes reading this book a wonderful pleasure.
However, Mineko's position within the geisha hierarchy was very atypical. She was at the very top of the heap, with all sorts of perks and privileges due to her station that many other geisha did not have (atotori so everyone respects her from day one; she gets personal access to the Big Mistress, tremendous financial and professional support in launching her career from her very-high-status okiya etc.), and it's not clear in the book that she understood this at the time, or indeed understands this now. For example, when talking about sexual matters (such as mizuage and whether a geisha's patron was entitled to sexual favors--Dalby and Golden say yes, Mineko says no), Mineko talks about her earnings, which were at the time she was working somewhere on the order of hundreds of thousands of yen a night in goshugi alone, and says something to the effect of "This is another reason why the idea of geisha selling sexual favors is so ridiculous. Given that geisha earn so much just by performing, why would they?" Well....most geisha, especially those who didn't have access to Mineko's advantages, probably *didn't* earn that much. Not that they necessarily sold sexual favors, you understand, it's just that Mineko doesn't seem to realize that her earning status was quite extraordinary and that there were probably a *great* many geisha who were a lot less fortunate.
(It may be worth pointing out here that Liza Dalby worked in Pontocho, a slightly-lower-status geisha district of Kyoto than Gion, where Mineko was located. Of course, Dalby also suggests that a great amount of the "sex" aspect of the concept of geisha may have come from the conflation of many different types of geisha and female entertainers.)
All in all, this is an entertaining book, well-written and highly readable, by turns sad and funny, as well as a great look inside the world of very-high-status geisha. In a way, this book is a tragedy as well, as by the end of it Mineko gives up her career and closes the okiya that had been entrusted to her by her adoptive family (an act that would have made Mineko look a lot less sympathetic if we hadn't seen just how hard she had been pushed as a child, even though her family cared for her.) Those reading it for information, however, should keep in mind that Mineko's account of geisha life is, while wonderfully detailed, also quite narrow in scope and that it may not be representative of all or even most geisha. For a look at a very different kind of geisha experience, I suggest AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GEISHA, by Sayo Masuda, who was a hot-springs geisha around 1940 or so.
