Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West [Hardcover]

Lesley Downer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2003

The critically acclaimed author of On the Narrow and Women of the Pleasure Quarters tells the enthralling true story of the woman who became the most celebrated geisha in Japan and the first to tour the United States and Europe.

At twenty-seven, she captivated the world's stage. The crowned heads of Europe vied for her favors. Picasso sketched her portrait. Puccini based the title character of Madame Butterfly on her and used one of her haunting melodies. Gide, Debussy, Degas, and Rodin were among her devoted fans. She was Sadayakko, Japan's most notorious geisha-and its first international superstar.

In this real-life Memoirs of a Geisha, Lesley Downer, journalist and author of Women of the Pleasure Quarters, hailed as "artfully intelligent... compelling...comprehensive and illuminating" (The Associated Press), re-creates the life and times of this extraordinary woman and cultural icon. Sadayakko's adventures and travels lift the veil on the secretive world of the geisha and are told against the backdrop of the beguiling era when Japan and the West were meeting for the first time.

Drawing from meetings with Sadayakko's family members, including her granddaughter, who granted rare access, and others who knew her intimately, this noted geisha expert chronicles the pivotal moments of Sadayakko's dramatic life. As an exquisite young geisha, her virginity was sold for an exorbitant amount to Japan's most powerful man, the prime minister. She shocked the Tokyo geisha world when she left her lucrative career to become the wife of the rebellious-and penniless-actor and political maverick Otojiro Kawakami. He took her to the United States, where posters and crowds hailed her arrival, and to Europe, where she became the toast of Paris, a muse to writers and artists, and an influence on women's fashion.

Madame Sadayakko tells the story of an unlikely rebel who carved out her own path, and reveals a missing piece of history from the turn of the last century, when Japanese women were wearing bustles and learning the waltz and European women were wearing Sadayakko kimonos.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The first Japanese actress of modern times, Sadayakko (1871-1946) shared the stage with Isadora Duncan and influenced Puccini's writing of Madame Butterfly. Unfortunately, this biography, a follow-up to Downer's Women of the Pleasure Quarters, never takes wing despite the author's best efforts to track down relatives who still remember the actress, sold by her family to become a geisha at age five. Pieced together from newspaper clippings and writings by contemporaries, the book fails to capture the excitement of Sadayakko's success. Like many geisha, who were considered social outcasts, Sadayakko married into the theater at age 19 by choosing a husband, Otojiro, from among the "riverbed beggars," as actors were then known. She joined him on stage during his troupe's first American tour, but soon she became a bigger star than he. Otojiro founded New Wave drama, or shimpa, which was much less stylized than traditional kabuki, yet Downer makes a strong case that Sadayakko was every bit as important as Otojiro to the development of Japanese theater. But Sadayakko, who was eager to support her husband, left no record to indicate the exact nature of her role, if any, in the development of his plays. After Otojiro's death, Sadayakko continued to act and to train other young actresses. Although Sadayakko was a captivating character, Downer doesn't come up with enough facts to present an equally captivating story.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The author of The Brothers: The World of Japan's Richest Family here examines the superstar of the geisha sisterhood, who captivated the West (Picasso sketched her) and eventually married a political renegade.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 321 pages
• Publisher: Gotham (March 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592400051
• ISBN-13: 978-1592400058
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,688,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A bewitching look at the classic Geisha, May 3, 2003

By 

Wendy-Marie Chabot "The Bad Gwen" (Central CT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West (Hardcover)

I picked up Lesley's Downer's "Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West" with great apprehension. Earlier in the month, I had read another geisha biography which failed to bring the geisha culture alive for me. A close look at the author's name should have erased any doubts in my mind.

Much like her "Women of the Pleasure Quarters", Lesley Downer's lastest effort is well-written and a wonderful read. I kept turning from the text to the photos to gaze at the creature who was so enchanting.

With each change of her name, Madame Sadayakko morphed into another creature who managed to survive the blows and upsets life sent her. Her pre-geisha and geisha life is fascinating but what truly captured my attention was her and the troupe's struggles to stay afloat once Japan was far behind.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting addition to the 'Geisha book' phenomenon, August 7, 2003

By 

Megami (Darwin, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West (Hardcover)

Sada became a trainee Geisha as a very young girl, soon rising to the highest echelons available to her - her Danna (patron) was one of the most important men in the country, and she was as renowned as a woman could be in Japan at the time. She married an actor, and eventually travelled to the West, where she began acting as part of a Japanese acting troupe, touring their mish-mash version of Japanese dance and theatre through America and Europe. Sadayakko was always the star of the show, and was one of the highlights of the Paris Exposition. Sada returned to Japan and founded an acting school for girls.

This is a well-written book, the author being most famous for her book on Geishas. Many readers will probably come to this book searching for another read on Geishas, and if this is the case, they may be a little disappointed - Downer does not write in too much details about this time in Sada's life, choosing to concentrate on her overseas travels. However, this does not detract from the overall story. What does is the fact that Downer states some things as fact when they must be supposition: "He stood watching until she disappeared from view. He could not help noticing her sweetness and pride and the skill with which she handled her horse." I can almost guarantee that there is no written record anywhere that on the exact occasion in question the man who saw Sadayakko was thinking those exact thought. This is a fault of many biographers, and it will probably be overlooked by all but the nitpickers like this reader.

This is a book I would recommend to the growing number of readers interested in Japanese history and culture, and also to anyone interested in the cultural currents of the late 19th Century, as Madame Saddayakko had a far reaching influence in the realms of drama, dance and fashion for the Japan-crazed period.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rather uneven biography of a legendary woman, March 11, 2003

By 

Vincent Lau - See all my reviews

This review is from: Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West (Hardcover)

After producing an excellent book on the exotic world of the Japanese geisha (which I reviewed in this website in April 2001), Lesley Downer proceeds to examine in detail the life of one particular geisha for her next publication. And who would make a better and more fascinating subject matter for research than the legendary Sadayakko Kawakami (born 1871), who was not only a top Tokyo geisha during the final years of the 19th century, but also Japan's first actress (in the modern sense of the word)? Together with her flamboyant husband Otojiro Kawakami, a pioneer of Japanese Shimpa (New Wave Theatre), Sadayakko made two triumphant overseas tours in the early years of the 20th century and then, after the death of Otojiro, became a long-time mistress of business tycoon Momosuke Fukuzawa, who, according to Downer, might in fact be Sadayakko's first love when she was still a budding geisha in her teens. As such, Sadayakko not only blazed a path that was unique amongst women in Japan at the time, she also witnessed how her country gradually opened up to the West during the Meiji Reformation all the way until much of the land was reduced to ashes in World War II just before she died in 1946.

Sadayakko thus inhabited three different roles during her life - geisha, actress and mistress - all of which were marginalized by the society which she lived in despite her doing spectacularly well in each of those roles. Downer therefore justifiably divided her book into three major sections, each encompassing one of the three succeeding roles that Sadayakko assumed. In my view, Downer was least successful in the first part, as her discussions of Sadayakko's stint as geisha was rather cursory, as were the descriptions of her relationships with Prince Ito (her principal patron) and her other dannas (patrons) and admirers. Sadayakko's character doesn't come off very much alive through these earlier pages of the book. In fact, one seems to have a better idea of Otojiro Kawakami, Sadayakko's husband-to-be, in this section than the protagonist herself.

Downer is, however, excellent when recounting the Kawakami's tours to America and Europe, which started almost in disaster but, against all odds, finally turned into a triumph, mostly because of Sadayakko's reputedly superb performances and the troupe's unflagging spirit. Contemporary Japanese theatre historians often dismiss the Kawakami troupe as fooling the West with bastardized versions of Kabuki (and the Japanese with bastardized versions of Shakespeare, which the Kawakami brought back to Japan after their tours), and that the name of Sadayakko is often subsumed into the discussion of Otojiro. Downer, in my view, sets the record straight by giving a meticulously researched account of those tours. She debunks a few myths on her way (such as the Kawakami's alleged performance at Buckingham Palace) but also shows clearly the important role played by Sadayakko, both in making a tour a success as well as her staunch support of Otojiro and his theatrical visions (and expediencies). To those who consider Sadayakko a mere novice in the theatrical world, Downer responds by quoting the many words of praise by the European and American press and the leading critics of the West. Indeed, not only did the Kawakamis perform for Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor Franz Josef, the Prince of Wales and President McKinley and other royalties and celebrities of that gilded age, they, and especially Sadayakko, who was constantly being compared to Sarah Bernhardt with some considering her to be even superior to the great French actress, were praised or became a source of inspiration to people like Andre Gide, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Loie Fuller, Emma Calve, Emma Eames, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Paul Klee, Isadora Duncan, Ruth Saint Denis, Giacomo Puccini, Claude Debussy, Jean Lorrain, Paul Morand etc., a virtual list of Who's Who in western cultural society in the early 20th century. Downer also succeeds in painting quite vivid pictures of America and Europe during Victorian times, which contrasted sharply with the environment in Meiji Japan. Such a clash and cross-fertilisation of the civilizations between the Orient and the Occident can also be seen through the Kawakami tours and have been captured by Downer quite successfully in her account.

Downer's treatment of Sadayakko's life after her retirement from the stage is, by contrast, rather terse, although it is clear that she and Momosuke has had years of happy time together. As the former-geisha/actress has become a mistress, it is understandable that she became more discreet and assumed a lower profile in life. Besides, much of her personal belongings (including letters) have been destroyed by fire during the war. Yet, under Downer's sympathetic account, there is a sense of nostalgia and even poignancy towards the end of the book even when some of the more intimate questions surrounding the relationships of Sadayakko, Otojiro and Momosuke have not been satisfactorily explained. For example, was Momosuke always in the heart of Sadayakko since those early days of their first encounters? Why did she marry Otojiro then? More crucially, did she love Otojiro (she apparently did, and very much so, in Downer's account)? If she did, how come she became Momosuke's mistress so soon after her husband's death. And was there in fact a sort of menage a trois between the three at some time?

Despite these imperfections, this new publication is still a fascinating account that can make an interesting read. There are some illustrations, but I really would like there to be more, in particular as Downer often describes in some detail certain photos that she must have seen during her research on the subject but they are not included here. Anyway, at the end of the day, Downer has painted a rather charismatic picture of this legendary woman and one can't help but be gradually seduced by her when browsing through the pages, just like the spell that she weaved over Western audiences a hundred years ago through her performances on the stage. This, of course, is one of the main achievements of this rather uneven biography.