Customer Reviews

Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale (Japanese Studies Series)

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Apparently catty girls fighting over a popular guy knows neither the boundaries of time nor place nor social status. "Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale" could just as easily be a hot new teen film, starring Lindsay Lohan as the naive new girl being manipulated and preyed upon by the more cynical seniors. Even when set against the elegance of the flower and willow world, these women of the arts are still just ordinary people inside, with hopes and ambitions and disappointments just like everyone else.

And that really is the charm of this book. The geisha here are just allowed to be people, and interact in a regular old-fashioned love/rival story, rather than serving as some great symbol of refined and mysterious Japan. There is almost no emphasis put on the job of the geisha, the endless hours of training, the various roles in the geisha house and the extravagance of rare mockingbird-poop make-up that gives them a special sheen. Instead, they are just human beings doing a job, not all of them happy with it, not all of them good at it, but all of them determined to make some go at happiness, by hook or by crook. Author Kafu Nagai has put forth a story that is far more Jane Austen than Kawabata Yasunari, more light-hearted romp than heavy-hitting classic.

The basic story has Komayo arriving on the Tokyo Shimbashi geisha scene, returning after a short break when she was married are taken to the countryside. Her husband dead and her marriage over, she returns to the only work she knows. Unknowingly stealing a client from another geisha, the established and imperious Rikiji, she sets herself in a position of retaliation, and the gears start slowly working against her. Others move about the scene, like Hanasuke, the second-place girl content to be in the background but still looking after her own interests, or the slutty Ranka about whom it is gossiped that she is little more than a prostitute painted like a geisha but is still very popular with the male customers. The prize for all involved is the handsome and popular actor Segawa, a somewhat fickle man who is content to watch the game unfold and see who emerges the winner.

A short book at a little over 200 pages, it is still a great read and a refreshing perspective for anyone wanting to read about geisha, or just get involved in a fun catty story of a couple of pretty gals maneuvering for the top guy.

Nagai Kafu is not well known in the West but he is important for his chronicling of certain aspects of the Taisho period (the one after the Meiji Restoration) when Japan was undergoing massive change due to its contact with the West but much still remained of what, we in the West, would regard as traditional Japan.

This is the story of a geisha who after having been married by one of her customers, returns to the quarter when her husband dies and she cannot survive in the remote country area of his relatives.

She becomes involved in a love triangle where she is ultimately disappointed. The ending is, however, in the context of the book, a happy one.

More important than the plot to the modern reader is the picture of everyday life of a geisha in that period and their vulnerability to the whims of men and the fears that they face. It also dwells on the cultural skills of the geisha and the central role played by kabuki actors at that time.

It is a fascinating and at times, alarming tale. Japan

Typically I love books based on Geisha and their stories. I've read many books, both fiction and non-fiction, and this book just didn't do it for me. I didn't care for any of the characters and it took me months to read this book that isn't even 200 pages in length!

In a typically well-written Japanese novel from the early half of the last century we find out - between the lines rather than between the sheets - just what it meant to be a geisha and to live in the geisha world. And if anybody knew about this world, it was Kafu.