Memoirs of a Geisha [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we..." (more)
Key Phrases: tipsy house, lacquered zori, penalty glass, Iwamura Electric, Ichiriki Teahouse, Nobu Toshikazu (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

According to Arthur Golden's absorbing first novel, the word "geisha" does not mean "prostitute," as Westerners ignorantly assume--it means "artisan" or "artist." To capture the geisha experience in the art of fiction, Golden trained as long and hard as any geisha who must master the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival beauties, and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. After earning degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard and Columbia--and an M.A. in English--he met a man in Tokyo who was the illegitimate offspring of a renowned businessman and a geisha. This meeting inspired Golden to spend 10 years researching every detail of geisha culture, chiefly relying on the geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who spent years charming the very rich and famous.

The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute--and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumor spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."

Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow--the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity--the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world, and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors.

From Library Journal

"I wasn't born and raised to be a Kyoto geisha....I'm a fisherman's daughter from a little town called Yoroido on the Sea of Japan." How nine-year-old Chiyo, sold with her sister into slavery by their father after their mother's death, becomes Sayuri, the beautiful geisha accomplished in the art of entertaining men, is the focus of this fascinating first novel. Narrating her life story from her elegant suite in the Waldorf Astoria, Sayuri tells of her traumatic arrival at the Nitta okiya (a geisha house), where she endures harsh treatment from Granny and Mother, the greedy owners, and from Hatsumomo, the sadistically cruel head geisha. But Sayuri's chance meeting with the Chairman, who shows her kindness, makes her determined to become a geisha. Under the tutelage of the renowned Mameha, she becomes a leading geisha of the 1930s and 1940s. After the book's compelling first half, the second half is a bit flat and overlong. Still, Golden, with degrees in Japanese art and history, has brilliantly revealed the culture and traditions of an exotic world, closed to most Westerners. Highly recommended.
-?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (September 23, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375400117
• ISBN-13: 978-0375400117
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2,512 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #142,714 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Novel to Savor!!!, May 9, 2003

By	M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is one of the most beautifully written novels of the past 20 or more years, and definitely one of my personal favorites. Arthur Golden, a student of Japanese art and language, paints a remarkably true-sounding account of one woman's training and practice as a geisha. There's not a false note in the writing: The characters, dialogue, and emotional content all ring true. Aside from some slightly plodding descriptions of the protagonist's introduction to the geisha district of Gion, the pacing is excellent.

I kept waiting for Golden to slip, for some implausibility in character or plot development, some anachronism or "artistic license" that would have made me feel cheated-but it never happened. Without further research, it's difficult for me to comment on the book's historical and cultural accuracy, but it always felt true, and Golden's simple but powerful language is absolutely compelling. The book surpassed my already high expectations, and increased my appreciation of--and curiousity about--historical Japanese social structure in general, and geisha culture in particular. Above all, this is a completely satisfying book about perseverance within boundaries. Both the story and the writing are filled with grace, power, and beauty.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Evocative Peek Into the "Flower and Willow World", December 22, 1999

By	Hikari (Lima, OH USA) - See all my reviews

As a "gaijin" (foreigner) who spent 6 years in Japan and had ample opportunity to witness many of its social customs, I think it's worth noting that the setting Mr. Golden creates in his "Memoirs" is very much of a Japan gone by. This is sad. It is precisely the aspects of Sayuri's world that are the most exotic to us which exemplify the best of what is uniquely Japanese. Modern Japanese cherish the remnants of that romantic past the same way that Americans revere tales of our pioneering forbears--as a way to hold on to, and honor all that was poetic and noble about ourselves.

I think it also bears mentioning that the average Japanese person today knows almost as little about the life of a typical geisha as the average Westener. Geisha entertainment has always been the province of extremely wealthy, powerful men--going to a teahouse to be entertained by geisha served the same function for a Japanese VIP that a British one would find at his tony men's club. Throughout the centuries that Japan's entertainment quarters--"the flower and willow world" as they call it--has existed, the number of patrons who could afford top-notch geisha entertainment for themselves and their friends has been an exclusive club indeed. In today's highly Westernized and technology-worshipping Japan, the idea of a geisha party is nearly as anachronistic and unattainable as it is here. Geisha belong to the same catagory as cowboys, knights on horseback and damsels-in-distress: cultural icons who have no place in the modern world. Mr. Golden does a superb job of capturing some of the magic of Sayuri's metier for those of us who will never have the opportunity to witness it firsthand. Sayuri and her fellow geisha may be trained from birth to be beautiful flowers, but they are also very human "working girls" (and I don't mean that in the sense of prostitute) Although there is an ever-present sexual overtone to the role of geisha, 99% of the time it is subliminal rather than overt, which I think Mr. Golden makes clear. I agree with one of the other reviewers who equated a geisha mistress with a Western "trophy wife". This is a very apt description. While wives are chosen for their docility, domestic skills, and breeding potential, a geisha mistress provides color, dash and sexual sauce for those who are lucky enough to afford them. However, in today's economy, a man would have to sport a bankroll the size of Donald Trump's to be a serious contender for a geisha mistress.

Geisha are not flourishing these days, but a few communities still survive in major Japanese cities. For an excellent, highly readable treatment of the "modern" geisha (if this is not an oxymoron!) I highly recommend Liza Dalby's book "Geisha." The author was the only Western woman ever or since to apprentice as a Kyoto geisha, so she knows what she is talking about.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic and Evocative, December 17, 2003

By	Review Lover "ReviewLover" (At a place...) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memoirs of a Geisha Uk (Paperback)

As a twentysomething Irishman who's only ever lived in the UK, my contact with traditional Japanese culture, society and history is, as you can imagine, scant. However, Golden's classic 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is so beautifully crafted, and so powerfully descriptive, that even my bare knowlege of Japanese history is extended by having read it.

It's the fictional story, cleverly told from an autobiographical point of view, of one of Japan's most famous and enthralling Geisha, a woman of a profession commonly mistaken for prostitution (Golden draws some clever and insightful distinctions between the two, both in general and specifically). Sayuri tells her story from her humble beginnings as Chiyo, the daughter of an impoverished fisherman, through desperation, war and trial, to the final happy ending.

For a man to write so convincingly as a woman is a very rare thing - Nick Hornby's 'How to be Good' is an example of how it can go wrong - but for an American man to write so beautifully and convinvingly as a Japanese woman from a highly secretive society is an unequivocal triumph. We believe, from the first few chapters, that Sayuri is this observant, silent little thing, a lower-class child facing the arduous and enforced task of becoming a Geisha. We are there with her when she is sold into servitude, when she attempts a failed escape, when she eventually becomes a successful geisha - all thanks to Golden's rare gift for combining a strong plot with incredible descriptive prose. You can smell the incense and see the kimono as Sayuri is preparing to go to work. It's a strange, wonderful style of writing - set at a slow pace (after all, this is the story of a life from start to near-finish), Golden neatly sidesteps any sort of flagging pace by creating some hugely memorable characters - Auntie, Mameha, Mother and the destructive Hatsumomo - and giving them fully-realised personalities. The consistency with which Golden creates these women is admirable - after a while we feel we know them. Their reactions and situations seem perfectly reasonable to us, thanks to excellent character construction and atmospheric prose.

An epic, enthralling and sensitive novel, 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is a huge recommendation for anybody fond of novels, epics and truly exceptional examples of fiction.