Artistry

Many years ago, I read Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.  I remember being confused at first as to if it was a novel or a memoir, because it even comes with a forward by the author thanking the main character and such for telling her story.  I did eventually figure it out.  But then, the movie version of the book came out, and it's a beautiful piece.  Ziyi Zhang (right) plays the main character, Sayuri, and Michelle Yeoh plays her mentor, Mameha (left).  The imagery and filmography is stunning.

The book and move tell the story of Sayuri, a geisha in Kyoto.  Sayuri was born Chiyo, and sold the the geisha house when she was eight years old.  She makes an enemy of the head geisha, Hastumomo, simply, it seems, by being smart and pretty.  Sayuri has very distinctive blue-grey eyes.  After trying to run away, Chiyo is turned into a maid.  But she catches the eye of someone important, and when she is twelve, she reenters geisha training with the help of a popular and established geisha named Mameha.  The book follows through Chiyo--now Sayuri's--career as a geisha, where she battles personal desires with professional duty.  She is also still battling Hatsumomo's abuse.  During World War II, she is sent to live with a kimono maker, and survives the war.  When she returns, she helps old friends and patrons save their company.  And after that, she finds a happy life.

What I only learned recently is that Golden based his story on the life of Mineko Iwasaki, a popular geisha who had a life similar to Sayuri's.  When Golden wrote his book, he broke confidences by naming Mineko, who had broken the unspoken rules that you do not talk about life in the geisha district of Kyoto, known as Gion.  In response, she wrote her memoir with the help of Rande Brown and named it Geisha, A Life (for US readers.  In the UK it's titled Geisha of Gion).  In it, she tells what it was really like to be a geisha.

Mineko, for example, was the youngest of thirteen children.  Several of her sisters worked for the Iwasaki geisha house (okiya), and she was raised from the age of five to be the heir.  She didn't have troubles and toils like Chiyo.  She did have an older geisha that she called Old Meanie when she was a child, but became very close to as she got older.  She had real friendships with men, but the other geisha didn't like her because she was extremely popular and made a lot of money.  Mineko was a dancer, and her teachers pushed her to be even better.  She clears up a few of the mistakes that Golden makes--for instance, for geisha, the "mizuage" ceremony is not the ritual loss of virginity, but rather a coming of age ceremony.

Reading wise, Memoirs of a Geisha is a great read with a good plot.  But Geisha, a Life is a really interesting look into a world that is so different from what I, as a westerner, am used to.  It's  a little scatterbrained in it's telling, with time passing differently in different chapters, but it's really interesting, and more similar to a life that an American can recognize.  The world of the geisha is a tight sisterhood, but it comes with backstabbing and sibling rivalry that exists in any world.  I would recommend either of these books, depending on what you like to read.  Actually, I'd suggest reading them both, and I'd read them in the same order that I've discussed them in here.