9.4.2020 EDIT:

Okay, it's truly horribly embarrassing that I once had a liking for this book. But at that time, I was in high school and knew next to nothing. So, I now take back all the praise I gave. This book is a truly awful example of a white man writing from an Asian woman's perspective. He not only benefits financially from doing so but also contributes to the silencing and fetishization of Asian women. T.J. describes it very well in his review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

This article also does an excellent job of delving deep into how problematic this book is: https://kyotojournal.org/culture-arts...

I wonder if this book were published today, would people have spoken out about it more, just like they did about American Dirt? I truly hope so.

Original review from 2011:

People were skeptical when Kathryn Stockett wrote in the voice of two black women in The Help. However, Arthur Golden took it to another level when he, a white, middle-aged man, narrated as an orphaned Japanese girl on her way to becoming a geisha.

Surprisingly, it worked. Even without any prior knowledge of Golden's extensive experience in studying Japanese culture and history, the reader is led to believe that the protagonist is telling the story herself. Memoirs of a Geisha managed to transport me to a completely different era. In that era, superficiality and beauty were regarded as more important traits for a woman than practicality and intelligence.

I really enjoyed the writing style that Golden utilized in this book, especially the analogies. Here are two that I marked:

"For it's one thing to find your secrets suddenly exposed, but when your own foolishness has exposed them... well, if I was prepared to curse anyone, it was myself... A shopkeeper who leaves his window open can hardly be angry at the rainstorm for ruining his wares."

"Her skin was waxy-looking, and her features puffy. Or perhaps I was only seeing her that way. A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infecting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence."

It was a great read. I am so very thankful to my friend who bought me this as a birthday present. I would highly recommend it to anyone who has even the slightest interest in Japanese culture or the life of a geisha.

*cross-posted from my blog, the quiet voice.

I read this a long time ago. It is one of my favorites.

What's truly amazing is that a'male' wrote this book.

As I was reading, it sure 'felt' like a female was speaking.

The author has managed to capture the essence and emotions in a way that is so细腻 and relatable.

It makes you question the traditional notions of gender and writing styles.

This book has opened my eyes to the fact that great writing knows no gender boundaries.

It has become a cherished piece in my collection, and I often find myself going back to it to experience that unique voice and perspective once again.

I have discovered that the author has a controversy regarding this book, and I am still reflecting on that.

On the other hand, in the final stages of her existence, Sayuri, an elderly Japanese woman residing in New York, shares the fascinating story of her life with a young American friend. Through the captivating narrative of this legendary geisha, the reader is transported to a Japan marked by wars and still steeped in feudalism, exploring one of the most intriguing traditions of the country (and of the world, I would say): the life of the geishas. This book, which might seem dense to some, seemed to me to be extremely captivating. I found in it an engaging and enriching story that stands out for its characters and narrative. You don't know how much I love it, and it is truly regrettable that it is cancelled.

This book was truly wonderful. I have such a profound love for the movie that I now feel an urgent need to watch it again.

In many aspects, this was a rather sad story for me. I have a strong desire to read a biography of a geisha and watch a documentary to deeply explore their unique world.

The images provided, such as those sourced from https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1541249582ra/26541986.gif, https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1541250010ra/26542012.gif, and https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1541250192ra/26542018.gif, add a visual dimension to my understanding.

The quote "

We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.

" really struck a chord with me. It makes me reflect on how our lives are often shaped by unexpected events.

Finally, I want to end with "Happy Reading!" and send my regards from Mel

This is not a memoir. Do your research, people! Arthur Golden invented it all. He shamelessly used up Mineko, the retired geisha who trusted him enough to tell him her life story. What was printed on these pages is a fiction, not a real story. Mineko even received death threats because of his lies. These are serious matters. Many Asian women have been sexually assaulted by Western men because of books like this one, which paint them as promiscuous prostitutes.

The author was sued for breach of contract for mentioning Mineko in the acknowledgements. Although they reached some kind of agreement in court and the author may no longer advertise this novel as a true story, didn't he used to do so in the past? At any rate, a lot of people still think that what Golden wrote was based on a real life account, which is definitely not the case.

What do I think about his actions? The author not only trivialized and insulted Japanese culture but also invented the whole thing. It is fiction, not a memoir. Obviously, nobody seems to care about that. What interests me is how readers can be so stupid (or perhaps it's better to say culturally ignorant) as to think this is a memoir. Haven't you noticed passages that are literally rewritten from Gone with the Wind? That episode when the heroine hides her hands after having to work during the war is a sure rip-off from Gone with the Wind. There are other Western movie references that I can think of, but forgive me if I don't feel too inclined to overly analyze this excuse for a novel.

So, what do I think about this novel? If the author wasn't so immoral in advertising it falsely and had been clear that it was all invention, it would still be a terrible and shameless book. I mean, maybe I could give it two stars if it was placed in an imaginary land. The story isn't great as such, but apart from being wildly racist, it's somewhat readable. Nevertheless, it is a shameless and racist attack on Japanese culture. The author should be ashamed of himself.

This started so well but then it got more and more boring with each chapter.

I was initially hooked on this as soon as I began reading. I found myself racing through it, completely invested in the story. However, somewhere around the halfway point, I started to grow terribly bored. My reading pace slowed down significantly. It began to feel like a tiresome chore, and it took me almost five months to finally finish it.

What exactly happened? The story seemed to reach a standstill, and the descriptions felt overly similar and reused. Moreover, it didn't seem to be progressing in any unexpected direction, but rather following the obvious path. Granted, it did pick up a bit towards the end, but by then I had already lost interest and simply wanted the book to be over.

It seems rather cliché in a book review to complain about the length of a book, but I'm going to do it anyway: this one felt way too long. I have no issue with large books if they truly need to be that big. But this one felt padded out, as if certain parts needed to be trimmed back and the writing tightened up. It just rambled on and on, and I grew increasingly tired of it.

It was slow, so painfully slow.

I'm disappointed because I feel like I should have loved this one, and I initially thought I was going to. I wish I had something more positive to say, but unfortunately, I can't find anything else that I enjoyed about it. It had a good hook at the beginning, but that's about it. Consider me very unimpressed.

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Like savoring a fancy dessert at a gourmet restaurant, Memoirs of a Geisha is truly beautiful. The language simply melts lightly off the tongue, and yet, it will likely be forgotten shortly after it's done. The author, Arthur Golden, has painted a remarkable picture of a specific time and place.

However, if one is seeking to learn something profound about the psychology of Japanese culture or encounter nuanced characters, this book may not be the best choice. The story merely skims the surface of the more complex aspects of a Japan in decline. Instead, it focuses predominantly on a genteel lifestyle that perhaps appears more appealing from the outside. There is a sense in which the book, written by a man and a westerner, is slightly fetishistic, although perhaps less so than one might initially imagine.

Another reader proposed that perhaps the superficiality of the story is intentional. In a way, the book resembles a geisha. It is beautiful and eager to please, yet it remains too distant to truly learn a great deal from. Ultimately, it is little more than a beautiful, well-crafted object to be appreciated. If this is indeed the case, then Arthur Golden is remarkably clever, and I would applaud him. However, if it is not the case, the book still remains very pretty and an easy read.

The book in itself presents an interesting story, and makes for an entertaining read.

However, what truly bothers me about this book is that the vast majority of Western readers interpret it as a historically accurate memoir. In reality, it was written by an American author for an American audience, and has achieved its success by appealing to and reinforcing the stereotypes about Japanese culture in America. Another reviewer on this website writes, "It is a wonderful introduction to... Japanese culture," which vividly illustrates how many Western readers (including countless personal friends) interpret the lifestyle and culture depicted in Memoirs of a Geisha as absolute historical fact.

In the tradition of Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Golden presents Japan and Japanese culture as "exotic" and "strange," further reinforcing the major theses of the Nihonjinron genre.

When looking at the ever-popular images of a lone, white man in a crowded Tokyo street, many Westerners see the surrounding Japanese as identical to one another and inherently different from that white man and his native culture. Golden's novel only serves to perpetuate this belief. What disappoints me the most is that Golden holds a degree in Japanese History, yet the inaccuracies and stereotypes that he was raised with prevail over historical fact in his writing.

In conclusion, Golden presents an interesting story in Memoirs of a Geisha, but it should only be read if the reader is prepared to believe none of it.

Additional readings: Yellow by Frank H. Wu, Orientalism by Edward W. Said.

Nitta Sayuri's story commences in a humble fishing village in 1929. At just nine years old, with her remarkable blue-gray eyes, she is torn from her home and sold into servitude at a famous geisha house. There, we witness her arduous journey of learning the intricate arts of dance, make-up, and fashion. The seemingly simple gesture of flicking the wrist while pouring sake is actually a carefully honed skill designed to allure. We see how petty jealousies can escalate to deadly proportions, and how her virginity is auctioned off to the highest bidder. In this unforgiving world, love is but an illusion. To endure, she must master the art of beguiling the most influential men.

This is truly a magnificent book. It has the power to transport readers back in time, immersing them in the captivating world of geishas. I also relished the movie adaptation. Watching Nitta dance was a truly powerful experience. I wholeheartedly recommend both the book and the movie to anyone seeking a captivating and enchanting story.

When I was studying pre-Islamic history in the Arabian Peninsula, there was a paragraph that always repeated about the position of women in society. I felt they were repeating it deliberately to humiliate the female gender. The author described the treatment of men towards women based on the idea that she was property or something similar. When I read "Geisha", that sentence kept recurring in my mind, the harshness of men and their attitudes towards this living being!

Whatever miserable situation women lived in India, China, Japan, among the Arabs or others, east and west, it was not different!

Females always revolved in the orbit of men, they lived and died for them!

Geisha were trained to be like beautiful boards on which men competed and the stronger, luckier and smarter ones won them..

This miserable situation and the type of inherited male thinking undoubtedly evoke sadness. The truth is that throughout my reading of that novel, I was amazed at how women sold themselves in this humiliating way. And although this still happens in different forms and more simply in many places where the nightmare of poverty dwells, what is astonishing is how geisha created a world for themselves with special rules, and women who were overcome by the lust for power and control lost all the meanings of humanity!

Arthur Golden tells the story of a girl and her younger sister and their father, a great hunter in his old age, while their mother suffered from a muscle disease that deprived her of the ability to live. Over time, she lost her activity and the sound of pain came, depriving our little heroine of the feeling of safety and the sting of feeling close to the end.

Accordingly, there was no one to take care of the girl, the heroine of the story, and her young sister. She went out to get medicine for her mother, but she was caught and the hunters brought her to the patron, Tanaka. The meeting with Tanaka is what completely changed her life in a different direction that the little girl had never imagined.

Chiyo had gray eyes that stole glances, although she walked on tiptoe, with tousled hair and clothes. But Mr. Tanaka was impressed by those eyes and began to see a different future that would bring him money!

Due to the difficult poverty-stricken conditions and the uncertain future surrounding the two girls, the father was forced to sell his daughters to Mr. Tanaka, who in turn sold the younger one to one of the geisha training houses and the older one to one of the brothels. And from here begins the path of torture of the girl whose dreams were dimmed in a house with good care in the company of Mr. Tanaka.

Arthur Golden studied the principles of Japanese art, and this was remarkably reflected in his novel "Geisha" and in his immersion in the world of geisha, which is based on training the girl to be a dancer, singer, have a refined taste for art, be able to speak and serve men in the famous tea houses where the gentlemen of high society gather. What caught my attention, rather amazed me, was this excellent and detailed description that Golden used in describing the kimono, which is the dress that geisha wore to attract the attention of men and represents a real competition among geisha to obtain the most beautiful and luxurious types. Golden was so detailed in the description that you could tell that the author himself was knowledgeable about this type of art. He described the fabric, the color, the patterns, and analyzed its movements so that it seemed like a painting pulsating with vitality and life. Golden also delved into small details such as the white makeup, the way of painting the face, lips and eyes, and all these things reminded me that Golden spent many years writing this novel, just as he did with "Memoirs of a Geisha". This precision and sense of responsibility towards writing makes you stand in respect for the author, especially since he decided to enter a world that he does not really belong to!

The matter was not limited to just entering that world, but also with the touching story that did not end with the torture of that little girl and her rival who did not spare any effort in shaking her existence in the brothel, nor with the idea of escape that haunted her in search of a free and noble life in that dark period that turned her into a humiliating servant.

When the father and sister abandoned her, a single ray of hope shone for her to become the most famous geisha in the history of geisha.

Moreover, this hope created by love became the main driving force for the possibility of all that which could not be endured. The meetings that took place between Sayuri and her only man were among the most beautiful warm and tender scenes, although they were infrequent and spaced out, carrying little hope and a lot of despair..

Golden was excellent in depicting his fictional characters as if they were real. If the author specified the spaces he gave to each character, what he wrote about them could be many pages or just a few lines. And although Sayuri is the central character in this novel, the presence of the other characters was equal in terms of their impact on the course of the narrative. Golden's mother who runs the brothel with her greed and tyranny.

And Hatsumomo, the beautiful rival who emerged as a living female who changes her skin according to her personal interests. I really liked the way of depicting this moving, lively, crazy, full of strangeness and astonishment character. The noble main hero, the ugly, puffed-up baron, and the doctor who exudes the smell of hospitals when Golden writes about him.

And Mameha, the beautiful, intelligent female, a model of the exemplary geisha who was crowded with the maturity of an experienced woman.

And Nobu, from that character, he is actually one of the most wonderful and great characters in the novel because of his strangeness and his cruel actions that were accompanied by other noble qualities.

I don't know why I recalled this novel with the story of those Chinese women (Wild Swans). I was thinking about the connection between the two novels.

Perhaps it is the world of the East, or perhaps it is the humiliating women, or perhaps it is the torture that the little girl endured, or maybe it is that unique type of pleasure and entertainment that I obtained from the two books about two completely different worlds from me!

I didn't know it at the time.

I was completely oblivious to what was about to unfold.

The events that followed would change my life forever.

But in that moment, I had no inkling of the chaos that was coming.

I went about my day as usual, completely unaware of the storm that was brewing.

Little did I know that my actions would have such far-reaching consequences.

As time passed, I began to realize the magnitude of what had happened.

But by then, it was already too late.

The damage had been done, and there was no turning back.

I was left to deal with the aftermath, and it was a heavy burden to bear.

Kill me.

This overwhelming feeling of regret and despair has been weighing on me ever since.

I can't seem to escape the memories of that fateful day.

I absolutely loved this.

I really don't know why it took me such a long time to pick it up.

It has truly become my favorite of the year so far.

Every moment spent with it has been a delight.

The details, the story, the characters - all of it just draws me in and keeps me hooked.

I can't wait to explore more of it and see where this journey takes me.

It's like a hidden gem that I'm so glad I finally discovered.

I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great read.

You won't be disappointed.