I read this book back when it first came out. I never wrote a review of it because when I first joined GR I didn't really know what it was all about. It took a bit before it sunk in for me.

Now GR members get spammed at times. The newest form of spam is review bumping. I didn't even know that existed because..well I'm a slow learner. I kept noticing the same person's reviews on my thread. Several times a day. All day. For weeks. Someone finally pointed out to me that they are bumping their reviews. Then I saw several status updates from people posting about how it was driving them bonkers.

Now my friend Kat decided to take a stand..she made a awesome little badge to show we are all fabulous..not just the top reviewers, and my friend Kelly has a great idea..we are gonna spread some love. Everyone on GR is Goodreads Fabulous.

Here's my friend Argona's review for this book. Her's is much better than anything I could have written..Go show her some love.
Argona..you are Goodreads Famous baby!
n  n

I read this a long time ago ---(a favorite) --- Its amazing a 'male' wrote this book. (sure 'felt' like a female speaking).

”Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. “

n  n
Geisha Mineko Iwasaki basis for Chiyo/Sayori.

Chiyo, with her sister Satsu, and her mother and father live in a shack by the sea on the coast of Japan. The shack leans, and has to be propped up to keep from total collapse. Her mother is sick and on the verge of death. Her father is a fisherman, uneducated, and generally befuddled by anything that doesn’t have to do with his fishing nets. When a businessman from the village comes to them with an offer to take their girls to the city it doesn’t take much to convince the father that nearly any opportunity is better than staying there in the tilted shack by the sea.

He was wrong. Or was he? Without a crystal ball or access to a series of timelines showing the variations created by changing key decisions at critical junctures how can we know?

Satsu, who is fifteen, is promptly placed with a brothel. Not exactly what her father had in mind. I’m sure he was told she would be trained for “domestic service”. Chiyo, who is nine, is deemed young enough to be trained to be a geisha. She is a lovely child with startling rare gray/blue eyes.
n  n
Those Blue Eyes are what set her apart.

The Mother of her geisha house is equally startling in appearance.

”Instead of being white and clear, the whites of her eyes had a hideous yellow cast, and made me think at once of a toilet into which someone had just urinated. They were rimmed with the raw lip of her lids, in which a cloudy moisture was pooled, and all around them the skin was sagging.”

Obvious a bit of a failing liver issue going on here, but wait she is really much more mugly.

”I drew my eyes downward as far as her mouth, which still hung open. The colors of her face were all mixed up: the rims of her eyelids were red like meat, and her gums and tongue were gray. And to make things more horrible, each of her lower teeth seemed to be anchored in a little pool of blood at the gums.”

Okay so Chiyo lets out a gasp. She starts out her new life in trouble.

It doesn’t end there. She is quickly considered a threat to the lovely and vindictive Hatsumomo who is the only fully trained geisha working for the house. Chiyo is accused of stealing (not true). She is accused of ruining an expensive kimono with ink (true but under duress). She is caught trying to escape ( she broke her arm in the process so try and give the kid a break). Well, all of this ends up costing her two years working as a housemaid when she could have been training as a geisha.

She receives an unexpected benefactress, a mortal enemy of Hatsumomo named Mameha decides to take Chiyo under her wing and insure that she has another opportunity to become a geisha.

Chiyo, tired of scrubbing floors and being the do-this and do-that girl of the household realizes her best chance at some form of freedom is to elevate herself.

n  n
The Movie based on this book was released in 2005 and directed by Rob Marshall.

At age 15 her virginity or mizuage is put up for auction. It is hard not to think of this as a barbaric custom, but for a geisha, if a bidding war erupts, she can earn enough money to pay off all the debts that have accumulated for her training. Chiyo, now called Sayuri, is fortunate to have two prominent men wanting to harvest her flower. The winner is Dr. Crab who paid a record amount for the privilege.

”Of course his name wasn’t really Dr. Crab, but if you’d seen him I’m sure the same name would have occurred to you, because he had his shoulders hunched up and his elbows sticking out so much, he couldn’t have done a better imitation of a crab if he’d made a study of it. He even led with one shoulder when he walked, just like a crab moving along sideways.”

Not the vision that any girl would have for her first time, but ultimately it is a business transaction that frees Sayori from the bonds of debt. After the deed is done, the eel spit in the cave, Dr. Crab brought out a kit filled with bottles that would have made Dexter jealous. Each bottle has a blood sample, soaked in a cotton ball or a piece of towel of every geisha he has ever treated including the blood from his couplings for their virginity. He cuts a piece of blood soaked towel that was under Sayori and added it to the bottle with her name.

Ewwehhh! with a head snapping *shiver*.
The cultural obsession, every country seems to have one, with female virginity is simply pathological. Girls can’t help, but be fearful of the process. Not strapped to a table by a serial killer type fear, but still there has to be that underlying hum as the man prepares to enter her. I wonder if men, especially those who avidly pursue the deflowering of maidens, are getting off on that fear? I’ve made myself feel a little queasy now.

Sayori is on her way to a successful career. She is in love with a man called The Chairman and wishes that he will become her danna, a patron, who can afford to keep a geisha as a mistress. There are people in the way, keeping them from being together, and so even though there were many geishas who wished for her level of success she still couldn’t help feeling sad.

”And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped about my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy. “

It was fascinating watching this young girl grow up in such a controlling environment; and yet, a system that can also be very deadly. One misstep, one bit of scandal, and many geishas found themselves ostracized by the community. They could very easily find themselves in a brothel. During WW2 the geisha community was disbanded, and the girls had to find work elsewhere. Sayori was fortunate. Despite all the hardships I know she was enduring, Arthur Golden chose not to dwell on them in great detail. I was surprised by this because authors usually want and need to press home those poignant moments, so that when the character emerges from the depths of despair the reader can have a heady emotional response to triumph over tragedy.

I really did feel like I was sitting down for tea with Sayori, many years later, and she, as a way of entertaining me, was telling me her life story. Golden interviewed a retired geisha by the name of Mineko Iwasaki who later sued him for using too much of her life story to produce this book. She even had light brown eyes not as striking as Sayori's blue/gray eyes, but certainly light enough to be unusual. I wonder if Iwasaki was still the perfect geisha, keeping her story uplifting, and glossing over the aspects that could make her company uncomfortable.

n  n
Mineko Iwasaki

The book is listed in the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It was also made into a film, which I’ve been avoiding, knowing that I wanted to read the book first. I notice some reviewers take issue with Sayori. They feel she did not assert herself, and take control of her life. She does in the end, but she is patient, and waits for a moment when she can predict the outcome. I feel that she did what she needed to do to survive. Most of the time she enjoyed being a geisha. It takes a long time to learn not only the ways to entertain, but also all the rigid traditions that must be understood to be a successful geisha. As she gets older, and can clearly define the pitfalls of her actions, we see her manipulating the system in her favor.

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Non si diventa geishe per piacere ma per necessità. Queste poche parole, pronunciate da una delle protagoniste, sembrano racchiudere il senso di questo romanzo, la condizione di una donna-oggetto destinata al puro piacere dell'uomo, che, nella propria condizione di prigionia, si sforza di cercare brandelli della libertà perduta e negata e, nei giochi di potere con le altre geishe, l'opportunità di esprimersi e farsi valere che non ha più. Illusione e auto-inganno necessarie a vivere una vita che potrebbe solo condurre alla disperazione. Tentativi più o meno riusciti di far proprio uno stile di vita inaccettabile e illudersi di poter ancora vantare un'esistenza degna di tal nome.

Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003.

There's nothing positive about this book, so let's just go straight in to why it was so bad.

The narrative was unbelievable. And I don't mean "OMGA DID YOU SEE THAT?" kind of unbelievable, I mean it was so unconvincing it was dire. At not point did it feel like a woman, a Geisha, a girl, a human being was telling me a story. It felt so flat and boring and my gosh, she was tedious. She had the emotional range of an egg.

The world description was non-existent. The beginning, when we are in the Japanese countryside, was the only part that was descriptive: we had a lovely house and lovely scenery, and then we moved to Tokyo and all of a sudden it's just grey and stone, and that's it. And oddly empty of people. No atmosphere, no city scenery; it was vague at best. It could have still been happening in the fish factory.

There also needs to be an amendment to the Bechdel Test. 3.1: Two women have a conversation about something that isn't just bitching about other women.

And, whilst I don't agree that "culture" automatically means you forgive something, and I realise it was a different time and a different place, but I don't want to read about creepy old men who creep about pubic hair growing on twelve year olds' vaginas. I just don't.

And I know this is the most unhinged and incoherent review ever, but I also didn't find myself learning anything particular about Geisha. In fact, I'd agree with most other reviewers and say it was far too Westernised and almost Romanticised.

Fun Fact Amendment: All Geisha were originally men. Think about that.



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Sem dúvida, uma das minhas melhores leitura foi “Memórias de uma gueixa”, não só pelo impacto que essa leitura me causou, mas também pelo conhecimento que me trouxe da cultura japonesa. Aprendi muito. Conta basicamente a história de Sayuri que em 1929 devido ao estado de pobreza e a saúde precária dos seus pais, é vendida ainda bem pequena (9 anos), com a sua irmã, para uma Okiya (casa de gueixas) em Kyoto. No entanto, ao chegar em Kyoto ela é separada da sua irmã e parte sozinha para viver nessa Okiya. Lá passa por todos os tipos de provações, humilhações, na tentativa de se tornar uma gueixa famosa. Ela tem que suportar Hatsumomo, uma famosa Gueixa que vive na Okiya que vê em Sayuri uma real ameaça ao seu reinado e começa então a praticar todos os atos de maldade possíveis contra ela. O enredo do livro é basicamente esse: a busca de Sayuri em ter sucesso como gueixa, ajudada por uns e atrapalhada por outros, principalmente por Hatsumono, seus treinamentos buscando a perfeição através da dança, da música, ao vestir seu quimono, ao se maquiar. Mas há personagens maravilhosos como o Sr. Presidente que em um momento de desespero a ajuda quando ela ainda era bem pequena, arrebatando o seu coração. Há também Nobo, um sobrevivente de guerra com grande sequelas físicas que também se apaixona por Sayuri. Temos também Mameha uma Gueixa muito famosa que auxilia Sayuri em seu árduo caminho para se tornar uma gueixa. Enfim há outros personagens tais como o Dr Caranguejo, uma gueixa que chamam Abóbora, há também o Barão, enfim uma gama de personagens inesquecíveis. Outra coisa que me chamou a atenção é o submundo que envolve o mundo das Gueixas, como a guerra entres elas para se ter sucesso, os interesses meramente financeiros das donas das Okiya, a venda da virgindade das gueixas para quem der o maior lance como se fosse um leilão, homens ricos, famosos e casados que procuram as Gueixas para satisfazerem seus desejos sexuais. Enfim são tudo aparências, o amor é uma ilusão, isso me enojou muito. Como já citei foi uma ótima leitura, amei esse livro, uma obra-prima de Arthur Golden, que estudou muito o mundo das gueixas e nos brindou com esse livro, que em parte pode ser um livro histórico, e parte um conto de fadas e também um livro de terror!

I got tricked into thinking this actually was Chiyo's biography. I read the preface by the imaginary professor matter of factly, not giving much thought to it. Of course the idea of reading an autobiography sparked my excitement. I liked the prose, the part of the book in which Chiyo was not yet abducted stood out and "felt" Japanese. What quickly brought me back on the right track again, was the formulaic style. Chiyo's life consisted of a little too many Cinderella ingredients to not make me doubt her existence.

For example, her brief encounter as a child with the  Chairman and the way this affected her for the rest of her life didn't seem very likable, and appeared purely added for romantic 'it's fate' impact. Then there was Hatsumoto's limitless - evil stepmother! - hatred for what was in the beginning hardly more than a poor little girl from the countryside.You'd think a woman in her position would choose her battles in the snake pit that comes with the profession more wisely.

It was the ending though that bothered me most. Golden either became bored or felt his publisher breathing in his neck and thus tried to wrap up the story quickly. It showed. The final pages were hardly worth reading. Also, this book could've been so much more intense if Golden had avoided that sugary Hollywood ending. .

But then...despite its flaws this was one of those 'hard to put away' books. Geisha's in general are a intriguing - and dying - subgroup of Japanese culture, so it was interesting to read about their world: their habits, ceremonies and make up rituals. Despite me being in no position to comment on the veracity of his research, the author offers nicely detailed descriptions that showcase a lot of research.

Edit: He descubierto que el autor tiene una controversia por este libro y aún estoy reflexionando sobre eso.

Por otro lado: en las últimas etapas de su existencia, Sayuri, una anciana japonesa radicada en Nueva York, comparte la fascinante historia de su vida con un joven amigo estadounidense. A través de la cautivadora narrativa de esta legendaria geisha, el lector es transportado a un Japón marcado por guerras y aún impregnado de feudalismo, explorando una de las tradiciones más intrigantes del país (y del mundo diría yo): la vida de las geishas. Este libro, que para algunos podría parecer denso, a mí me pareció de lo más cautivador y encontré en él un relato envolvente y enriquecedor que destaca por sus personajes y narrativa. No saben cuánto lo amo y es realmente lamentable que esté cancelado.

The world of Geisha is a secret and forbidden world. The shell is beautiful and seems to be a life of luxury, but the core is pure suffering. Geisha do not love, they do not choose their fate, and their life is owned by the men they entertain. They are not meant to feel. The very word geisha means moving art. That’s all they’re meant to be. Not humans but paintings. Like a sculpture, beautiful but cold as the stone their made of. Memoirs of a Geisha is a book that is based on a true story and let’s us catch a glimpsetof the world where the women paint their faces and don’t deserve to love.
Based in the 1920’s in Kyoto, Japan a young girl named Chiyo lives with her sister Satsu, in a poor town called Yoriodo along with her sick mother and elderly father.
Her father sells Chiyo and her sister to Mr. Tanaka to be taken to an office where they decide that Chiyo will become Geisha for her good looks and blue eyes but Satsu will be taken to a prostitution house in the pleasure district. Chiyo is taken to the Nitta okiya (Geisha House) to become a Maiko (apprentice geisha). She breaks her leg from trying to run away and her training is stopped. Chiyo is then told that both of her parents have died. She meets the Chairmen of Iwamura Electric Company and falls in love with him. She dedicates her life for him to become her danna (not a husband but similar, the danna gives geisha kimono, and money to afford an apartment. Danna are usually wealthy men). Hatsumomo is the lead Geisha in the Okiya and is jealous of Chiyo’s good looks and the attention she gets. Thus, she treats Chiyo like the dirt she walks on. The only person in the okiya kind to Chiyo is Pumpkin, an aspiring geisha the same age as Chiyo. Her dream is to be adopted by oka-san (owner of the okiya) and be the lead geisha of the okiya. Mameha, a renowned geisha, comes to the okiya to offer to be Chiyo’s onee-san (older sister). She teaches Chiyo all of the secrets to becoming a great geiko or geisha. She is no longer known as Chiyo but, Sayuri. Sayuri meets Mameha’s danna, the Baron. He takes an unusual interest in Sayuri, and when she goes to the cherry blossom festival held at his estate he brings her into his quarters. He presents to her, a beautiful kimono. He offers to give the kimono to her if she merely would take hers off. Sayuri panics and the Baron starts removing her obi. He did not violate her, just merely looked at her. Rumors spread that Sayuri is now a worthless Meiko (Meiko must be virgins for their mizuage; their first sexual experience which is sold to the highest bidder). With her debut not far away Sayuri has to mend all wounds with the patrons who heard the rumors that Hatsumomo spread. The bidding begins and Dr. Crab, one of Sayuri’s patrons, wins her mizuage. Sayuri then becomes a geisha, and unexpectedly is adopted by oka-san and is the head of the okiya. Pumpkin is extremely upset for that was her dream. Sayuri is given yet another name, Nitta Sayuri (taking the name of the okiya is a custom in the geisha world). She then obtains a danna, a general in the army whom she doesn’t really like.
War is declared on Japan. Sayuri’s danna leaves to fight in the war and is killed. Nobu, a patron and good friend, takes Sayuri into hiding in northern Japan. She lives there for years working at a dye factory owned by Nobu’s friend. Nobu comes for her and offers to become her danna. Sayuri, still in love with the Chairman, doesn’t know what to say. Nobu says that before she answers Sayuri and Pumpkin need to entertain a party with an American general to try and make peace. She accepts and tries to look like the geisha she was years before. Nobu clearly doesn’t like the General so Sayuri uses the general to make Nobu hate her. Sayuri tells Pumpkin to bring Nobu to the warehouse later at night. Sayuri brings the General with her and starts to be intimate with him. The door opens and instead of bringing Nobu as Sayuri asked, Pumpkin brought the Chairmen! The Chairmen sees and walks away. Sayuri runs to Pumpkin and asks why she would bring the Chairmen. Pumpkin says that Sayuri stole the one thing that she wanted, to be adopted by oka-san. She took what Sayuri wanted as vengeance.
Sayuri is depressed. She almost certainly lost the one she loved. She gets invited to a small get together and is surprised to find that the only person in the tea house is the Chairmen. He begins by saying that Nobu was supposed to come but heard about what happened and now is livid at her. He continues that he was the one who told Nobu because he understood Sayuri’s intentions. He says that Pumpkin explained and begins to kiss Sayuri. He confesses his love to her and offers to become her danna.
A danna is not a husband. Danna’s are usually married and have a geisha as a mistress. No matter how much she would like to marry the Chairmen she can’t. Sayuri moves to America because of a feud with who would inherit the Iwamura Electric Company, the Chairmen’s son-in-law married to the daughter he had with his wife or a rumored son with his mistress, Sayuri. She moves to New York and the Chairmen visits regularly.
The book ends with Sayuri saying that the day Mr. Tanaka took her away was the worst and best day of her life. She says, “As a young girl I believed my life would never have been a struggle if Mr. Tanaka hadn’t torn me away from my (house Yoriodo). But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”
I would highly recommend reading this book. It’s a window into a different world and makes you admire but pity the geisha. ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ is an empowering novel that every person should read to appreciate what they have.

چطوری این کتاب انقدر خوب بود آخه، همم!؟
لذت بردم از این کتاب، از تمام اون تصاویر و خاطرات رنگارنگ و زیبایی که لزوما همیشه هم با خوشی و سعادت همراه نبودن اما اونقدر گرم و عزیز بودن که چشم رو نوازش میدادن و به دل می نشستن

شده تا حالا با یه کتاب زندگی کنید!؟ اگر شده پس به احتمال زیاد الان دلتون برای اون کتاب تنگ شده. درست مثل همین دلتنگیِ بازیگوشی که هنوز هیچی نشده کنج دلم جا خوش کرده و منتظره ببینه من دوباره کی می رم سر وقت این کتاب! چقدر با این کتاب به من خوش گذشت
^^
یادگاری از کتاب

اکنون می دانم زندگیمان هیچ وقت پایدارتر از موجی نیست که از پهنه ی دریا برمی خیزد. مبارزات و پیروزی مان هرچه باشد, هرگونه که آنها را از سر گذرانده باشیم, مثل قطره ای مرکب بر روی کاغذ می دود و راه خودش را می یابد

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پ.ن : یه نکته راجع به ترجمه بگم. از اونجایی که من مدت هاست عادت کردم این سبک از کتاب ها رو همزمان با نسخه ی انگلیسی شون بخونم باید بگم که ترجمه سانسور داشت، حالا نه خیلی زیاد ولی در حد سه-چهار صفحه اینجا و اونجا، یکی دوتا پاراگراف سانسور شده بود که جای حرفی هم نداره. اما در کل از هر لحاظ ترجمه ی عالی و با کیفیتی بود

Memoirs of a Geisha is an amazing novel that discusses the life of a Geisha, a Japanese artist-entertainer. Both its very exotic setting, with its extremely different value system, and its fascinating plot, which grabs your interest early on and keeps you waiting for more all along, contribute to making this novel a special book worthy of reading.

The best quality in this novel, in my opinion, is the way the narrator (Chiyo), tells the story. Her reflections concerning much of the events in the novel are very similar to those of the reader. At least I felt I could connect with her, and approved of – even if I didn't always agree with – many of her actions. The pain she suffered is well-depicted in the novel, we almost start to feel that pain with her; we often share the same surprises with her about the different things a geisha should or should not do, and even share the pleasures of success regardless of the fact that most of us despise the geisha way of life.

A slave, sold by your own family, and trained for the sole purpose of pleasuring men, whether you like it or not. Imagine living such a life; I know I cannot. Yet, at some point, you are happy that Chiyo succeeded in becoming a geisha. If that's an indication of anything, it's the skills of the author.

They say a geisha is no prostitute; well, that may be true, but as the story truly shows, the main revenue for a geisha is through sex, at least when she is a successful one. To me, sex for money, no matter how much you sugar coat it, is still some form of prostitution.

I don't like what she did with Nobu, but I understand her perspective. Our emotions are not necessarily affected by how other people treat us, but by how we feel about their behavior. The chairman in my opinion was much more the Chiyo type than Nobu is, and her dedication to reach him amazes me, though not the methods she used to achieve it after her desperation.

The destruction of Hatsumomo was, in my opinion, the brightest point in the story. I feel that the story, and the geisha life, has changed forever after the Second World War, so Chiyo, or any other geisha at the time for that matter, could not have been more successful after the war, nor could the story be more fun.

Yet, another bright point was the encounter with the Chairman. Since Pumpkin caused the Chairman to run into Chiyo and the Minister, I knew the Chairman and Chiyo are going to have a future together. In fact, when Iwamura Electric called for Chiyo to the Ichiriki Teahouse, I guessed – correctly – that Nobu won't be there, but the Chairman.

The most disappointing thing in this novel, in my opinion, is the way the author talked about the US. If the novel had talked about any other place than his country, this might have been tolerable, but when an American author, writing a novel that takes place in Japan for the most part, makes the main character fall in love with the US, and talks about it like a country much better than Japan, there is something wrong. Unless, and I hope this is the case, he did this mainly because the actual geisha upon which he based his novel had described this to him. Then I might accept it.

I think this is going to be one of those books you either love or hate, or is that a tattoo I’ve seen somewhere?.

Having checked my Almanac I knew I had to finish this book before the east wind of Hurricane Milton reached the Tiger Claws of Alligator Alley. Thank goodness I did, the leaves need sweeping.

Although a fictional tale set predominately in Japan in the 1930’s, it gave me a wonderful insight into the vanishing world of a life of a Geisha.

From childhood, to apprentice Geisha, to a fully fledged Geisha was a daunting ride.

The Characters for me made this book. On one side you had the main Geisha’s battling out for their dominance of Gion. All sorts of mixed cunning methods, friendly, smart or down right wickedness hidden behind the white faces and beautiful kimono’s. The other main Characters being the customers visiting the tea houses mainly Businessmen, Politicians, Generals and Doctors. Some of these perhaps more caring than others and some simply that give you the creeps, let’s not talk about Dr Crab.

Anyhow, I worked out the ending pretty quickly but still loved the plot.

Geisha meaning artist, performing artist or artisan. What a wonderful way to describe something else, only the Japanese could do that.

Sadly there was no Dancing Queen when the Shamisens were playing, although I’m sure there was an hint of a Gary Glitter track “you want to be in my gang” when Dr Crab paid a yen or two.

There is actually a Shamisen Thunderstruck cover on YouTube, check it out.

If you hate metaphors, you will hate this book, it’s full of them. There are more metaphors than dinghy’s blowing north in the Channel.

Off to buy some more books but I need a danna.

5 Stars.