Absolutely beautiful! This story was so rich and vivid. With attention to personal details, you could almost think this is a real memoir.
from her childhood as Chiyo, her days as a maid and finally her transformation into Sayuri and her life as a geisha. It was a remarkable, heartfelt journey. She goes through so many hardships to obtain the best life possible and make her dream come true. It is a show of how life does not always go as we want. That others actions can affect our own.

The glimpse we get for the secrets of geisha are incredible to read about. Even just the lifestyle for the time period in general. From the make=up and dressing, to their training. How they entertain, what process they have to go through to get ready for an event, the different stages ans so much more.

***This review is not complete but these are my basic thoughts. More to come...***
I will admit the big downfall to me was the odd obsessive romance for a 12 year old girl toward a 45 year old man as it continues through the years. Admiration is one thing, but she really does go too far.

A great cultural eye-opener. I would love to read other historical novels by this author!

فیلمش رو دیدم
بر اساس زندگی واقعی یه گیشا در ژاپن
گیشاها برای خودش زندگی نمیکند برای سرگرم کردن مردان زندگی میکند
گیشا از بچگی برای این تربیت می شود
نواختن ساز را یاد میگیرد
رقصیدن
آداب راه رفتن و معاشرت
و همه اینا برای جلب توجه و لذت بردن مردان است
آخر فیلم حرفای تلخی زده می شود:
اون صورتش رو رنگ میکنه که مخفیش کنه
چشم هایش آب عمیقی است
گیشا حق نداره چیزی بخواد
گیشا نباید احساس داشته باشد
گیشا یه هنرمنده در این دنیای مواج
می رقصه،میخونه،سرگرمت میکنه
هرچی که بخوای
بقیه اش سایه اس،بقیه رازه

این کتاب نه سرگذشت امپراطور است
نه ملکه
بلکه سرگذشتی از نوع دیگر است

Una niña de hermosos ojos gris traslúcido, las intrigas de una okiya y una famosa geisha que hará todo lo posible por destruirla.

Yoroido, años 30. Cuando la madre de Chiyo se encuentra al borde de la muerte, su padre las vende a ella y a su hermana Satsu al no poder hacer frente a su manutención. Las niñas son separadas al llegar a Gion y Chiyo se ve obligada a crecer en un okiya, una casa de geishas, cuya principal protagonista, Hatsumomo le hace la vida imposible nada más llegar. Separada, la niña trata de encontrar a su hermana mientras sobrevive a las trampas que le pone Hatsumomo, a su formación como aprendiza de geisha y a la difícil vida lejos de su familia.

Arthur Golden nos transporta al fascinante mundo de Japón y las geishas, donde las apariencias son lo más importante, así como la virginidad de las niñas, que son adiestradas en el arte de entretener y seducir a hombres poderosos para ser mantenidas y ascender en la escala social. Una novela narrada por una Chiyo ya anciana y que nos cuenta su vida. Una historia repleta de amor, suspense y erotismo cuyos principales temas son el poder, el sacrificio, la guerra, la pobreza, la prostitución, el sexo, la supervivencia, la traición y el dinero.

✔️ Puntos fuertes: las descripciones y la envolvente ambientación y retrato de la cultura japonesa, los personajes bien construidos (como la protagonista Chiyo y su "hermana mayor" Mahema), las intrigas de la trama, una historia cautivadora, la tensión creciente, las relaciones entre los personajes, los giros y la emotividad de la lectura.

❤ Te gustará si: buscas una lectura histórica ambientada en Japón, en el mundo de las geishas o de la época de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

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

-----
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

عن الحب و الحرب ، عن جمالية الفنون و مرارة الإتجار في البشر ، ممتهنات أقدم مهنة عرفها التاريخ :

جميلات الدعارة الراقية كما تسمى اليوم
من هن حقيقة فتيات الغايشا في اليابان
!
الغيشا في الاصل هن المضيفات من الفتيات اللاتي يقمن بإحياء الحفلات والمآدب عن طريق الأغاني والرقصات التقليدية اليابانية والعزف على آلة الـ”شاميسين“ وغيرها من الفنون.

يقال إن بداية هذا الفن كانت في عصر إيدو في القرن السابع عشر حين بدأت الفتيات العاملات في محلات الشاي بكيوتو واللاتي كُنَّ يقدمن الحلوى والشاي، بمحاكاة عروض مسارح الكابوكي وأصبحن يؤدين عروض الرقص والعزف كنوع من الترحيب بزائري المعابد البوذية والشنتوية والسائحين. ولا تزال ثقافة الغيشا باقية إلى الآن في عدة مجالات ومنها السياحة حيث يتم الاستفادة من ثقافة الغيشا بشكل أساسي في كيوتو وطوكيو وأيضاً في نيغاتا وأكيتا وغيرها من المناطق الأخرى. لكن لطالما ارتبط اسمهن بالدعارة و تسلية أهم الرجال من الدولة.

هن في الواقع مراهقات حسناوات يتم تبنيهن للعيش داخل الاوكيا و هي منازل للرعاية و وتكوين فتيات الغايشا المستقبليات من خلال تلقيهن دروس في الفن و الرقص و الرسم و الاتيكيت ، مقابل أخذ نسبة من أجورهن في المستقبل بعد أن يصبحن غايشات ناجحات.

تبدأ الرواية بسرد الواقع المرير للفتاة الجميلة نيتا التي سيصبح اسمها في بعد سايوري، فقر أسرتها المدقع و مرض أمها الذي لا أمل في شفاءه اضطر أبيها بيعها هي و اختها الكبرى لرجل ثري سيأخذهما للعيش في إحدى الأوكيات .

فعلا تدخل الفتاة الصغيرة و تبدأ رحلة معاناتها لتصبح غايشا ، علاقاتها المتعددة نجاحاتها إخفاقاتها و الأهم من كل هذا مشاعرها الدفينة في كل موقف و التي أغلبها حزينة و موجعة، حتى قصة حبها الوحيدة عانت كثيرا لتصل للعيش رفقة حبيبها كخليلة لأنه كان متزوج و كان هو عائلها أو الدانا كما يطلق على معيل الغايشا آنذاك ..

رحلة طويلة للبحث عن الاحترام و عن مكانة بين ذالك المجتمع المغلق و إثبات الذات و إثبات نجاحها ك غايشا.

بعد بحثي عن تاريخ الغايشا في اليابان وحقيقة هذه الحياة الحافلة و السرية، وجدت أن مكانة الغايشا بين النساء كانت مهمة ومحترمة، فالغايشا الناجحة هي صاحبة المال و السلطة تستمده من الدانا أو معيلها أو من معارفها المتعددة و للأسف في أكثر من مصدر فتيات الغايشا كن خليلات أهم رجال الأعمال و السياسة خصوصا في القرن العشرين.

أحببت الرواية جدا فهي أقحمتني في عالم كان مجهولا بالنسبة لي بتفاصيل متعددة و أسلوب سرد فريد للثقافة اليابانية.

Well, I finally got around to this one. & I think I understand its fan base and its subsequent literary worth; it was the "Gone Girl" of the 90's. (Only in popularity.) This time, the fairy tale (with "Girl" it seems as if we're more comfortable with the cautionary tale in the 10's) has a Cinderella and many suitors after her. It is absolutely immersive... a page turner that has as many colors as a used-up coloring book. I see the geisha in that light: like La Marilyn, the geisha are symbol of tragedy and misplaced youth and beauty.

The plot is orchestrated in that well-intentioned Great Novel tradition. A Great Expectations-meets-Great Gatsby novelty item that's as pure as winter's snow, that shimmers & attracts the senses like a ruby from some volcano deep in the Pacific. Metaphors and similes are very effectively used here, & their dual purpose is clear: it tells the life story in a very non-nebulous manner, in clear, concise, not-to-be-misconstrued mode; and the words seem authentic enough to evoke an actual geisha-- it is her telling you her memoirs, sitting there with you, drinking tea.

Also, Hastumomo, in the role of ugly stepsister, is an adversary from hell. Grrrreat character! Too bad she leaves the narrative at too-crucial a juncture (the anticlimax meaning, then, the immediate displacement of anything that did not fit into the societal standards from the board... Lame!). She is a worthy nemesis to our heroine--as voracious for fresh meat as a Great White. The feud between them two is the centerpiece of this Fanny Hill-like tale, this enormously feminist (?) text. For in Gion, Japan, the geisha are treated like a lot of women have been, like objects, pawns, or even disembodied ideas.

I don't really know why I waited so long to read this book, and I most certainly never thought I would enjoy it as much as I did. Of course I realize this story is historical fiction and may not correctly depict the life of a geisha during the 1930s and 1940s in Japan in its entirety. I do feel, however, that I know quite a bit more about the geisha than I did before reading this book - both because of the book itself and of it inspiring me to research a little on my own.

My heart was absolutely broken for Sayuri (Chiyo) almost from the get-go. I cannot even begin to fathom how desperate a parent would have to be to sell his or her children into the life of slavery. You may argue that the geisha were not slaves, but when you have absolutely no other choice, you are a slave at least to your circumstances. The women of the okiya were so horrible to Sayuri. I understand they also led terrible lives, but that does not excuse cruelty toward a child.

I did have to confront my distaste of polygamy in this book. To my understanding, Japanese marriages, at least during this time period, were mostly arranged among the upper class. They didn't marry for love. I still couldn't help feeling sorry for the wives of the men who were patrons of the geisha. I can only imagine how hurt I would feel if my husband became the danna of another woman. I would feel betrayed at the very least. While I did very much want Sayuri and the Chairman to end up together, him being married was a hard pill to swallow.

My heart was also absolutely broken for Nobu. I felt that he did truly love Sayuri, and while she shouldn't have been with him if she didn't truly love him in return, I was simply saddened at the cruelty of life for him. He seemed to be a good man with good intentions. He deserved to be loved by someone with the same depth he was capable of loving.

”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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If I hadn't paid for it, I would not have read it. Although historical fiction is not a genre I normally read or enjoy, I had high expectations for this book. Despite the controversy, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It took me a long time to read and annotate it. I felt a strong connection with the characters. The author's writing style was fantastic. The characters were given more depth. The story's pace, which was languid at times, docked one star.

Overall, this was a fantastic experience. This book marked the end of my 2021 reading challenge..

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

“If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.”



Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha is a beautifully written novel about one of Japan's most famous geisha. I just wasn't sure I trusted the immersion into geisha life that the novel purports to represent. I enjoyed the read, but everything, all the dramatic tension from Sayuri becoming a geisha to auctioning off her virginity, fit way too nicely into a competition between Sayuri and her rival, Hatsumomo. It gave Memoirs of a Geisha a page-turning quality (and maybe that's just good writing), but here it struck me as a little false. I need to remind myself that it is fiction, but this prevents me from accepting the world of the novel. 3.5 stars

I loved the romantic parts but I just wished it was more and I also found this book to long and some parts were realy boring , but overall I realy enjoyed it and now I finally know what an geisha is