Memoirs of a Geisha Review

Ever thought about the difference between a true “geisha” and someone who dressed like them and sold herself? Ever wondered what lies behind the fragile mask, the work of art that forms a geisha? In Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, now a film directed by Steven Spielberg, all those questions are revealed and answered tenfold. The process in which a young woman becomes a piece of art, the workings and training they go through, and in which a maiko - apprentice geisha - locks away her heart.

Memoirs of a Geisha centers around little Chiyo, who grew up in a minuscule place by the sea, called Yoroido. Chiyo, her mother, father, and older sister Satsu grew up in a shanty which she called a “tipsy house”. When she was seven her mother fell ill from what was probably bone cancer. When she was nine her mother passed, leaving her time-worn father to care for her sister and her. Unable to care for them, Chiyo and Satsu are sold off to a man who takes them to the mistress of an okiya in Kyoto. But fate would divide them, Chiyo being taken into the okiya to eventually become a geisha, and Satsu taken to a less respectable place. After a failed escape attempt, a sobbing Chiyo meets a man on a bridge who buys her a sweet and gives her his handkerchief. She then knows she must lock her heart away for the Chairman, and prays to the gods for her to become a geisha.

This book was so hard to me to put down, the visuals so strong and the narration so clear. It was a journey from start to finish, going with Chiyo from when she becomes known as Sayuri, and through the effects of World War II on the okiyas. Filled with highs and lows, laughs and tears, this novel is a touching roller coaster ride of experiences. It touches on all senses and leaves one breathless, as if the life being painted with words is their own. When I was done, I felt as if I had been a famous geisha in Kyoto around the time of WWII. Arthur Golden truly captures Nitta Sayuri’s life in every color of the rainbow, rapturing those that read the book, showing a more personal touch that eludes the newspaper articles on her life.

As if a river, flow with the ride that is the memoirs of a once-famous geisha captured through her historian friend. Learn every little thing about geishas you wish to know, like what a mizuage is and why that is what makes a maiko a full-fledged geisha, or how having a danna makes everything so much simpler financially. Take the dive and be captured like I was in Memoirs of a Geisha.