I enjoyed this greatly--it was the kind of book that plunges you into another world where you come up for air for a few breaths before submerging yourself again. I'm not in a position to critique the portrait of Japan and its geishas, but if I can trust the afterwards and biographical notes, Golden has received degrees in Japanese art and history and interviewed a celebrated geisha, so there was good reason to believe he knows his stuff. (Although I've read his informant, Iwasaki Mineko, would later dispute the authenticity of his details.)
The story is of a geisha, Nitta Sayuri, as told to a professor who will write her memoir. Born Sakamoto Chiyo in a small Japanese fishing village, when nine-years-old in 1929 she and her fifteen-year-old sister are sold into two kinds of sexual slavery. Her sister into simple prostitution, but Chiyo's destiny is different--to be trained as a geisha. According to this novel, "geisha" can actually be translated into "artist" and they are trained as dancers, musicians, and in the formal Japanese tea ceremony. They are trained to please and entertain men, and aren't strictly speaking prostitutes as we in the West think of them. They're not meant to be bought for a night. Their virginity is auctioned off, and after that if a man wants her sexual favors he must contract for her as a mistress--even undergoing a ceremony to bind her to him, and she's expected to be as faithful as a wife as long as the relationship lasts in return for his patronage. The two sure things about a geisha's career as Golden depicts it is it's not one chosen by her--and it has nothing to do with love. In a way, the book is about how the girl Sayuri breaks both those constants.
This was a very immersive book, taking you through a geisha's training, everyday life, makeup, etc, and it features several unforgettable characters. Not just Suyuri herself, but her fellow geishas. Pumpkin, who shares her girlhood, her mentor Mameha, and her dangerous rival Hatsumomo. The book gripped me from beginning to end and paints a vivid picture of Japan in the 1930s and 40s. The style is lovely, very visual, and it feels stingy somehow not to give it full marks, but though I feel it's the kind of novel I'll long remember, it didn't move me deeply, and I don't think it's the kind I'll ever feel the urge to revisit again. Both negative and positive reviews refer to Geisha as a "Cinderella" story, and though I can see those aspects, maybe the reason I can't quite resonate to what others love in the story, is that I can't really at heart see her life, built around an obsession with a man kind to her as a young girl, as glamorous or triumphant or romantic.
1
