Real Gion Kid (Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden)

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Date:	25/02/01 (819 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gave a lot of information about the life of geishas living in 1930s Kyoto

Disadvantages: Not terrifically well written, weak characters, quite dull in places

'Memoirs of a Geisha' seems to have been on the bestseller list at many bookshops since its first UK publication in 1998. It's by no means the first book on the subject, but it's undeniably the most popular. In fact, several years before the publication of 'Memoirs', Liza Dalby, the only American woman ever to become a geisha, wrote about her experiences in a book entitled simply 'Geisha'. So, after having seen the book on bookshelves across the country for so long, spotting it in HMV's "2 books for £10" promotion, and having an interest in Japanese culture, I decided to give it a go.

Put simply, despite the raving quotes on the back of the book, and positive comments by some friends of mine, I found 'Memoirs of a Geisha' a quite unsatisfying and uninspiring ordeal to read. Yes, it did achieve the purpose I read it for, in that I learnt about the life of geishas in early 20th century Kyoto, however, it wrapped this information up in a merely adequately written story.

THE PLOT

Basically, 'Memoirs of a Geisha' follows the life of Sakamoto Chiyo, who begins the book as the daughter of a poor family living in the tiny fishing village of Yoroido. When Chiyo's parents become ill, they sell her and her sister, Satsu, to become a geisha and a prostitute respectively. The two of them travel to Kyoto, and Chiyo is heartbroken to be separated from her sister, especially given the unpleasant atmosphere in the okiya (geisha house) to which she's assigned, and the hellish treatment that she receives at the hands of Hatsumomo, the geisha in her okiya.

When Chiyo first arrives at the okiya, she undertakes menial tasks, cleaning the house and running errands, all the time scheming to find a way to meet up with her sister, and escape from Kyoto to return to her parents in Yoroido. 'Mother' and 'Granny', the two elderly ex-geishas who run the okiya, hope that one
day, the beautiful Chiyo will prove herself to be obedient and will pay for her to undergo training to become a geisha.

However, when Chiyo attempts to run away from the okiya to meet with her sister, she falls from the roof of the okiya, breaking her arm, as well as destroying any chance of being trained as a geisha. Or has she?

Of course not. One way or another, some 160 pages into the 420-page book, Chiyo becomes a geisha, and changes her name to Sayuri. Her "elder sister", Mameha, one of the Gion district (the district of Kyoto within which the geishas live) of Kyoto's most famous geishas, trains her to become one of the most successful geishas.

THE BOOK

The book is quite simply, overlong. This is mainly because of the extended portion of the book describing Chiyo's life in the okiya before becoming a geisha. You might suspect that this portion of the book is essential for the introduction of various characters into Chiyo's life, or indeed that we might get some insight into her thoughts and feelings. However, there really isn't that much there. Most characters introduced during this period are incredibly weakly written, and hardly develop at all over the course of the novel. For example, Hatsumomo, the main geisha in Chiyo's okiya, is introduced as an ogre, and more or less remains as such for the remainder of the book.

Also, for a set of 'memoirs', 'Memoirs of a Geisha' seems to lack any of the aspects that really make a set of memoirs. The descriptions of Chiyo's (and indeed Sayuri's) emotions and feelings throughout the novel are scant, at best, and you come out knowing little about how she felt. This might reflect the notorious Japanese reserve in describing their feelings to strangers, but even if so, this style of writing means that we really don't learn much about the personal experience of being a geisha, which surely is the point of a set of memoirs!


Nonetheless, I learnt an awful lot about the life of a geisha, and the way in which the Gion district brought in money for the city's economy. In addition to learning vocabulary - geishas live in okiyas, and wear a kimono tied using an obi, for example. I learnt that geishas are more than mere prostitutes. The majority of geishas earn money simply by entertaining wealthy businessmen, charging for their services by the hour. Geishas rarely sleep with their clients, however they do auction off their virginity, which is lost in a ceremony known as mizuage. If a businessman takes a particular liking to a geisha, he can become her 'danna' – essentially meaning that she becomes his paid mistress, and while she remains free to entertain other clients, she cannot sleep with them.

Explanations of the life of the geisha in the text are slightly laborious, however, since this was the part of the book that most interested me, I found them far more interesting that the frustratingly tedious story about Chiyo's adventures.

REVELATIONS

OK, now if you want to experience the book the way the author wants you to experience it, then skip the following paragraphs and go straight down to 'CONCLUSIONS'. It’s worth mentioning that I knew the following information about the story before I started reading it, and I don't think it affected my enjoyment of the novel particularly. While I quite understand if you don't want to read the following paragraphs, bear in mind that it is only in the light of the revelations I reveal below that I can adequately justify my low rating of the book.

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When I started reading 'Memoirs of a Geisha', I opened the book to page 1 – 'Translator's Note'. "Oh," thought I, "I wonder what the translator has to say that's so important." The answer? Nothing much, just introducing us to Sayuri, as she is today, a wealthy w
oman living in the Waldorf Towers in New York City. The translator makes a few points about translating the Kyoto dialect, and the difficulties of choosing appropriate English translations, before signing himself off as 'Joseph Haarhuis, Arnold Rusoff Professor of Japanese History'.

"Hang on," thinks I. "Who's this Haarhuis guy? I thought the author was Arthur Golden. Maybe Golden's not an English speaker, and the book's been translated from another language." Of course, this doesn't make sense with hindsight – why would Golden's translator have spoken to Sayuri? But I didn't think of this at the time, and instead turned to the 'Acknowledgements' at the back of the book, the first line of which reads "Although the character of Sayuri and her story are completely invented..."

Needless to say, I was unimpressed. The book has made an effort to promote itself as the memoirs of a geisha, and there's nothing on the packaging to suggest that it is, in fact a work of fiction. If I'd wanted a work of fiction, I would have sought one out... I wanted a book describing the experiences of a geisha, and introducing me to the life of a geisha. Instead, I've got a complete work of fiction written in the 1990s, by an American graduate in Japanese History, who has "lived and worked in Japan" – scarcely a substitute.

Of course, this does go some way to explaining the crass job that the narrator of the novel does of evoking the life of a geisha in 1930s Japan. It explains the lack of any adequate emotional depth to the main character, and, to a lesser extent, the lack of development of many of the story's characters.

However, most importantly it explains why the book's story bears such an uncanny resemblance to 'Cinderella'. Indeed, 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is a true 'rags to riches' story, only differing from 'Cind
erella' in that it doesn't require the dubious plot conceits of pumpkin coaches and glass slippers to achieve its implausible and ridiculous conclusion. This was the main thing that truly infuriated me with 'Memoirs of a Geisha' – it's a sickeningly moral fable. With remarkably few exceptions, good characters end up happy and successful, and bad characters end up miserable.

CONCLUSIONS

So, overall 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was a fairly unrewarding read. I learnt a lot about the life of geishas in the Gion district of Kyoto through the novel, and since that was the main reason I bought the book, I suppose I should be grateful. However, these interesting details were buried in a dull and uninspiring novel, which I found to be something of a struggle to get through at times.

Now, I do know several people who have enjoyed the book, and found its story inspiring and encouraging. However, personally, I found the writing lacking, and the story to be far less interesting than its subject matter.

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