Lyn's Reviews > Memoirs of a Geisha

A pleasing mix of Great Expectations and Little Orphan Annie but all mixed up in Japanese Geisha society.

Full disclosure: I, like many westerners, believed that geisha were a high end version of prostitutes. Sophisticated, talented and very excessively priced – but prostitutes all the same.

Golden’s book has afforded me some erudition and I now know that is not the full story … except, well … there are still some elements of prostitution in the story. The fictional geisha first person narrator describes her own role as akin to a mistress rather than a wife, with formal rules that for the most part established that a geisha was connected to her “danna” or patron. It’s all very complicated and I never fully understood what was going on. To be fair, looks like the intricate etiquette rules confuse many Japanese as well.

My usual genre is science fiction / fantasy so this was something of a departure for me, but honestly, the description of Japanese culture, particularly Geisha culture, might as well have been something dreamed up by Jack Vance or Robert Silverberg it was so alien to me.

Golden describes the “memoirs” of a fictional geisha, Sayuri, and her ascent to the role of geisha in a bildungsroman style. We also share in Sayuri’s animosity with rival geisha Hatsumomo and her complicated relationships with patrons and sponsors.

Entertaining and provocative, this also sheds light on a time and place, Japan before, during and after WWII.