Memoirs of a Geisha
   Arthur Golden
  1997 Alfred A. Knopf NY USA
   ISBN: 0375400117


Nitta Sayuri recounts the adventures of her life as a child in a fishing village in 1929 to her virginity auction; her training as a geisha & her life during the past 70 years in Japan.

This is like entering a whole other world, a different pace, a different place. Life as seen, experienced & recounted by a tender, wide-eyed child who finds her mission at the age of twelve. It doesn't matter that her life choices were made for her, it matters that after weeks of impassioned resistance to her fate, fate deals her an enchanting moment of consciousness & from then on she knows what she will be.

Gloved in the delicacy of pliability, beauty & harmony is one determined, lively & curious mind. Back & forth, Nitta Sayuri weaves her memories & we are led into her life, like a thread, eager to join the tapestry.

Stories within stories, crowded with people, images, colors & rituals. The life of a geisha truly becomes a work of art. Like priestesses, the geisha administer to the wealthy bureaucrats & like aging prima donnas, squabble among themselves. This is all about relationships. All about advantages, payback & the rarefied reaches of honor, codes & manipulations.

One story that illustrates the complex ritualized way of life is when Nitta's virginity is auctioned & finally plundered. What a cultivated ritual: the deflowering, the collection of bloodied towels & the disembodied formality. It reminded me of Margaret Atwood's A Hand Maid's Tale.

Did I enjoy this long read? Only in places - the descriptive passages about rituals, weather, music & clothes. Did I learn new things? Oh yes, many new insights about how sloppy is our Western love! Is this book articulate? Indeed, Arthur Golden has written a symphony.

My reluctance is in that I was never engaged by anyone in the book. The subtlety of the difference between destroying a rival madam & the untidy emotion of romantic love, escaped me. I didn't enjoy dwelling so long in the alleyways of such callow indifference, masked emotions & euphemisms.

It just wasn't my cup of tea.
(05/16/00)

Rebecca