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Memoirs of a Geisha
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Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) (edit title/settings)

by Arthur Golden (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

A seductive and evocative epic on an intimate scale, that tells the extraordinary story of a geisha girl. Summoning up more than twenty years of Japan's most dramatic history, it uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. From a small fishing village in... read more

Summary edit see section history

Sayuri is a really pretty and famous geisha from the renowned Nitta Okiya of Gion, the geisha district in Kyoto.
Her story starts as a little girl named Chiyo Sakamoto. Chiyo, along with her older sister Satsu are to be sold as servants when their father can no longer care for them due to... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Sayuri is a really pretty and famous geisha from the renowned Nitta Okiya of Gion, the geisha district in Kyoto.
Her story starts as a little girl named Chiyo Sakamoto. Chiyo, along with her older sister Satsu are to be sold as servants when their father can no longer care for them due to his old age and their mother's terminal illness.

Chiyo is taken in by the unsympathetic proprietress of the Nitta geisha house, whom she addresses as "Mother". Also in the geisha house are mother's sister ("Auntie") another young girl in the house, Pumpkin, and Hutsumomo, the head geisha of the house. Hutsumomo doesn’t like Chiyo at all and she pressures Chiyo into becoming her personal slave when she tells Chiyo she has knowledge of her sisters's whereabouts.
Most of little Chiyo's childhood is spent working as a maid to pay off debts she has gained while at the geisha house. In one instance, Hatsumomo forces Chiyo to soil a kimono owned by a well-known geisha; in another Hatsumomo sets up Chiyo to look like she has stolen an expensive brooch, which Hatsumomo had hidden.

One day while crying in the street, the young Chiyo is noticed by a passerby, Chairman Ken Iwamura, who buys her an iced snow-cone and gives her his handkerchief with some money. Inspired by his act of kindness, Chiyo resolves to become a geisha so that she may one day become a part of the Chairman's life. Early in her teenage years, Chiyo is taken under the wing of Mameha, one of the top geisha in Kyoto at the time. Under Mameha's tutelage, the girl Chiyo becomes Sayuri, the most famous geisha in all of Gion. Her growing success impacts on the careers and lives of Hatsumomo and Pumpkin. Hatsumomo tries to destroy Sayuri's career, but ends up destroying her own when she bites one of her clients in a jealous fit. Sayuri is selected over Pumpkin as the heir of the okiya, earning the name Sayuri Nitta, and causing Pumpkin to despair.
Through Sayuri s life she work as a geisha, is reunited with the Chairman, whom she has secretly loved since she was a girl. She doen’t get to spend time with him because of Toshikazu Nobu, a bestfriend and business partner of the Chairman. By the outbreak of World War II Sayuri's safety is ensured by Nobu, who sends her to a different town to live with his friend's family. Nonetheless, Sayuri and those close to her must endure a life of hard labor. Cutting her successful career as a geisha short. After the end of the war, Nobu visits Sayuri and asks that she return to Gion to help entertain Deputy Minister Sato, who can help to restart the Chairman and Nobu's company that was all but destroyed during the war. He also tells her that after the safe his electric future he will become sayuri’s patron. Sayuri doesn’t like this at all but agrees to help to pay back nobu’s help. Once they return to Gion, Sayuri seeks the help of Mameha and Pumpkin to entertain the Deputy Minister. Eventually, Nobu tells Sayuri that the time has come for him to become her patron and Sayuri is in despair. On a weekend trip to Amami Islands with Iwamura Electric, Sayuri devises a plan to humiliate herself with the Deputy Minister in front of Nobu. She think of this because one day Nobu told her that just the feeling of her being with another man made him sick, he wanted her just to himself. Instead, Sayuri is humiliated in front of the Chairman by Pumpkin, who still harbors resentment toward her. Sayuri despairs that her dream of being with the Chairman is lost. Days after her return from Amami, she gets a call that Nobu wanted to see her. Mother and she immediately think that he is going to keep his promise and become her patron. But instead the Chairman shoes up and reveals to her that he always known she was little Chiyo. He could betray his best friend Nobu who was deeply in love with her, that’s why he decided to stay away. Now that Nobu had found out about her with another man he didn’t want to hear from her again. The story ends with Sayuri recounting her subsequent life as the Chairman's mistress, including her time in Gion as a retired geisha, a mention of a son she had with the Chairman.

Conflict-
For Chiyo, it is a difficult journey at a very young age. At the tender age of 9, Chiyo and her older sister, Satsu are adopted and taken from their father and very ill mother to live in a Geisha house with Mr. Tanaka. Chiyo and her older sister are learning the ropes of being a Geisha, but they are trying to escape, because they feel trapped. Their escape plan, ends up failing for Chiyo and she is left with the rudest Geisha of all.

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “"We don't become geisha so our lives will be satisfying. We become geisha because we have no other choice."”
    Mameha
  • “Watch for the thing that will show itself to you. Because that thing, when you find it, will be your future.”
  • “Was life nothing more than a storm that constantly washed away what had been there only a moment before, and left behind something barren and unrecognizable?”
    Chiyo
  • “I felt as a bird must feel when it has flown across the ocean and comes upon a creature that knows its nest.”
  • “We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”
  • “Being sent out into the world isn't necessarily the same as leaving your home behind you.”
  • “This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like fire does, and sometimes consume us completely”
    Chiyo
  • “If you aren't the woman I think you are, then this isn't the world I thought it was.”
    Arthur Golden
  • “We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should”
    Chairman
  • “Young girls hope all sorts of foolish things. Hopes are like hair ornaments: young girls wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.”
    Mameha
  • “What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been. What life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give”
    Chiyo
  • “"...but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us"I liked this quote because it showed that we can never run away from who we truly are, and something that we gain in life, will stick forever.”
    Chiyo-chan
  • “I never seek to defeat the man I am fighting,” he explained. “I seek to defeat his confidence. A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory. Two men are equals—true equals—only when they both have equal confidence.”
  • “I dont think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it.”
    Arthur Golden
  • “From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”
    Arthur Golden
  • “But now i know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”
    Arthur Golden
  • “This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes consume us completely.”
Show all 17 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

Much of the novel is set in the geisha district of Gion in Kyoto, Japan.
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First Sentence edit see section history

Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, 'That afternoon when I met so-and-so ... was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.'

Glossary edit see section history

  • geisha: - Female Japanese entertainer- means "artisan"
  • okiya: Houses where geishas live
  • jorou-ya: Japanese brothel
  • nagauta: form of singing
  • wareshinobu: hairstyle of a young apprentice geisha
  • shamisen: Japanese guitar
  • sanbon-ashi: A geisha's neck design. "Three legs"
  • danna: Danna pays for all the daily living expenses of the Geisha, and in turn would attain a more intimate long running affair with the Geisha. Typically a wealthy man, sometimes married, who had the means to support the very large expenses related to a geisha's traditional training and other costs.
  • takamakura: Cradle for the base of the neck; used by apprentice geisha to protect their hairstyle
  • okobo: Tall shoes, made of wood with lacquered thongs to hold the foot in place; worn by geisha
  • mizuage: (水揚げ?, lit. "hoisting from water") was a ceremony undergone by a Japanese maiko (apprentice geisha) to signify her coming of age. When the older geisha (in charge of the maiko's training) considered the young maiko ready to come of age, the topknot of her hair was symbolically cut. During the Edo period, courtesans undergoing mizuage were sponsored by a patron who had the right of taking their virginity. Mizuage has also historically been connected with loss of virginity of maiko, but this practice became illegal in 1959. Afterward, a party would be held for the maiko.
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Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 21 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 62 of 200 in BBC 'Big Read' Top 200 Novels, 2003. (authoritative list)
This is book 27 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 22 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 21 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
This book is in Hit : biblioteka moderne literature (Znanje, Zagreb). (publisher series)
This is book 39 of 95 in Telegraph Top 100 Books, 2008. (authoritative list)
This is book 138 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)
This book is in Book Lover's Cook Book, The. (authoritative list)
This book is in 100 Fantabulous Book Challenge. (community list)
This is book 34 of 145 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2011). (authoritative list)
This is book 30 of 121 in Whitcoulls Top 100 (2012). (authoritative list)
This is book 62 of 82 in BBC "Big Read" Top 100 Novels. (authoritative list)
This book is in Random Synapses: 100 Book Reading Challenge (2011). (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Arthur Golden (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Country: United States of America
Publication Date: October 6, 1997
ISBN: 0-375-40011-7
Page Count: 434

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3557.O35926 M45
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

This novel is very graphic in pertaining to sexuality. For adults only. Is okay for mature teens.

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Remains of the Day
  • The Tale of Genji
  • The Tale of Genji
  • Geisha

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Conducting the Reference Interview
  • Japan Dreams: notes from an unreal country

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