Memoirs of a Geisha
Although Arthur Golden does a masterful job in exposing the trials and tribulations of the Japanese geisha before WW II, he himself admits in an interview with AMAZON BOOKS that the last 100 pages, the happy-ending romance between Sayuri and Chairman, was the weak point in his novel.
But the rest of Memoirs of a Geisha is both absorbing and informative. Sayuri (or Chiyo before her name was changed) was born into a poor fishing family but at the age of nine was sold along with her older sister to a home in the city of Kyoto. The older sister became a prostitute, while Sayuri, the best looking of the two, lived at the okiya house and began her training as a geisha (artisan) at a a nearby school. Smart, good looking girls were a big investment to the Mother of the house. She looked forward to the well to do men paying "$150 a beer" for a geisha's company or entertainment at a popular teahouse.
Sayuri's beginning years were aided a lot by Mameha, a more experienced geisha who introduces the apprentice as her younger sister. But to assure that the money Sayuri earned stayed in the right hands, the Mother of the okiya house finally adopted her. Sayuri would put on her makeup and expensive kimono at home, then meet Mameha at her apartment. From there they would go to visit, perform or drink Sake with rich men, at as many nightly parties as possible.
Before WW II there were some 800 geisha working in Gion, the geisha district of Kyoto. But the war changed everything, and the geisha girls had to work at factories or prostitution. Sayuri got a job helping make kimonos through a crippled, hotheaded Japanese man named Nobu, who later planned to have Sayuri as his mistress (danna), if he could bid high enough.
But that never worked out. Another man, Dr. Crab, aware that "a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder", became her first "lover". Later, a military general outbid all others and bought Sayuri as his mistress. This all took place while she secretly longed to be chosen by Chairman, a kind business man wh had befriended her when she was a child.
Golden rarely mentions Japanese families in the novel. Most of the business men are married, but partying with the geisha is their favorite pastime. And if they can afford to buy one as a mistress, it is not frowned upon. All of this raises the geisha's station in Japanese society, but not always by choice. To spend a lifetime entertaining, drinking with and submitting to various married men usually leaves the geisha well-off, but loveless.
Another impressive part of Golden's novel is WW II and its effects on the Japanese, but all from a geisha's point of view.
At the end of Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden admits "... one of Gion's top geisha in the 1960s and 1970s, opened her Kyoto home to me during May 1992, and corrected my misconceptions about the life of a geisha." Both Golden's research and writing are to be commended.