TedPage: Geisha, A Life

I just finished reading Mineko Iwasaki's Geisha, A Life and I found it enthralling. It was much better than the other bargain book I bought. For me, a book can be judged by how far I get in my bus ride before I look up to figure out if I need to get off, this book would engross me for easily 30-40 minutes at a time.

An autobiography by Iwasaki-san, it tells the story from her childhood to the time when she retired from being a Geisha (at 29). Her story talks of the difficulties in becoming an object of Japanese beauty, and what she gave up to get there. This all coming from a shy but determined girl, starting at age 5. She was forced to leave her parents and enter a world where etiquette reins over a veiled competition to get to the top. She was the top. Often considered one of the best geikos, perhaps ever.

She wrote the book to give us, the reader, a look into an intricate part of Japanese aristocratic life. And, to defend the honor of all geishas, constantly proclaiming that they are not prostitutes. One of the arguments that she uses against that is that she was already making $500K a year, so why would she sell sex for money? Well, that doesn't take into account that she was the highest paid Geisha in Gion, I'm sure that there were many who made less than her. Also, Gion was one of the most respected districts, geisha all over Japan most likely make significantly less than her. But, that being said, the job of a geisha is not to be a prostitute -- whether some girls are less savory on the side, is unrelated to what their job is.

The story itself is relatively flat, something I liked, but I'm sure that others would not. It feels like she is really telling the story, not making her role seem more glamorous, the bad guys more devious, or try to tell a moral in the story. Not to say the life she lived was not glamorous, but the story feels like a real life. I kept wanting her father (who made kimono fabric) to be making all the fabric for her kimonos. It would have been a neat way to tie the story together. But, it didn't happen (or she didn't know that it did, he apparently made some of the finest fabric, and she wore the best kimonos, so it is likely that she wore his fabric at some point), so it wasn't in the story.

I also really enjoyed the translation to English. It was a wonderful balance of using the Japanese words, but explaining what they meant. Also, I felt like there was more description of the topics that Americans would know less about -- which was helpful in understanding the story. I think that it really brought a story about Japan to an audience that doesn't understand Japan.

Overall, I liked it. I tend to enjoy thinks from Japan and the Orient, so I am perhaps biased. I still feel it is an interesting story about a culture that is very foreign, but beautiful.