1. Analysis
1.1 Details
Title: Memoirs of a Geisha
Author: Arthur Golden
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated
Publishing Place: United States of America, New York
Publishing Business: Vintages Books
Publishing Date: April 1998
First Print: April 1998
Eighteenth Print: March 2001
1.2 The Story “Memoirs of a Geisha” is a complicated story, but you do not need any extra information to understand it. The book explains everything quite clearly, which makes it easy to follow. 1.3 Theme *The story is about the lives of geisha in the 20th century, but it also reflects the position of women in Japan at that time and the Japanese culture. *The title “Memoirs of a Geisha” refers to the fact that the book is a composition of Sayuri’s personal experiences, a composition of her life. 1.4 Narrator Sayuri/Chiyo is the narrator of the story, which makes her the I person of the book but at the same time Sayuri already knows what is going to happen. 1.5 Structure * The story begins in a poor fishing village named Yoroido where nine-year-old Chiyo lives with her elder sister, Satsu, and their parents. Chiyo’s mother is really sick and when she dies, her father, who is a poor fisherman, sells his daughters to a rich man in the hope that they will have better lives. This man sells grey-eyed Chiyo to the Nitta-okiya in Gion, Kyoto. But Satsu is not as lucky and she ends up in a brothel in the red light district Miyagawa-cho where she becomes a cheap prostitute. In the Nitta-okiya Chiyo begins Chiyo’s geisha training. She is treated as a slave and has to clean the rooms, the floors and make sure that Hatsumomo, the most successful geisha of the Nitta-okiya, has everything she needs. Chiyo can only get out of the house to go to school or when she has to run an errand. Hatsumomo hates Chiyo from the beginning because she is afraid that Chiyo will one day become a more successful geisha than she so she does everything to hurt her physically and mentally. The only person in the okiya Chiyo gets along with is Pumpkin, a round-faced girl she goes to school with. At school they learn to play the shamisen, to dance, to sing, to converse and to practice the art of the tea ceremony, all in very disciplined and structured conditions. When everything seems to go fine, Chiyo decides to run away with her sister. She wants to get out of the house by climbing on the roof of another okiya, but when she’s on top of it, she slips and falls. The three most important women of the okiya named Mother, Granny and Auntie are contacted and they come to the decision not to spend any more money on Chiyo because she is now seen as a bad investment. From this day forward Chiyo has to work as a maid. Then one day Chiyo’s shopping for the okiya, but cannot take it anymore and throws herself onto the stone wall at the edge of the Shirakawa river and cries. There, a chairman tries to comfort her and gives her his handkerchief. She falls in love with him instantly. A few months later, when Chiyo is still working as a maid, Mameha knocks on the door. Mameha is one of the best geishas in Gion, this is also the reason why Hatsumomo hates her. Mameha wants to become Chiyo’s big sister. A big sister takes the younger geisha to tea ceremonies and parties in teahouses, she also introduces the younger geisha to all her customers and gives her a good reputation. It’s unusual to have a big sister from another okiya, but Mameha makes a pact with Auntie. If Chiyo becomes a successful geisha, Auntie has to pay Mameha and if Chiyo fails, Auntie receives money from Mameha. Hatsumomo hears about this pact and becomes Pumpkin’s big sister, just to compete with Mameha. Chiyo becomes a very successful geisha, and changes her name to Sayuri. After a few years of success in Gion, the Japanese war starts and Sayuri has to move far away from Gion. She stays in the house of Kimono maker Arashino, a friend of Nobu, one of her customers and a very good friend. There, Sayuri has to dye the kimonos, the dye has a lot of chemicals that leave scars on her hands. After the war Sayuri returns to Gion and starts her geisha life again. She sees the Chairman and realizes that she is still in love with him. But Nobu wants to become
Sayuri’s danna , which makes it impossible for Sayuri to be with the man she truly loves. During a holiday on a Japanese island she makes a plan to get rid of Nobu, it works and he never wants to see her again. A while after that the Chairman declares his love to Sayuri. And explains that he was the one who told Mameha to become her big sister. Sayuri becomes the Chairman’s mistress, moves to New York where she opens her own teahouse and lives happily together with the Chairman, until he dies. * “Memoirs of a Geisha” has thirty-five chapters and 503 pages. * The story is told chronologically, but this book is in fact an entire flashback because it is told after the events happened, when Sayuri looks back on her days as a geisha. This is also the reason why the entire book is told in the simple past. * The time of the narrated is larger than the time of the narration. The time of the narrated is about forty years, while the time of the narration is only 13 hours. * To create suspense, the author holds back the reason why al of a sudden Mameha becomes Sayuri’s older sister. He also only reveals the Chairman’s feelings at the end of the book.
2. Reading Experience
Arthur Golden’s successful novel “Memoirs of a Geisha” has again focussed the attention on white writers assuming the identity of Asians. Here, Golden tells us the life of a Japanese geisha in the twentieth century.
Although I could not really relate to the topic, for the reason that it is completely out of my world, it was not hard to follow at all because the book explains us everything we need to know about geishas. Before reading the book I thought a geisha was simply a well-dressed and expensive call girl. Now I realize that it is much more than that. A geisha is a beautiful artisan, whose success is measured by the prestige of her clientele. This book has showed me that being a geisha is much more than only being attractive.
“Memoirs of a Geisha” not only reflects the hard life of geishas, but it also describes the Japanese culture, their tea ceremonies, clothing, food, traditions, customs… Arthur Golden has obviously done a lot of research to write this book because all these are brought to us, so richly detailed, that it almost seems as if we were there. Everything in this book is actually very detailed, all the events, the characters’ actions, Sayuri’s feelings, …
Feelings and events have an equal value in the story. It is important to know how Sayuri feels and thinks, but it is just as important to know what is going to happen. I can’t specifically say which event is the most important one, but the one that marked Sayuri for the rest of her life was when the Chairman gave 9-year-old Chiyo / Sayuri a handkerchief.
Chiyo / Sayuri is the main character of the story. We could say that she is a heroine because she evolves from a frightened little girl into a confident, down-to-earth and beautiful woman. Of course this evolution does not happen overnight, she goes through a lot to become who she is. This makes her a round character, we get to now her thoughts, her feelings and her desires, which are all very human and very credible. And the fact that Sayuri is not perfect, makes her even more realistic.
All of this leads to the creation of a certain sympathy towards the main character. We connect as it were with Sayuri. We feel sorry for her when she gets in trouble, or we are happy for her when she is happy. We cannot say the same about the other characters, but that is also because we do not get to know them as well as we get to know Sayuri. The other characters are described superficially and Sayuri seems to find it incredibly important to describe how the others look and what they are wearing.
The structure of this book is not complicated, it is all just one plot divided in multiple chapters, which are often only a few pages. This makes the book easy to read and to follow.
Another aspect that contributes to the easiness of this book is the use of a simple English language, which makes the story pleasant to read. Golden sometimes uses a poetic language to describe Sayuri’s emotions. There are of course a few Japanese words in the book, but they can all be derived from the context. These words are especially ones that have to do with geishas.
Besides giving me a whole new meaning to the word geisha, I learnt a lot about the Japanese culture. “Memoirs of a Geisha” was also incredibly pleasurable to read. So much happens in this book, that there is not any time for boredom and before you realize it, you are already at the end of the book.
Title: Memoirs of a Geisha
Author: Arthur Golden
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated
Publishing Place: United States of America, New York
Publishing Business: Vintages Books
Publishing Date: April 1998
First Print: April 1998
Eighteenth Print: March 2001
1.2 The Story “Memoirs of a Geisha” is a complicated story, but you do not need any extra information to understand it. The book explains everything quite clearly, which makes it easy to follow. 1.3 Theme *The story is about the lives of geisha in the 20th century, but it also reflects the position of women in Japan at that time and the Japanese culture. *The title “Memoirs of a Geisha” refers to the fact that the book is a composition of Sayuri’s personal experiences, a composition of her life. 1.4 Narrator Sayuri/Chiyo is the narrator of the story, which makes her the I person of the book but at the same time Sayuri already knows what is going to happen. 1.5 Structure * The story begins in a poor fishing village named Yoroido where nine-year-old Chiyo lives with her elder sister, Satsu, and their parents. Chiyo’s mother is really sick and when she dies, her father, who is a poor fisherman, sells his daughters to a rich man in the hope that they will have better lives. This man sells grey-eyed Chiyo to the Nitta-okiya in Gion, Kyoto. But Satsu is not as lucky and she ends up in a brothel in the red light district Miyagawa-cho where she becomes a cheap prostitute. In the Nitta-okiya Chiyo begins Chiyo’s geisha training. She is treated as a slave and has to clean the rooms, the floors and make sure that Hatsumomo, the most successful geisha of the Nitta-okiya, has everything she needs. Chiyo can only get out of the house to go to school or when she has to run an errand. Hatsumomo hates Chiyo from the beginning because she is afraid that Chiyo will one day become a more successful geisha than she so she does everything to hurt her physically and mentally. The only person in the okiya Chiyo gets along with is Pumpkin, a round-faced girl she goes to school with. At school they learn to play the shamisen, to dance, to sing, to converse and to practice the art of the tea ceremony, all in very disciplined and structured conditions. When everything seems to go fine, Chiyo decides to run away with her sister. She wants to get out of the house by climbing on the roof of another okiya, but when she’s on top of it, she slips and falls. The three most important women of the okiya named Mother, Granny and Auntie are contacted and they come to the decision not to spend any more money on Chiyo because she is now seen as a bad investment. From this day forward Chiyo has to work as a maid. Then one day Chiyo’s shopping for the okiya, but cannot take it anymore and throws herself onto the stone wall at the edge of the Shirakawa river and cries. There, a chairman tries to comfort her and gives her his handkerchief. She falls in love with him instantly. A few months later, when Chiyo is still working as a maid, Mameha knocks on the door. Mameha is one of the best geishas in Gion, this is also the reason why Hatsumomo hates her. Mameha wants to become Chiyo’s big sister. A big sister takes the younger geisha to tea ceremonies and parties in teahouses, she also introduces the younger geisha to all her customers and gives her a good reputation. It’s unusual to have a big sister from another okiya, but Mameha makes a pact with Auntie. If Chiyo becomes a successful geisha, Auntie has to pay Mameha and if Chiyo fails, Auntie receives money from Mameha. Hatsumomo hears about this pact and becomes Pumpkin’s big sister, just to compete with Mameha. Chiyo becomes a very successful geisha, and changes her name to Sayuri. After a few years of success in Gion, the Japanese war starts and Sayuri has to move far away from Gion. She stays in the house of Kimono maker Arashino, a friend of Nobu, one of her customers and a very good friend. There, Sayuri has to dye the kimonos, the dye has a lot of chemicals that leave scars on her hands. After the war Sayuri returns to Gion and starts her geisha life again. She sees the Chairman and realizes that she is still in love with him. But Nobu wants to become
Sayuri’s danna , which makes it impossible for Sayuri to be with the man she truly loves. During a holiday on a Japanese island she makes a plan to get rid of Nobu, it works and he never wants to see her again. A while after that the Chairman declares his love to Sayuri. And explains that he was the one who told Mameha to become her big sister. Sayuri becomes the Chairman’s mistress, moves to New York where she opens her own teahouse and lives happily together with the Chairman, until he dies. * “Memoirs of a Geisha” has thirty-five chapters and 503 pages. * The story is told chronologically, but this book is in fact an entire flashback because it is told after the events happened, when Sayuri looks back on her days as a geisha. This is also the reason why the entire book is told in the simple past. * The time of the narrated is larger than the time of the narration. The time of the narrated is about forty years, while the time of the narration is only 13 hours. * To create suspense, the author holds back the reason why al of a sudden Mameha becomes Sayuri’s older sister. He also only reveals the Chairman’s feelings at the end of the book.
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