Geisha, a Life

First off, unlike most of the other reviewers, I've actually never read [b:Memoirs of a Geisha 930 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1157749066s/930.jpg 1558965]. I picked this up because I've always been curious about geishas and I have a love of memoirs. I found Mineko's writing immediately engaging – I think her skill as a geisha really comes out in the way she writes. Her words are precise, but captivating and she really captures the emotional tone of a scene. Mineko's life is fascinating and otherworldly. She presents snippets of her life, leaving the reader to fill in details: a scene from her infancy, a scene from her toddlerhood, vignettes along the way to her being whisked into the secluded world of geisha-hood. The book toes the line between a description of specifically Mineko's life and exposition of the life of a geisha. Unfortunately, by compromising in to the middle ground, it does an adequate job to both sides, but is stellar on neither. I learned a lot of the terminology, economy and practical matters that go into being a geisha; however, while Mineko states several times that she has a passion about the lack of education that geishas get, this passion is not demonstrated at all in the book and the emotions that the geishas have are obscured. Similarly, Mineko's decision to retire as a geisha and become an art dealer happens over the course of a mere handful of pages and seems to have no basis in the rest of the book.Mineko also is very clearly a spoiled girl and woman, who is very used to being catered to. While she occasionally shows insight to that, there are also huge portions of the novel where she seems to have no insight, which left me wondering whether the injustices that she complains of were true, or figments of her unrealistic expectations.

A friend recommended GEISHA, A LIFE to me, and shared the history of how it came into being. Forever fascinated by Asian culture and literature, it took very little to convince me to read it. I personally loved reading about Ms. Iwasaki's life, and gaining an extremely detailed and vivid insight into the true world of being a geisha. It has only further cemented my desire to travel to Japan one day, and has helped me gain a whole new appreciation and respect for the beautiful traditions of Kyoto and Japan.