“Memoirs of a Geisha”, Arthur Golden
September 27, 1997
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it.
“I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.”
Memoirs of a Geisha is a historical novel that balances beauty with brutality. Having first seen the film, I was already captivated by Zhang Ziyi’s breathtaking portrayal of Sayuri, but reading the book revealed so much more depth than I expected. It isn’t the lurid, exoticized story I half-feared it might be; instead, it’s a detailed, often painful exploration of what it meant to live within the nuanced, highly political world of geishas in early 20th-century Japan.
The story follows Chiyo, later renamed Sayuri as she is sold into servitude, separated from her family, and subjected to the ruthless rivalries of okiya life. We then follow her transformation into one of Kyoto’s most celebrated geisha. What struck me most was how Golden captured not only the surface beauty of the geisha tradition—the silks, the performances, the art of subtle conversation—but also the sacrifices, manipulations, and vulnerabilities hidden beneath it. Every relationship Sayuri forms, whether with mentors, rivals, or patrons, is shaped by power dynamics she can never fully control.
Golden’s prose is elegant yet accessible, making the historical detail feel organic rather than overwhelming. At least for the freshman college student that I was when I first read the book. And while the novel has been critiqued for being written through a Western lens, it nonetheless offers an insightful and humanized glimpse into a cultural role often reduced to stereotype. For me, the power of Memoirs of a Geisha lies in its contrasts: beauty and brutality, ambition and exploitation, resilience and vulnerability. It’s a story that reshaped my understanding of what it meant to be a geisha—not an object of fantasy, but a woman surviving, adapting, and carving meaning out of a life with few choices.
These two ate in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (my favorite movie when I was in elementary school) and ate again in Memoirs of a Geisha. We need a third Michelle Yeoh x Zhang Ziyi film post haste.
Content Warnings
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of content and trigger warnings.
sexual assault • child abuse • trafficking
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