The Making of a Geisha and Life in an Okiya

Japanese geisha, Arthur Golden '78 explains, take great care with their makeup. The lengthy and complicated process of adding layers and layers of precisely applied makeup is almost ceremonial, yet a geisha will leave a border of naked skin around the edges of her face, heightening the theatricality of her appearance. The rim of exposed skin supposedly reminds men of the rest of the geisha's well-concealed skin.

Golden's new book is a sort of makeup remover. Memoirs of a Geisha starts at that bare rim of skin and gradually dissolves the entire facade of Gion, Kyoto's geisha district, during the 1930s and 1940s. The story of young Chiyo's transformation into the geisha Nitta Sayuri is not merely the tale of one woman but the chronicle of a particular place and age.

Chiyo's career as Sayuri begins when her elderly father, distraught over his ailing wife, permits her to be placed in okiya, or training houses for geisha, at the urging of a rather dubious local entrepreneur.

Cinderella led a life of relative ease and comfort when compared with Chiyo's existence in the okiya. Chiyo carries out a grueling round of chores fueled by rations scarcely sufficient to sustain life, tormented always by the dominant geisha, Hatsumomo, who sees the beautiful Chiyo as a threat. A failed runaway attempt cuts short her training, but then the famous geisha Mameha takes a sudden and surprising interest in Chiyo and her unusual blue-gray eyes. Chiyo is permitted to resume her training, becoming the geisha Sayuri and beginning her slow ascent to the heights of Gion.

Sayuri once notes that "the point wasn't to become a geisha, but to be one," but Golden wisely devotes the bulk of the book to the becoming. Golden has done an exquisite job of research. His comprehensive knowledge of the world of a geisha adds verisimilitude as Sayuri describes her reactions to her increasing knowledge of a geisha's life. Her descriptions of how to wear a kimono, or what a geisha's daily lessons are like, or how a geisha is expected to behave in the presence of men are among the best passages in the book: educational, yet highly engaging.

Capturing the flavor of the time as well as of the place, Golden's depiction of Gion during and after World War II is superb. He is even confident enough to have some fun--he includes a wonderful brief passage about Mameha's past encounters with various luminaries who had visited Japan. "She poured sake for the great German writer Thomas Mann, who afterward told her a long, dull story through an interpreter," Golden reports, as well as for Ernest Hemingway, "who got very drunk and said the beautiful red lips on her white face made him think of blood in the snow."

Oddly enough, men play almost an incidental role in Sayuri's life as a geisha. She spends her evening hours being attractive and attentive to the men she entertains and excites at the scores of parties she pops in and out of, yet scarcely sees another man besides her dresser at any other time. The main figures in a geisha's life are all female. Even during the evening, while seemingly enthralled with the men she is with, a geisha is likely to be secretly worrying about a catty rivalry with some other geisha rather than about the men themselves. Conflict and backstabbing abound.

If the women of Gion are somewhat indifferent to their male customers, the men are all too aware of the women. Many men are boorish and cruel around geisha, and geisha are expected to be subservient to men in everything, but men place geisha on a sort of erotic pedestal. They will pay exorbitant amounts for a geisha's virginity, and the sums they pay to become a geisha's danna, or exclusive sexual partner, could support a family in many cases. The danna is the key distinguishing feature between a geisha and a prostitute; the effort and expense involved in becoming a geisha's danna is almost as significant as that involved in obtaining a wife.

Men will often expect as much emotionally of a geisha as they would of a wife, without realizing that a geisha's lifestyle cannot allow her to give her emotions so freely. The interactions between men and women seem sad and empty in Gion; so many misunderstandings, so many disappointed dreams, so much pain.

Memoirs of a Geisha is crammed with wonderful sentences; Golden's language is almost overwhelming. He is fond of verbal special effects, and his prose reads almost like a poet's at times Image follows metaphor, which follow conceit, which follows simile. There is proliferation of "like" and "seemed and imaginative figures of speech are densely crammed together. Sometime Golden's images ring false--raindrop that hit "like quail eggs," a sky "extravagant with stars," a retired geisha "more terrified of fire than beer is of a thirst old man."

These lapses are especially evident when Sayuri is still the young Chiyo Golden seems uncomfortable with the voice of a young girl and often strikes note of rather false naivete. As Chiyo enters the okiya and quickly grows up Golden becomes more assured and his prose finds its natural, comfortable rhythm. From this point on, the majority of his startling observations an images have a delicate beauty, almost a if they were adapted from Japanes proverbs.

Golden would have written a different book if he wished to expose the ugliness of geisha culture; Sayuri ultimately leads a happy life and is satisfied with her lot as a geisha. Yet hints of that ugliness appear even during the most positive parts of his portrayal of geisha's life. The white makeup that transforms an ordinary woman into lovely geisha was once lead-based; this malignant makeup slowly poisoned generation of geisha. Similarly, the most expensive and coveted of a geisha's many beauty ointments is a face cream made of nightingale droppings. Golden has taken even such unsavory details of the sometimes unattractive but always interesting life of a geisha and written tale of great beauty.