Geisha: A Life by Mineko Iwasaki Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Geisha: A Life
Book Review: High class or low class it does not matter.
Summary: 3 Stars
Geisha a Life, is a second of a series of books that I have read about Geishas.In Iwasaki San's book, the life of her as a Geisha is very much influenced by her relationship with the Imperial House.From that moment on the arrogance,and suttle way of writing makes you really wonder, what is the truth.I have been in the Japanese culture for over 30 years, and have met people of all standards of life. Believe me when I say suttle arrogance,is an understament.I would read it with a grain of salt.Book Review: Honest, amazing and true.
Summary: 5 Stars
From the age of five till when she retired at the age of twenty-nine Mineko Iwasaki was hard at work being the best maiko and geisha she could be. Her love of dance helped her live through demanding fans, rivals, pain and fears. The book is very honest on telling about all the problems and joys of her life. But there is also a touch of humor. For example, her love of manga and the fact she once played basketball.
The book was a delight to read and very light. You could easily finish it over the weekend.
Book Review: Informative
Summary: 4 Stars
I read this book out of sheer curiosity about the life of a geisha and finished it by picking up tidbits of the rich culture of the Japanese.
This is the first book on this topic that I have ever read so I can't compare it to anything else but I will say that I learned a lot and it sparked an interest to read more about this in the future.
I was blown away by the incredible memory of Mineko. She remembered the smallest of details of life with her parents (whom she resided with only until the age of 5) and she was able to retain so much information in her early childhood during her training. That determination fostered a workaholic approach to her career when she became a maiko, where she set out to become Number One.
One thing that stood out for me was when Mineko pointed out that no two kimonos are alike and that the patterns on them indicates what stage a woman is in in her career.
I also learned about the turning of the collar and the differences between a red and white collar (red symbolizing a child, white an adult). At the age of 21, a woman becomes a full-fledged geiko.
There was an antagonist in the book, Yaeko. Someone needed to teach this woman (and, apparently, her sister) something called manners. This woman dumped all over Mineko, making life miserable for her during her training and deliberately embarassing her in front of customers. (Nice to see her get it in the end proving that "what goes around comes around.")
Towards the end of the book, Mineko details how much the performers give to the profession but how the profession does not give back to the people who breathe life into it (not her words). She also sadly points out that the world of the geisha is dying out.
And despite her gripes with "the system" that she tried for so long to change and couldn't, she is truly sad about its bleak future.
Book Review: Interesting, but somewhat incomplete
Summary: 4 Stars
I first got interested in geisha reading Arthur Golden's MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, then decided to go hunting for more information on geisha to see how accurate his account was. I started with Liza Dalby's GEISHA, and then came to read this.
Mineko delivers an absorbing account of her life and training as a very top geisha in Gion, the most exclusive of Kyoto's geisha districts. For those who are comparing her tale to Golden's, keep in mind that Golden is writing fiction, in fact, almost fairy-tale-esque fiction (complete with wicked stepsister, wicked stepmother, fairy god-mother, handsome prince, etc.) Mineko's tale is true, and archly told; Mineko herself comes across as a very strong, in some places almost domineering personality, as one would expect given her position in the family she was adopted into and her family's high-status position in Gion. The strength of her personality makes reading this book a wonderful pleasure.
However, Mineko's position within the geisha hierarchy was very atypical. She was at the very top of the heap, with all sorts of perks and privileges due to her station that many other geisha did not have (atotori so everyone respects her from day one; she gets personal access to the Big Mistress, tremendous financial and professional support in launching her career from her very-high-status okiya etc.), and it's not clear in the book that she understood this at the time, or indeed understands this now. For example, when talking about sexual matters (such as mizuage and whether a geisha's patron was entitled to sexual favors--Dalby and Golden say yes, Mineko says no), Mineko talks about her earnings, which were at the time she was working somewhere on the order of hundreds of thousands of yen a night in goshugi alone, and says something to the effect of "This is another reason why the idea of geisha selling sexual favors is so ridiculous. Given that geisha earn so much just by performing, why would they?" Well....most geisha, especially those who didn't have access to Mineko's advantages, probably *didn't* earn that much. Not that they necessarily sold sexual favors, you understand, it's just that Mineko doesn't seem to realize that her earning status was quite extraordinary and that there were probably a *great* many geisha who were a lot less fortunate.
(It may be worth pointing out here that Liza Dalby worked in Pontocho, a slightly-lower-status geisha district of Kyoto than Gion, where Mineko was located. Of course, Dalby also suggests that a great amount of the "sex" aspect of the concept of geisha may have come from the conflation of many different types of geisha and female entertainers.)
All in all, this is an entertaining book, well-written and highly readable, by turns sad and funny, as well as a great look inside the world of very-high-status geisha. In a way, this book is a tragedy as well, as by the end of it Mineko gives up her career and closes the okiya that had been entrusted to her by her adoptive family (an act that would have made Mineko look a lot less sympathetic if we hadn't seen just how hard she had been pushed as a child, even though her family cared for her.) Those reading it for information, however, should keep in mind that Mineko's account of geisha life is, while wonderfully detailed, also quite narrow in scope and that it may not be representative of all or even most geisha. For a look at a very different kind of geisha experience, I suggest AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GEISHA, by Sayo Masuda, who was a hot-springs geisha around 1940 or so.
Book Review: It was just ok...
Summary: 3 Stars
Geisha, A Life was just an ok book. I received it as a gift and read it because I felt obligated to. Otherwise I probably would have stopped. Not because it was a bad book, but it just wasn't good.
I didn't feel attached to Mineko at all. I guess her mission could have been to just inform about geiko life, but I don't really that informed in the end anyway. The way Mineko described herself seemed very self-centered and made me seem like she was someone I wouldn't really want to be friends with let alone know. She has a wonderful memory from her years before she was 5 years old, which makes me question the validity of those "memories". She seems pretty antisocial and disagreeable in general.
There was a lot of Japanese terminology that was defined once but difficult to remember throughout the book, which got a little old. Also, Mineko spent pages on details that were not necessarily that interesting. Endless descriptions of kimono and somewhat small pointless ideas wore on me and made me want to skip through them. Those things may have been extremely important to geisha, but I was more interested in her life choices. She spent literally half a page talking about closing the okiaya - a century+ old family institution. They adopted her into this family to continue the line and she closed the issue in less than a page. Very surprising...
Anyway, just not that interesting of a book. I know Memoirs of a Geisha is exaggerated fiction, but a least it was interesting. I would read something other than Geisha, A Life.