Arthur Golden’s best selling saga of a geisha girl is back in the news. First published in 1997, this kimono clad ‘Pretty Woman’ meets ‘A Woman of Substance’ wowed readers with its exotic subject and setting. Indeed Golden ( who based his tale on the confessions of Mineko Iwasaki, a retired Kyoto geisha) was much praised for his atmospheric authenticity. But three years and four million copies later, Iwasaki sued Golden claiming that he "tarnished her reputation, breached an unwritten contract not to reveal her identity and unjustly enriched himself through the novel".
Now Memoirs finds itself in the centre of another news making controversy – this one caused by the release, earlier this month of it’s cinematic version. Produced by Steven Spielberg, this visually sumptuous epic of the East seemed an inevitable development of a Hollywood hungry for Oriental inspiration. But the film invoked the ire of purists and politics , for it’s controversial casting of Chinese actresses in the three Japanese female leads.
All of which makes Memoirs the season’s trendiest read – a worthy successor to sushi bars, pokemon and manga comics. The book itself is undeniably engaging. Set in early 1900’s Japan, it opens in the little fishing village of Yoroido. Sayuri (still called Chiyo-san) and her elder sister Satsu are sold by their fisherman father and sent many miles away to Kyoto. There, they are separated – the plainer Satsu into an ordinary brothel and Chiyo with her striking grey green eyes into a geisha obiya. This house of the rising sun is run by two mean and ugly crones, ‘Mother’ and ‘Auntie’ . Nine year old Chiyo must fight their petty cruelties and the evil wiles of the beautiful but cruel geisha, Hatsumomo. One day , teary eyed on the banks on the Shirakawa river, Chiyo meets the man who will change her life, known simply as ‘Chairman ‘. He gives her counsel and a coin to buy ice candy ( also a monogrammed handkerchief to wipe her tears). Chiyo’s luck turns, she acquires a fairy godmother, the famous Mameha, who is also rival to Hatsumoto. She applies herself feverishly to her lessons, playing the shamisen, learning dance and deportment (including training to pour tea with just the right glimpse of bare skin visible through a kimono sleeve and walking daintily in wooden shoes ). Events proceed briskly in the tatami matted territory of the Gion tea houses . Mameha’s manipulations for the bid price for Sayuri’s mizuage ( virginity) by playing two interested bidders off each other, pays off. Sayuri is now an independent geisha . But in the conspiring cat-eat-cat world of the Gion geishas, will she achieve her dream of acquiring the ‘Chairman’ as her danna or special patron ?
Golden tells the story deftly, with lots of intricate little descriptions ( Hatsumomo’s kimono, for instance is ‘ water blue, with swirling lines in ivory to mimic the current in a stream. Glistening trout tumbled in the current, and the surface of the water was ringed with gold wherever the soft green leaves of a tree touched it’.) There’s lots of interesting trivia as well , from the designer details of kimonos with their broad belt obi’s and under layer koshimaki’s to the intricacies of geisha make up . And in the distance , tiny glimpses of a frightening real world – of poverty, of common whore houses , being made to work in a factory and of War time in Japan.
Definitely worth a read . For even if it’s a cliché it’s a fascinatingly accoutered one.
This appeared in The Times of India Sunday BookMark dated 1st January 2006
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