Memoirs of a Geisha

I finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden. I should have realized this was not a true story from the day I opened the book. I must have been in a daze when I read the information about the author? I probably just assumed this guy had recorded the information from a living person and put it in book form. Or something? When I finished it I was still hungry for more. How was this lady able to stay in New York City in an expensive apartment; and own a small tea house; and it was then that I realized this was a, "novel" and that I had convinced myself this was a true story. It is a "novel." I never read novels about a woman by a man or the other way around. It would be like reading a novel entitled, "My Life as a Pig" by Mrs. Cow.

So books like Autobiography of a Geisha and Geisha of Gion: The Memoir of Mineko Iwasaki is the real thing and not fiction. What was I thinking?

Which brings me to the point that I have been at parties and watched and listened to Geisha play the Shamisen and the music that comes from it. I was absolutely in awe of these ladies when I was just nineteen years old, 9,000 miles from home, sitting on a straw mat in a tiny room somewhere in the Ginza in Tokyo. I had assumed they were high-class prostitutes but was told nothing could be further from the truth. There are prostitutes that parade around as Geisha and, their Obi tells you, 'I am a prostitute' but I was not aware of these fine points of Japanese dress at that time.

© 2006 Abraham Lincoln - All rights reserved.