《Memoirs of a Geisha》or《艺伎回忆录》is one of the top favourite books of my friend Pia. By a chance, I bought two, one for me and one for her. It took me about 6 weeks to finish the book. Well, during the 6 weeks, I also read other 4 books. Anyway, it is more than 500 pages, a long story, attractive a story. 

I knew the book many years ago because of the film which was based on the novel of the same name. On the cover page it wrote that “This is an epic tale and a beautiful evocation of a rapidly vanishing world”. I would say it is really great book, introducing Geisha and Japanese culture. 

It is a story of a young girl, Chiyo, who was sold at the age of 9 into a geisha house, and her journey to becoming a successful geisha Sayuri. The story was told by the first person as an old woman looking back her life.

She lived with her sister, and parents in a shack by the sea on the coast of Japan. Her mother was sick, and they were poor people. An appearance of businessman from the village changed little Chiyo’s life. She was sold to one of the geisha house mainly because of her beautiful and her gray/blue eyes. 

She desperate to escape from the geisha house at the beginning, because she was considered as a threat to the Hatsumomo, a famous fully trained geisha working for the house. Little Chiyo had a miserable life at the beginning, she was accused of stealing, ruining an expensive kimono with ink. And she was caught trying to escape. Until now seemed she would never become a geisha. Then accepted her destiny as a housemaid instead of being training as a geisha. 

Some day, she met one man, Chairman, who became the motivation of that she became a Geisha. But life was not easy, there was no opportunity for her because nobody would pay her the training fee. Suddenly one day, the opportunity came. She received an unexpected news that the most famous Geisha Mameha decided to take Chiyo under her wing and insure that she could become a geisha. From then on, Chiyo tried hard to become a geisha, a successful Geisha, named Sayori. 

She paid all her debts because of the very very high mizuage price. She became the daughter of the geisha house, which caused her loss of friendship with Pumpkin. She had a bright future. However, the Chairman seemed like did not recognised her. She tried to so hard to find any opportunity to see the Chairman. Unfortunately, there were always someone or something keeping away them being together. 

Nobu, a good man, a good friend of Chairman, was so kind to Sayuri. He also was the reason of Sayuri suffering. I didn’t like the way she treated to Nobu, but i understood her. 

I was kind of happy with the ending. It was not fairy tale, she was the mistress of the Chairman. She knew that she cannot married to Chairman. But, she was always the one who Chairman loved. 

In this book, I don’t like the Dr. Crab’s character. He was a sick man. He spent lots of money on girls’ virginity and kept the blood sample as souvenir? So sick…. So disgust….

I did some research that Geisha is still exist in the modern society, but the amount of Geisha is quite low. They are trained by playing music, dancing, acting, performing tea ceremonies. They make their living entertaining extremely wealthy, powerful men in tea houses. They were trained in this way, whether you like it or not. If you would like to see a Geisha in Japan, you have to go to special places, and it is very difficult to see them. 

Those two posts was about the Geisha history and their elaborate kimono, their white make-up, and traditional hairstyles.