One week amongst Geisha

Imagine yourself seated inside a teahouse , and kneeling in front of you, is a woman, dressed in an exqusite kimono and whose face is painted white, lips as red as blood, and she is pouring sake or tea into your cup whenever it gets empty. From time to time, she is telling stories or performing a short piece of dance to entertain you. Your imagination will take you to the 1930's, and you'll be in the Gion district of Kyoto, Japan, one of the prime Geisha districts of the country.

Truly, it is a different world altogether. Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha has casted such a spell on me that I am still wandering around the alleyways of Gion, mesmerised by the beauty of the artists there, who are known as geisha in Japanese. The novel tells the story of Chiyo, a girl from a fishing district of Japan named Yoroido, who possesses a very unusual pair of eyes, and how she transforms into Sayuri, overcoming all the barriers of hardships and meanness of the surrounding world.

Arthur Golden has depicted the lifestyle of the geisha during the period of 1930's in intricate details. The various trainings that a girl undergo from her very young age to become a geisha, such as playing various instruments, dancing, learning the tea-ceremony etc., the jealousy and rivalry between established geisha, various tricks that a geisha apply to beguile wealthy and influencial men of the society in order to gain his patronage and so on. In a world where beauty reigns supreme, a geisha loses her virginity through a man who makes the highest bidding (however, this aspect in the novel is much controversial and the author has been sued for this). But other than this, the novel has been able to portray the hidden stories and facts of an entirely different world which was unknown to the readers. This is, I think, the main success of this novel, a genuine literary piece which has interwoven fact and fiction in the correct proportion.

Reading this novel took me to a different world, and sitting in my bedroom, I was able to make a trip to Gion. Kudos to Arthur Golden for giving me this opportunity.