This is a fascinating autobiography. Mineko Iwasaki chose to leave her familys home at 5 years old and be adopted into the Iwasaki family as the heir to their geisha house. She spent the next 25 years immersing herself in traditional art forms, eventually becoming the most famous and acclaimed geiko (the more specific term that geishas use to refer to themselves) of her generation. When Arthur Golden was researching his Memoirs of a Geisha book, he interviewed her and used her story as his inspiration. She was totally pissed at the way he sensationalized and sexualized geishas and ignored their passion for and dedication to the arts. So she wrote this autobiography to help correct the misunderstandings about what a geiko does and how the system and its associated industries actually work.
Their dedication to their arts is astounding. Mineko does a really good job of laying out the stages a geiko goes through in her career and the incredible variety of skills she has to master for her profession. Minekos specialty was dance, but throughout her life as a geiko she continually took lessons for musical instruments, calligraphy, and flower arrangement. Eventually, Mineko became frustrated with the way the system that had originally been set up to support the women and help them maintain their independence and enable them to focus entirely on their art has become, over the centuries, calcified and so restrictive its ended up getting in the way of that dedication to art. But even though she retired as a geiko, Mineko hasnt stopped dancing and her love of the arts actually introduced her to her husband, an artist in his own right.
I read Memoirs of a Geisha years ago and it really bothered me, because it did feel like it sensationalized things and focused entirely on sex, but it was really well written and engaging (which somehow made it worse). I liked how this book not only laid out what a geiko actually does in a very clear way that even someone with no familiarity with Japanese culture and traditions can understand. She talked about not only the lessons, but also the relationships between the geisha houses and teahouses, what the parts of the geikos outfits mean and why theyre important, and the roles of all the people whose industries geiko depend on to enable them to perform their arts. She also explores some of the reasons there are so many misconceptions about what geishas actually do, such as similar use of terminology that leads to mixing up geiko traditions with those of courtesans.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable book. Its a fasinating look into a complicated, primarily female world. And I just admire the hell out of the dedication and determination it takes for these women to practice their arts.
Their dedication to their arts is astounding. Mineko does a really good job of laying out the stages a geiko goes through in her career and the incredible variety of skills she has to master for her profession. Minekos specialty was dance, but throughout her life as a geiko she continually took lessons for musical instruments, calligraphy, and flower arrangement. Eventually, Mineko became frustrated with the way the system that had originally been set up to support the women and help them maintain their independence and enable them to focus entirely on their art has become, over the centuries, calcified and so restrictive its ended up getting in the way of that dedication to art. But even though she retired as a geiko, Mineko hasnt stopped dancing and her love of the arts actually introduced her to her husband, an artist in his own right.
I read Memoirs of a Geisha years ago and it really bothered me, because it did feel like it sensationalized things and focused entirely on sex, but it was really well written and engaging (which somehow made it worse). I liked how this book not only laid out what a geiko actually does in a very clear way that even someone with no familiarity with Japanese culture and traditions can understand. She talked about not only the lessons, but also the relationships between the geisha houses and teahouses, what the parts of the geikos outfits mean and why theyre important, and the roles of all the people whose industries geiko depend on to enable them to perform their arts. She also explores some of the reasons there are so many misconceptions about what geishas actually do, such as similar use of terminology that leads to mixing up geiko traditions with those of courtesans.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable book. Its a fasinating look into a complicated, primarily female world. And I just admire the hell out of the dedication and determination it takes for these women to practice their arts.
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