While this passage is questionable, I have learned from Iwasaki that geiko are not in any way prostitutes but are artists. I don’t believe that geiko perform sexual favors for money, but the reasoning here isn’t sound to me. There are a lot of things that people would do for a large sum of money. (It is also the reason the notion that geiko perform sexual favors for their clients is so ridiculous. This was a good deal of money in 1960s Japan, more than that earned by the presidents of most companies. I don’t have the exact figures, but I believe I was earning about $500,000 a year. I believe a lot of what she says about life as a geisha, but one passage made skeptical of either her message in it or the translation. The book repeatedly describes why geisha aren’t prostitutes and that mizuage isn’t what we think it is. I haven’t read Golden’s book or watched the movie adaptation, but there are several parts that are very clearly directed at non-Japanese readers. Iwasaki’s memoir tries to break the stereotypes perpetuated in Golden’s book. After it was translated into Japanese, Iwasaki saw her name in print without permission and claims that Golden’s book misrepresents what it is to be a geisha. Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, was published in 1997 and acknowledged Mineko Iwasaki as the real-life geisha that the author interviewed.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |