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A review by dorothy_gale
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
5.0
THIS BOOK IS A LIBELOUS BETRAYAL, and for me personally, the most difficult 5 stars I've ever given. The story is fascinating. The writing, of a lyricist. The author, a skilled researcher... and treacherous swindler. He was sued (and paid) for what he did to Mineko Iwasaki, the retired geisha whose life 90% of the novel portrays. However, the damage he did to Japanese culture with the other 10% should be criminal. Even though this book is fiction, most people who read it will believe it is how geisha life really is. Arthur Golden exploited a beautiful, exotic mystery and twisted it into a sensationalized tabloid for the almighty dollar. 23 years later, he is a one-hit wonder and I hope it stays that way.
How did the world not condemn Golden's betrayal? It was 1997. The Internet was still AOL, and dial-up speeds of 56k had just become available. Google didn't launch until a year later and even then was still in beta. The first smart phone didn't arrive until 3 years after Memoirs was published. TMZ didn't exist until 8 years later. The west already had preconceived notions that geisha were just glorified prostitutes. So when a Harvard/Columbia grad who specializes in Japanese art and history and whose family publishes the New York Times comes along with a book written so convincingly in the first person (and "Memoirs" in the title), how could readers not regard it as fact? Most of the world didn't know any better.
Unfortunately, Mineko settled two years into her lawsuit (February 2003), so there is no public record of Golden's wrongdoing. But it was far too late anyway. The film rights to the movie were purchased years earlier, and when the settlement happened, the U.S. was in post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, and the tragic deaths of space shuttle Columbia's seven astronauts had just happened. Mineko Iwasaki's belated, principled, detail-less win wasn't newsworthy in comparison. Golden's betrayal snowballed into Hollywood, where the atrocious misrepresentation of geisha history and culture were magnified on the big screen and cemented with Academy Awards.
For the non-fiction story of brown-eyed Mineko Iwasaki's life as a geisha, see her actual memoir, here: [b:Geisha, a Life|522534|Geisha, a Life|Mineko Iwasaki|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1359402937l/522534._SY75_.jpg|18133]. For the complex history of geisha traditions, and clarifications on prostitution, see here: Wikipedia.
How did the world not condemn Golden's betrayal? It was 1997. The Internet was still AOL, and dial-up speeds of 56k had just become available. Google didn't launch until a year later and even then was still in beta. The first smart phone didn't arrive until 3 years after Memoirs was published. TMZ didn't exist until 8 years later. The west already had preconceived notions that geisha were just glorified prostitutes. So when a Harvard/Columbia grad who specializes in Japanese art and history and whose family publishes the New York Times comes along with a book written so convincingly in the first person (and "Memoirs" in the title), how could readers not regard it as fact? Most of the world didn't know any better.
Unfortunately, Mineko settled two years into her lawsuit (February 2003), so there is no public record of Golden's wrongdoing. But it was far too late anyway. The film rights to the movie were purchased years earlier, and when the settlement happened, the U.S. was in post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, and the tragic deaths of space shuttle Columbia's seven astronauts had just happened. Mineko Iwasaki's belated, principled, detail-less win wasn't newsworthy in comparison. Golden's betrayal snowballed into Hollywood, where the atrocious misrepresentation of geisha history and culture were magnified on the big screen and cemented with Academy Awards.
For the non-fiction story of brown-eyed Mineko Iwasaki's life as a geisha, see her actual memoir, here: [b:Geisha, a Life|522534|Geisha, a Life|Mineko Iwasaki|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1359402937l/522534._SY75_.jpg|18133]. For the complex history of geisha traditions, and clarifications on prostitution, see here: Wikipedia.