Autobiography Of A Geisha

This most recent geisha boom comes with a difference. While Golden’s novel skillfully utilises, and feeds into, clich-s of the Madame Butterfly variety, these two new publications can be seen as part of an attempt…to break the gendered orientalist gaze and unravel some enduring stereotypes. Masuda’s gripping, heart-rending and humorous account is a gem, especially as it offers a view “from below” of the untold social history of modern Japan * Times Literary Review *
An unvarnished firsthand look into the world of a woman who unflinchingly relates the bitter struggle of her geisha existence in pre-World War II Japan. This is a fascinating and heart-rending tale – Liza Dalby
Masuda’s account of being a geisha in rural Japan at a hot springs resort is at once intriguing and heartbreaking. While Arthur Golden’s fictional Memoirs of a Geisha continues to be the yardstick against which all other books on the geisha world are measured, Masuda’s account is a worthy complement * Publishers Weekly *

Sayo Masuda died in 2008. The translator G. G. Rowley teaches English and Japanese literature at Waseda University in Tokyo. She is the author of Yosano Akiko and The Tale of Genji.

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