The Geisha (novel)

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The Geisha (original title: Memoirs of a Geisha ) is the debut novel by the American writer Arthur Golden from 1997.

action

Japan 1929: Nine-year-old Chiyo lives with her older sister Satsu in a Japanese fishing village. Her mother is seriously ill and so her father decides to give the two girls away. While Chiyo ends up in the Nitta-Okiya in Kyoto, her sister is forced into prostitution in the neighboring district.

In the Okiya, a geisha house, Chiyo meets pumpkin heads and the cruel but successful Hatsumomo, the first geisha in the house. Pumpkin Head is a girl her age with whom Chiyo gets along well from the start. Hatsumomo, on the other hand, sees her position endangered by the "newcomer" because the pretty Chiyo could one day become a more popular geisha in Gion than Hatsumomo. So she tries to make the little fisher girl's life hell. She promises Chiyo that she will tell her where her sister has been taken if she will grant her every wish forever. She agrees, and Hatsumomo orders her to carry out tasks that skyrocket Chiyo's debt. It seems like the girl could never repay her debts and would have to work as a maid in her house forever to save money.

One day, however, to everyone's surprise, the great geisha Mameha Chiyos Okiya visits and surprises everyone with her request to make Chiyo their younger sister. Mameha becomes Chiyo's big sister, which means Mameha has to train Chiyo to be a geisha, help her to make contacts and take her with her to her own engagements. According to tradition, at the ceremony by which Mameha and Chiyo are declared sisters, their Mameha chooses a geisha name: Sayuri. Mameha concludes the following agreement with mother, the head of Nitta-Okyia, whom Chiyo considers an unsafe investment: If Sayuri manages to pay off all her debts by the age of twenty, Mameha will ultimately receive twice her normal share of Sayuri's income , otherwise she only gets half. Mother suggests this trade because there was only one geisha who managed to recover the entire debt by the age of twenty - Hatsumomo. Sayuri is allowed to go back to school (after she tried to escape with her sister shortly after her arrival, she was forbidden to do so) and learns to shamisen as well as to sing and dance.

In order to protect her from Hatsumomo's cruelty - at parties she does everything to make Sayuri look ridiculous - Mameha shields Sayuri extremely. While Pumpkin Head hurries from one engagement to the next with Hatsumomo, Sayuri sits in her okiya and practices playing shamisen or dancing. Sayuri therefore only accompanies Mameha when it is reasonably certain that Hatsumomo will not appear.

One day Mameha and Sayuri attend a sumo match at the invitation of the Iwamura Electric company, where Sayuri meets the company's president, Nobu, and sees the director, Iwamura Ken, again. Sayuri knows the director from an earlier encounter when she was nine years old and stood crying by a stream and he comforted her, bought her an ice cream and gave her his handkerchief. Since that day she has raved about this man without knowing his name. While Sayuri recognizes the director immediately, he doesn't seem to be able to remember this encounter. To her further disappointment, Mameha asks her to take care of the burned and one-armed Nobu. Nobu, who can be very hurtful, is taken with Sayuri, he gives her a comb and jewelry. Over time, Sayuri also begins to appreciate him and his friendship; nevertheless the director is far more important to her.

A key experience in Sayuri's life is her mizuage (defloration), which is more or less auctioned at the highest bidder (this practice of defloration for money was later rejected by Golden's source Mineko Iwasaki ). Thanks to Mameha's clever planning, Sayuris Mizuage turns into a competition between two men, which makes the price soaring. For Sayuri's mizuage, the highest sum has always been paid in Gion - 11,500 yen. With this amount it is possible for her to get rid of all debts in one go. Mother (who is basically all about the money) then decides to adopt her so that she doesn't miss a yen from Sayuri's income.

With her adoption, Sayuri is now better protected from Hatsumomo's atrocities, as Mother Hatsumomo explains that Sayuri is the main source of income for the Okiya and that she shouldn’t be pulled a hair. After Sayuri's adoption, Hatsumomo sinks deeper and deeper, her attacks of cruelty increase towards her friends as well, and finally mother throws her out of the okiya.

When World War II breaks out, Sayuri herself and her Okiya are initially fine. The Okiya gets a lot of goods that are rationed through Sayuris danna, a general who can achieve a lot for them through his position in the military. But finally the shortage becomes more and more noticeable here too, and the Gion Geisha district is closed. Fearing factory work and prostitution, many geishas are looking for shelter to stay in until the neighborhood reopens. Sayuri tries to go through the general first, but he can't help her. Thereupon she is ordered by Nobu into a tea house, who can find her accommodation.

When Sayuri returns to the newly opened Gion and her Okiya after five years, Nobu asks her a favor. He wants her to entertain the Assistant Treasury Secretary, a person Nobu finds obnoxious, to help save Iwamura Electric. At the same time, he announces that he will offer himself to her as danna as soon as the company is back on its feet. That Nobu her danna is, but is precisely what Sayuri is afraid secretly. She likes Nobu, but her heart belongs to the director, who unfortunately doesn't seem interested in her. Sayuri fears that if Nobu becomes her danna , that could mean the end of her efforts to win the director over.

That is why she decides to take a radical step. She wants to destroy Nobu's feelings for her, which she sees as an obstacle in her efforts, in one fell swoop. Since Nobu thinks the Minister is a terrible person - especially because he is very interested in Sayuri - she decides to do exactly what Nobu would never expect of her: to sleep with the Minister. Sayuri does not find it easy to carry out this plan; Nobu is a good friend to her, but her love for the director is ultimately more important to her.

In order for her plan to succeed, she asks Pumpkin Head to take Nobu to the place of her meeting with the minister as if by chance. But Sayuri was bitterly mistaken about pumpkin heads, which she thought was her friend. Pumpkin Head is angry and jealous of Sayuri because she was adopted and thus has a home, while Pumpkin Head herself has not been adopted and now lives in a simple okiya, for which Sayuri blames. In order to get revenge on her, she doesn't bring Nobu, but the director. She knows about Sayuri's feelings for him and wants to hurt her with them, which she also manages.

For three days she didn't hear from Nobu or the director. Then, however, one evening she is asked to come to the tea house. Nobu is waiting for her there, who doesn't know anything about her meeting with the minister. Instead, the director sits there. Sayuri, who is incredibly ashamed, expects her behavior to be reprimanded. The director, who learned from Pumpkin Heads that Nobu and not he should see Sayuri and the minister originally, wants to know why Sayuri did it. He also explains that he did not want to stand in the way of Nobu's affection for her, as he values ​​him as a friend beyond measure. That's why he withheld his feelings for her. When Sayuri tells him that she did everything she did only to get closer to him, he kisses her.

So the director will be Sayuris danna . She later emigrated to New York and opened a tea house there with his help. It is implied that she has a son with the director, but it is not explicitly stated.

History of origin

Arthur Golden lived in Japan for several years after completing his degree in Japanese art and history at Harvard and Columbia University and his Masters in English . While writing his first work, he is said to have been inspired by a meeting in Tokyo where Golden met the illegitimate son of a respected businessman and a geisha. This encounter fascinated the author so much that over a period of ten years he began to research every detail of Japanese geisha culture. When researching his novel, he is said to have mainly based on the experience of the geisha Mineko Iwasaki , a good friend of his grandmother's. For years Iwasaki had charmed the Japanese upper class as a famous geisha.

reception

The novel quickly became a sales success and was able to establish itself in the literary bestseller lists in numerous countries. In 2005, the material was filmed under the direction of Rob Marshall - see The Geisha (film) .

criticism

“The Geisha is a novel full of impressive intensity. Golden has achieved a masterpiece. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Tamara Wieder: Remaking a memoir. (No longer available online.) In: The Phoenix.com. Archived from the original on January 6, 2010 ; accessed on May 23, 2009 (English, interview with Mineko Iwasaki). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bostonphoenix.com