Bust
Her story is heartbreaking, but her indomitable spirit prevents it from becoming maudlin.— Elizabeth Quinn
Autobiography of a Geisha
by Sayo MasudaView All Available Formats & Editions
Sayo Masuda was a geisha at a hot springs resort, where the realities of sex for sale are unadorned by the trappings of wealth and power. Remarkable for its wit and frankness, the book is a moving record of a woman's survival on the margins of Japanese society--in the words of the translator, "the superbly told tale of a woman whom fortune never favored yet never
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Sayo Masuda was a geisha at a hot springs resort, where the realities of sex for sale are unadorned by the trappings of wealth and power. Remarkable for its wit and frankness, the book is a moving record of a woman's survival on the margins of Japanese society--in the words of the translator, "the superbly told tale of a woman whom fortune never favored yet never defeated."
Columbia University Press
Editorial Reviews
Foreword Magazine - Marlene Y. Satter
[Masuda's] endurance of adversity is admirable, as is the down-to-earth way in which she relates her story. She is witty, realistic, and forthright about her life, and readers will admire her courage and determination.
Woman's Day - Judy Helman
As I read this autobiography I cried for the women who live their lives as geishas...Thank you, Sayo Masuda, for revealing your life to us.
Time Magazines Literary Supplement
A much-needed corrective to the romantic myths spun around this profession... Superbly preserved and sensitively rendered... [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.University of London - Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
Autobiography of a Geisha is a compelling... gritty and at times bleak account, but one which is related with great pathos and humor throughout. Rowley is to be commended.Bust - Elizabeth Quinn
Her story is heartbreaking, but her indomitable spirit prevents it from becoming maudlin.
University of London Bulletin of the School of Oriental and AFrican Studies
Autobiography of a Geisha is a compelling... gritty and at times bleak account, but one which is related with great pathos and humor throughout. Rowley is to be commended.
Foreword Magazine
[Masuda's] endurance of adversity is admirable, as is the down-to-earth way in which she relates her story. She is witty, realistic, and forthright about her life, and readers will admire her courage and determination.— Marlene Y. Satter
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Courageously, Masuda refuses to put white makeup on the unsightly aspects of her tale, inviting readers to take a long, hard look at the unadulterated face of geisha living.
Woman's Day
As I read this autobiography I cried for the women who live their lives as geishas...Thank you, Sayo Masuda, for revealing your life to us.— Judy Helman
Booklist
Masuda's memoir is a must-read for those interested in the lives of geishas.
Persimmon
Originally published in Japan in the 1950's, Autobiography of a Geisha is a remarkably fresh and personal account of a life that is a far cry not only from the Eastern exoticism of [John Ball's Miss One Hundred Thousand Spring Blossoms], but also from the upscale and at least sometimes glamorous lives depicted in [Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.
Times Literary Supplement
A much-needed corrective to the romantic myths spun around this profession... Superbly preserved and sensitively rendered... [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.
Monumenta Nipponica
Since the publication of Arthur Golden's bestselling novelMemoirs of a Geisha, there has been a spate of books that an unkind reviewer might label 'follow-ons'... While all of these speak to a greater or lesser extent of the hardships and occasional cruelties of the geisha's life, none provides as raw and unvarnished account as Sayo Masuda'sAutobiography.
The Los Angeles Times
The writing throughout is quite plain and utterly unsentimental, more a self-narrated ethnography than a work of literature. Still, what is lost in literary style is more than compensated with the bracing slap of truth as she depicts the realities of geisha life and its sullied aftermath. Courageously, Masuda refuses to put white makeup on the unsightly aspects of her tale, inviting readers to take a long, hard look at the unadulterated face of geisha living. — Bernadette MurphyPublishers Weekly
Masuda's account of being a geisha in rural Japan at a hot springs resort is at once intriguing and heartbreaking. There is nothing idyllic in her description of geisha training or life between the world wars. Born in 1925, Masuda was sent to work for a wealthy landowner when she was five. At 12, she was sold to a geisha house for about 30 yen, the price of a bag of rice. During those years, Masuda writes, "I wasn't even able to wonder why I didn't have any parents or why I should be the only one who was tormented. If you ask me what I did know then, it was only that hunger was painful and human beings were terrifying." Originally published in Japan in 1957, where it is still in print, this book grew out of an article that Masuda, who didn't learn to read and write until she was in her 20s, submitted for a contest in Housewife's Companion magazine. Her picaresque adventures as a geisha, then mistress, factory worker, gang moll and caretaker for her young brother offer an impassioned plea for valuing children. "Never give birth to children thoughtlessly!" she writes. "That is why, stroke by faltering stroke, I've written all this down." (May) FYI: While Arthur Golden's fictional Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) continues to be the yardstick against which all other books on the geisha world are measured, Masuda's account is a worthy complement. Readers interested in this culture will probably have already seen Atria's Geisha, a Life (Forecasts, Sept. 9, 2002) and Gotham's Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West (Forecasts, Jan. 20). Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
The deeply unromantic life of a low-rent geisha. Some work the high-end world of Kyoto and Tokyo, and others work out of cheesy hot-spring resorts, their fare a stream of small-time businessmen, factory owners, and petty gangsters. Such was Masuda's lot back in the 1940s, when this rudimentarily trained geisha served more as an indentured servant and prostitute than an artful consort. Nonetheless, it was a step up from her stint as a nursemaid, beginning at age six, when she subsisted on leftovers and was mortified, tormented, and slapped about by adults and kids alike. In need of money, her mother called Masuda home and promptly sold her to a geisha house when she was 12. This unvarnished account, first published 45 years ago and still in print in Japan, does not paint a pretty picture. "Geisha's pride wasn't worth a broken straw sandal," writes Masuda, who made the mistake of falling in love and was then tossed out by the patron, who had bought her from the house. Turned away by her family, she reunited with her younger brother ("My dreams, my affections, they were all for him. He was my reason for living"), and together they struggled to survive in postwar Japan. In stark prose as fateful as a Greek tragedy, she captures a wholly dreadful existence hustling a few illegally foraged potatoes to a starving population for a few yen. When her brother contracted tuberculosis, Masuda intended to return to prostitution to pay for his penicillin, but he threw himself from the hospital roof rather than let that happen. She stayed hungry and harassed, thanks to hypocritical anti-prostitution laws passed in the '50s (and taken to pieces here), until this account shocked Japanese readers with itsbitter taste of grinding poverty and its revelations about the geisha world's dark side. A comfortless portrait of the flip side of the geisha world, where one is more slave than courtesan. A rock and a hard place-and enough to give readers gray hair.
Product Details
- ISBN-13:
- 9780231129510
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- Publication date:
- 05/25/2005
- Pages:
- 216
- Sales rank:
- 886,828
- Product dimensions:
- 5.32(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.57(d)
- Age Range:
- 18 Years
What People are saying about this
Norma Field
Sayo's unadorned yet spirited autobiography recounting her coming-of-age in the unglamorous world of the country geisha and the harsh choices offered by the postwar world makes a bracing antidote to the enticements of finery, romance with patrons, and exquisite training in the arts purveyed by so many geisha stories. The art in Masuda's life crystallizes from her very survival and subsequent determination to put it in writing herself.
— Norma Field, University of Chicago
Liza Dalby
In this sensitive translation of an original memoir of a real geisha, Gaye Rowley gives us an unvarnished firsthand look into the world of a woman who unflinchingly relates the bitter struggle of her geisha existence in pre-WWII Japan. This is a fascinating and heart-rending tale.
— Liza Dalby, author of Geisha
Edwin McClellan
A remarkable story [that] tells us a great deal about how unkind a society can be to the more unfortunate of its fellow citizens.... An important piece of social history of Japan in the 1940s and 1950s. G. G. Rowley's translation is very good indeed. Her language is always natural and fluent, and very persuasive.
— Edwin McClellan, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature, Yale University
Arthur Golden
This engrossing and very human story of survival not only casts light on the lives of countless women in early modern Japan, but offers the reader a compelling portrait of one woman's experiences in the often idealized world of the geisha.
— Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha
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